The SAFILM–San Antonio Film Festival is seeking funds to produce our 30th annual film festival, slated for Wednesday, July 12 through Sunday, July 16, 2024.
As the largest film festival in South Texas, SAFILM attracts filmmakers and attendees from all over the Lone Star State and beyond. The festival’s main mission is to provide educational and networking opportunities for filmmakers of all backgrounds and experiences as well as to offer opportunities for audiences to see films they might not otherwise have access to.
Since SAFILM is San Antonio homegrown and 64.5% of the city’s residents identify as Hispanic, the festival works to serve a large cross-section of the minority-majority population, whether staff, interns, filmmakers, or audiences. We also actively curate films that represent a wide range of identities to share diverse stories with attendees who might not otherwise see themselves or be introduced to different experiences through mainstream media and film.
Events are financially accessible with free educational panel discussions and competitive ticket pricing for screenings. We also offer free screenings at the festival and at our partner Artpace San Antonio, a contemporary arts organization with global reach.
For 2024, we plan to offer a larger number of events than the 2023 line-up, which includes screenings, free educational panels, screenwriting competitions, networking socials, and a festival award ceremony. Our 2023 program will have 6 days of screenings of approximately 246 films in all genres with corresponding filmmaker Q&A’s. Films will be shown across 5 screens from downtown San Antonio to the Northside at the Santikos Palladium Theater.
In the past, categories of films have encompassed narrative and documentary feature-length films: short films, including animation; experimental; music videos; food-themed films; and children’s films. These works of celluloid art are from local, regional, national, and international film directors.
Our three free educational panels will offer opportunities for filmmakers and cinema enthusiasts to participate in engaging conversations with vetted industry professionals. Past workshops have included cinematic icons such as producer Marion Rosenberg (The Deer Hunter, Revolutionary Road) with editor Anne Goursaud (Bram Stoker’s Dracula, A Classy Broad) discussing the art of cinema and Hollywood then-and-now and legendary producer Marcia Nasatir (The Big Chill, Rocky, Carrie, Apocalypse Now) sharing about how to create a career in show business. This year we are featuring world-renowned Paul Hirsch, the editor of the first Star Wars from 1977, The Empire Strikes Back, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
Every evening we host networking socials where attendees and filmmakers can meet each other and connect with the industry panelists, and our final evening is the awards ceremony when a plethora of festival awards are announced, including Best College Filmmaker, Best High School Filmmaker, and Best Intern awards.
In 2022, Pink Lagoon, a full-length feature film from Mexico by directors Juan Arce and Francisco Gallo, won both the Grand Prize and Best Actress in a Leading Role Awards. Other 2022 festival winners included the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature: Colineales by directors Jose Raul Corres, Fabian Corres, Patricia Corres & Isela De Hoyos and the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature: Backstreet to the American Dream by director Patricia Nazario.
One of the most important goals for SAFILM is to provide hands-on experiences in film and festival production to high school, undergraduate, and graduate students. Internships in marketing, public relations, and development are an essential part of how the festival is run. SAFILM works with the City of San Antonio's Summer Ambassador Internship Program and SA Worx, a local nonprofit focused on building a skilled workforce through industry-led talent development, to hire students for these paid internships.
Intern responsibilities include assisting the Director of Marketing with research, grassroots efforts, and internet marketing strategies. This includes working with social media, flyer design, and event promotion. A typical day can include negotiating in-kind partnerships with local restaurants, actively seeking potential sponsorships, assisting in writing a marketing proposal for a local business and updating our sponsorship database.
The success of our 2022 festival has shown us that we have bounced back from the rocky and uncertain years of 2020 and 2021 and that SAFILM is perfectly poised to grow and to continue creating a diverse, inclusive, accessible space for film artists and cinema lovers to come together and celebrate the art of film.
SAFILM - San Antonio Film Festival has been sought-after as a respected forum by independent filmmakers. SAFILM has gained international prestige as an important festival because it has been a springboard for the careers of low budget filmmakers. Year after year, we continually screen short and feature length films. There are numerous filmmaker success stories in the history of SAFILM. Films and filmmakers that screened at SAFILM graduated to recognition at the Oscars and the Sundance Film Festival. In 1995 we screened Academy Award winner Todd Phillips’ (director of the Joker) first film as well as his second film in 1999. We are working to bring him to our festival next year to present him with SAFILM’s first-ever outstanding Alumni award.
Our events are widely publicized, through print, television, radio media as well as having a presence on the internet with our website and on networks such as Facebook and Instagram. We distribute materials to the local hotels and meet with the concierge association to make sure they are aware of our events.
The San Antonio Film Festival continues to build our growing reputation as a world leader in cinema. Currently, we are the largest film festival in South Texas.
The SAFILM has a tremendous value for cultural tourists. On average we screen approximately 100-200 films every year. In turn these world-wide filmmakers come to San Antonio for the purpose of the film festival but they discover the rich culture, food, friendly people and tourist spots that our city offers. There is also a sizable contingent of independent film enthusiasts who travel every year, from all over the country, specifically to attend the Festival in San Antonio. Usually they spend half of their time at the Festival and the other half of their time on the streets of San Antonio spending hundreds of dollars in the shops, restaurants, and hotels of our city.
SAFILM - San Antonio Film Festival has grown into an event respected by world-class filmmakers, international film organizations and publications. This year there will be numerous free workshops for filmmakers to learn from our Los Angeles film industry guests for the festival. With the kind of success that we have gained, our vision is that the SAFILM - San Antonio Film Festival will make our city a prime destination for independent filmmakers.
As you know, our organization is all about cinema arts, education and the development of our city’s culture. A major part of our mission is growing the film business here in San Antonio and the large portion of the San Antonio Film Festival is educational. This year, we also had two epic educational panels that were free and open to the public. These included;
FREE HOLLYWOOD INDUSTRY PANEL: THE EDITORS CUT with Anne Goursaud + Lynzee Klingman Saturday August 7, 10:30am -12:30pm
Go behind-the-scenes with two of Hollywood’s greatest film editors in a one-on-one conversation about the life & times inside the cutting room. Featuring exclusive clips and stories from their notable films, like Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, plus, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, A River Runs Through It and more!
Our hard work running and presenting the San Antonio Film Festival has had a positive impact on the film scene in our city and I believe we are helping it grow and thrive by bringing enthusiastic film industry professionals to train and educate the growing San Antonio film community every year. We provide this priceless experience for filmmakers who traveled from across the ocean and from across the continent to be part of our film festival.
The 2019 fest was our biggest year yet! We had the privilege to host so many world-class celebrities and industry veterans in San Antonio, including Cybill Shepherd and Cheech Marin. Our festival was also selected to present the World Premiere screening of Paramount Network’s I AM PATRICK SWAYZE documentary, with Patrick’s wife and former team in attendance, as well as the U.S. Premiere of Alex Wolff’s directorial feature debut, THE CAT AND THE MOON.
The 2019 season was our fifth year at the beautiful Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, where we showed over 200 films in six days on three screens from July 30 – August 4, 2019 to more than 3,700 attendees. At least 100 filmmakers attended the festival from out of town with MANY local filmmakers represented.
The city of San Antonio was buzzing about their own homegrown SAFILM-San Antonio Film Festival and many received terrific media coverage with millions of media impressions worldwide!
I see a future where downtown Houston Street is activated by pedestrians, like Austin’s 6th Street during South By Southwest. I see the Alameda Theater as our busy and active screening location, augmented by the Majestic Theatre and the Charline McCombs Empire Theater for headliners. Our home base would remain at the Tobin Center for The Performing Arts as the endcap. And during the San Antonio Film Festival the entire downtown hotels, restaurants, and bars are populated with visitors.
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