We’re getting set for the 5th annual VFF and we’re all excited. The Festival’s grown every year and we appreciate the support we continue to get, from the filmmakers who come out from across the country, to the hundreds of people who volunteer every year, and from the film lovers who take over Vail for our four days.
For those of you who couldn’t make it out last year, the 2007 fest was one of our best. We had Harold Ramis out for our achievement award. He’s the real deal, as funny as you’d expect, and extremely laid back, just a really good guy. We gave a Rising Star award to Sophia Bush and a Breakthrough award to Hayden Panettiere. And we screened films, a little over 60 of them, in four days, which takes some scheduling but turned out well. We were really psyched to get “Knocked Up” from Universal for our Friday night screening. I loved “The 40 Year-Old Virgin” so I knew “Knocked Up” would deliver, and it delivered. Definitely one of the favorites at the fest. Universal sent out a security team with the film which was a first for us, and just made it an even bigger event, which is cool. We had a great lineup, one of our best programs, you can see the 07 program on the VFF site.
Right now we’re screening films, submissions opened in early October and close at the end of December, and we already have some great films coming in. We’re also getting films in for our RED Vision short film contest, part of our partnership with Product RED. We partnered with Bono’s Product Red last year and are excited about being involved with them and increasing awareness. You can visit joinred.com to see more about the partnership.
We’re also excited about our work with the Hotel Cafe. We’ve had some incredible musicians come out for the festival through the Hotel Cafe, from Cary Brothers to Josh Radin to Rachel Yamagata. They play during apres ski in the festival’s Music Cafe and it’s one of the highlights. We’re looking to shake things up a little for the big 5th annual next year and are talking about doing a Friday night concert, so we’ll have updates as things move forward.
Vail keeps growing and we keep growing with it. We’re looking forward to having screenings throughout Vail Village and beyond. It’s always tough to schedule as many films as we screen but that’s part of the fun. We know there are people out there who make it a mission to see as many films as possible so we keep improving the process to make it easier to see movies back to back and to get from one venue to another. Vail has the biggest free shuttle system in the country but we’ll also have a couple of Festival shuttles to help get people to the theaters, and to the parties. And talking about parties, I keep mentioning the 5th year, but it means a lot to us to really make an impact for the 5th annual, so we’re going big on the parties. We’ve got some unique and interesting and entertaining stuff in mind for the big parties, Opening Night on Thursday April 3rd, and Closing Night on Saturday April 5th.
We’re putting our award recipient list together now and should know who’ll be coming out pretty soon, so I’ll post that info as soon as I have it.
Until next time,
Sean