BENTONVILLE -- The 2016 Bentonville Film Festival will include an extra day, kids' activities, a diversity and inclusion summit and unique cinema venues, officials said Friday.
Trevor Drinkwater, the festival's co-founder, and Gina Allgaier, vice president of marketing, discussed the plans with about 150 people at the Bentonville/Bella Vista Chamber of Commerce's Business Matters Breakfast.
By The Numbers
The Bentonville Film Festival 2015:
• 70 films screened, 45 in competition
• 12 discussion panels
• 12 other events
• 39 celebrities in attendance
• 94 filmmakers in attendance
• 50 press companies in attendance
• 83 sponsors
• 950 volunteers
• 37,000 tickets sold
• 15,000 free community tickets
• 17 venues used
Source: Staff Report
Business Matters Breakfast
The Bentonville/Bella Vista Chamber of Commerce hosts a Business Matters Breakfast quarterly. Each event focuses on an important issue relevant to the community.
Source: Staff Report
The inaugural festival was announced Jan. 5 and took place May 5-9. A lot had to be done in four months, Drinkwater said.
"We were not perfect," he said, noting issues with logistics and communication with the public on ticket availability. "But it proved that the town is ready for an event like this."
Next year's festival will be May 3-8, making it a day longer than this year's festival.
Primarily, we want more people to see these films, Drinkwater said.
The festival was founded by Drinkwater and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. It's the only research-based organization working within the media and entertainment industry using education to improve gender balance in entertainment, according to its website.
Allagier didn't go into detail about what the Kids Fest might entail, but Drinkwater said it's possible Old High Middle School could be used as a screening venue where students could watch films and speak with filmmakers during the day and the public could watch movies in the evenings.
He also mentioned a competition where students would rewrite movie scenes and Geena Davis and other actors would perform the parts. That event may be at The Scott Family Amazeum.
"This year we want to be more purposeful about creating this educational tract," Allgaier said.
Top executives of sponsoring companies will be able to participate in a diversity and inclusion summit, Drinkwater said.
There will also be four "cinema transformers" downtown. A cinema transformer is an 18-wheel truck that opens up and becomes a theater that can seat 91 people.
"We just found our movie theater," Drinkwater said, referring to the fact that Bentonville doesn't have one.
Having screens on and near the square will allow attendees to walk between panels, the Sponsor Village and movies, he said. The trucks will be used to host "mini Bentonville film festivals" around the country.
Some activities that will return include the League of Their Own reunion game, the "Geena and Friends" panel where Davis and other female actors read male-dominated movie scenes, and the premiere of a major studio production. The title has yet to be announced. It was Pitch Perfect Two this year.
Drinkwater and Allgaier spoke about the festival's efforts to gain awareness nationally by attending other film festivals from California to New York to Louisiana and creating public service announcements of Geena Davis speaking about things like the festival and Bentonville.
The one shown Friday morning was about the festival's mission of championing women and diversity in media.
"We're not trying to change the world," Davis says. "We just want entertainment media to reflect the world we live in, which, the last time I checked, was 51 percent women and very diverse."
Davis goes on to say that 7 percent of directors, 13 percent of writers and 20 percent of producers are women.
The Geena Davis Institute doesn't place blame but works to bring awareness to this unconscious bias that is prevalent in media and entertainment, Drinkwater said, adding that it's part of the Bentonville Film Festival's mission to help change that.
The festival celebrates good filmmaking but also creates a platform for commercialization of content created by women and minorities, he said. The festival guarantees distribution, he said.
NW News on 10/24/2015