The San Luis Obispo International Film Festival celebrated its 30-year anniversary on April 25-30 with 152 films showing in local theaters, including The Palm Theatre, Fremont Theater and Downtown Centre Cinemas.
“It’s been so amazing,” SLO Film Fest Executive Director Skye McLennan said. “We’ve tried so many new things this year and engaged a bunch of different and new audiences.”
McLennan said she was very excited to see the turnout for this year’s festival.
“The attendance has been back. It’s felt like it’s gotten its life back and it’s taken us several years to get that since the pandemic,” she said.
While it may seem like a small film festival, SLO Film Fest shows a range of films and brought over 70 filmmakers to the Central Coast this year.
“I think there’s a misunderstanding that, you know, it’s like small, we’re small potatoes, but we really have some really, very high caliber stuff here,” McLennan said. “I just encourage people to not take that for granted.”
Surf & skate
A sold-out night at Fremont Theater and lines stretching down Monterey St. on Friday only meant one thing: Surf Nite was back another year.
The night featured two films, starting with the short film “To Be Frank,” which follows Frank Paine, a 73-year-old surfing legend from the South Bay and a family that has evolved from a shared love of the ocean.
The main feature of the night was “Trilogy: New Wave,” which told the story of three top professional surfers — Griffin Colapinto, Ethan Ewing and Seth Moniz — searching the world for amazing waves and rediscovering the joy of non-competition surfing.
“We had to do a film project that was an international-serving film traveling the world throughout [the COVID-19 pandemic],” Executive Producer Enich Harris said. “Four years later we’re celebrating an incredible surf film that traveled during that time and documented a time in history that’s pretty special.”
The event has been a staple of the SLO Film Festival since its establishment in 2006, bringing surfing to the big screen and highlighting a key part of the Central Coast community, according to the SLO Film Festival website.
“Film Fest means a lot for me,” Founder and Director of Surfing for Hope Foundation Bob Voglin said. “Surfing is such a special thing and I’m so pleased with the state of where we’re at that surfing is getting the respect that it should.”
Surfing for Hope is a non-profit organization that holds camps and other events for patients and survivors of cancer and their family members.
“I think just being on the ocean and the beach gives people a good feeling, which is why we kind of take a great thing and we try to, you know, take a terrible thing like cancer and mesh the two together and try to blunt the pain of cancer by surfing,” Director of Surfing for Hope Tom Spillane said.
This year, the SLO Film Festival introduced a new event, Community of Skate, to honor the skateboarding community and its contribution to film.
Skate-themed films such as the 1978 film “Skateboard” were shown throughout the day before the Community of Skate event on Sunday evening.
Doors opened at 5:30 p.m. and attendees could listen to live music from THE BOGEYS, and enjoy a showcase of custom skateboards and live screen-printing by the San Luis Obispo High School Advanced Graphic Design class before a film screening.
“What was really cool was we had all these different generations of people. We had young skaters, little skate dudes, and we had parents and everyone was finding that like common thread, which is super cool,” McLennan said.
Around 7 p.m., people settled into their seats to watch the award-winning feature film “Dogtown and Z-Boys,” and the preceding short film “4DWN.”
“4DWN” highlights a South Dallas skatepark working to help its community in the face of food insecurity and social injustice.
“Dogtown and Z-Boys” tells the story of a group of kids that revolutionized skateboarding and shaped its modern culture.
Attendees were excited to see an event about the skateboarding community. Timothy Daley drove up from Los Angeles Sunday morning for the event and said he hopes the event will inspire people to build more skateparks.
“I’m hoping that this may rejuvenate and revitalize the skate community,” Daley said.
After the films, directors Stacy Peralta and Danny Schmidt, joined by “4DWN” crew Rob Cahill, Mike Crum and Kareem Campbell, sat down for a panel discussion on the art of skateboarding.
During the panel, the speakers emphasized how inclusive the skateboarding community is.
“[Skateboarding] belongs to anyone that puts their feet on a board,” Peralta said.
Cahill described the skate community as “creative, innovative [and] tenacious.”
“Maybe we can harness this as a superpower of our subculture and use that to make an impact,” Cahill said.
Music
On Saturday, April 27, local cafe Kreuzberg held the SLO Film Festival’s 4th Annual Music Video Showcase. The showcase included film screenings, live interviews with directors and a live performance from SLO’s very own Krooks.
A total of 12 music videos were screened, with appearances from creative directors Bianca Catbagan, Jess Dunn, Richie Starzec and more. Artists featured included Gayle & BlackBear, Couch Dog and Sparks. The music videos followed a broad range of themes including LGBTQ+ narratives, grievance and love.
Attendees said they were excited to see the work of creatives and get the opportunity to speak with directors and producers in a relaxed environment.
Highlights of the night included the screening of local band Couch Dog’s music video “Not My Night,” produced by Ryan Porter. The music video was filmed in Los Osos and follows a comedy horror plot with blood explosions, zombies and impalement. The special effects and blood explosion contractions were done by Tasha Lee, bassist of Couch Dog.
Earlier on Saturday, filmmakers and the community gathered for a reception and discussion with Heather Graham, this year’s King Vidor Award recipient. The award is “an annual tribute to a talented filmmaker, actor or film artist in recognition of his or her exceptional artistic contributions to the motion picture industry,” according to SLO Film Fest.
Diversity, equity & inclusion
SLO Film Fest celebrated diversity, equity and inclusion in filmmaking through various programming, including a panel on queer influences on pop culture and film and a series of shorts presented by R.A.C.E. Matters.
At the queer film panel on Sunday, April 28, Andria Wilson Mirza, Fawzia Mirza, Sav Rodgers and Jess Dunn discussed their experience with queer representation in film and how that has influenced their work today.
For Rodgers, the movie “Chasing Amy” was the first time he really saw queer people represented in film and was highly influential in his life, leading to his creation of the film “Chasing Chasing Amy,” which was shown during the festival.
“The thing that ended up saving my life was there were queer characters that were three-dimensional,” Rodgers said.
The panel concluded that there needs to be more authentic queer representation in film and more funding going into queer filmmaking.
“It’s vital for our survival,” Wilson Mirza said.
Sunday also featured five shorts, ranging from 11-18 minutes long, during the R.A.C.E. Matters event: “Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games,” “Essex Girls,” “Gaps,” “In Wonderland” and “Nai Nai and Wai Po.”
The films shown during the R.A.C.E. Matters event all tackle themes of making space for diverse voices and finding oneself.
Fostering diversity and inclusion has been something SLO Film Fest has been focused on and hopes to continue doing going forward, according to McLennan.
“To have more inclusivity, more diversity, just those are things we’ve really been pushing, we felt them this year and even more is the plan,” McLennan said.
Local films & filmmakers
Monday at SLO Film Fest featured filmmakers of the Central Coast, including eight short films written, shot and produced by Cal Poly students, at Fremont Theater.
Cal Poly Short Cuts were created under the guidance of screenwriter, editor and Interdisciplinary Studies (ISLA) Lecturer Randi Barros and artist and Associate Professor of Art & Design James Werner, who helped bring the stories to life.
The films — “June in Summer,” “Thieves on Bicycles,” “When Life Gives You Apples,” “Olive Branch,” “Confession,” “Irritable,” “Amor Prohibido” and “The Clay Teapot” — ranged from 10-15 minutes long and explored themes of discovery, loss and connection, both within and outside of campus life.
“Seeing the movie theater filled with so many Central Coast filmmakers is really inspiring and getting to meet all of them,” Producer of “When Life Gives You Apples” and journalism junior Brianna Thompson said. “It’s my first time ever being at a film festival and being a part of it is just, I don’t know, it makes me want to create more.”
The films were created over the course of multiple classes and quarters in ISLA 340 and 341, tackling each aspect of making a short film methodically to create polished final products for the big screen.
Productions from other Central Coast filmmakers also premiered over the course of the day at multiple theaters in SLO, with collections of short films as well as full-length features showcasing themes of Central Coast life.
One of these films was “The Unbroken Sky,” a story based on the autobiographical books of local author Francisco Jiménez which explores the world and struggles of a teenage undocumented immigrant on the Central Coast.
“Things that were very important to us when we were making the film, was an immersive sense of authenticity of the time,” Director Josh Peterson said. “Giving real care towards representing that honestly and respectfully … that’s exactly what we’re trying to do.”
More information about the local filmmakers showcased can be found on SLO Film Fest’s website.
Awards & closing
The SLO Film Fest came to a close on Tuesday, April 30 with an awards ceremony and screening of “Thelma.” “Thelma” follows a 93-year-old grandmother on her journey to get her money back after being a victim of a phone scam that made her believe she was sending money to help bail her grandson out of jail.
Filmmakers were awarded in 10 categories by a jury of film and media professionals, with honorable mentions being named in half of these categories, as well.
The winning films and honorable mentions in the George Sidney Independent Film Competition are as follows:
- Best Animation: “The House of Loss”
- Best Narrative Short: “Please Hold the Line”
- Narrative Short Honorable Mention: “The Masterpiece”
- Best Documentary Short: “Sludge: A PFAS Uprising”
- Documentary Short Honorable Mention: “Dicks That I Like”
- Best Documentary Feature: “Sugarcane”
- Documentary Feature Honorable Mention: “Arc of Oblivion”
- Best Narrative Feature: “Tokyo Cowboy”
- Narrative Feature Honorable Mention: “Riley”
- Best Music Video: “Watch Out”
- Music Video Honorable Mention: “La Vida es Fria”
The winning films in the Central Coast Film Showcase are as follows:
- Best Music Video: “Not My Night”
- Best Short Narrative: “Superstar”
- Best Short Documentary: “Tasting Notes”
- Best Feature-Length Film: “Wrestled Away: The Lee Kemp Story”
Lee Kemp said the award was completely unexpected.
“Well, because of the way the documentary was created over such a long period of time, I have to be frank, I never thought it would even get finished,” Kemp said. “It’s gratifying. It’s my first non-wrestling award, that’s kind of cool.”
While the main film festival has ended, there is still an opportunity to view the films. A special encore event will take place both online and in person in Paso Robles from May 2-5.
More information about the encore showings can be found at slofilmfest.org.
