Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Lights, camera, action. The Fort Smith Film Festival expanding this year, and it's going to offer more than ever before. We're going to talk about it on today's know the news.
Welcome to this installment of the Know the news podcast. I'm your host, Chris Swindle, metro editor.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Today I'm joined by Brandon Chase Goldsmith, the Fort Smith Film Festival executive director and founder, to talk about what festival.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Goers can expect to see this year.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: This is in advance of a story that we'll publish on the topic in this Sunday's what's up, arts and entertainment magazine. Thanks for joining me, Brandon, to start. Brandon, I just want you to tell.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Me a little bit about yourself and your background in film.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: We've actually been talking a little bit about that before the camera's turned on.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: So maybe you could just share a little bit of that.
[00:00:57] Speaker C: All right. Well, it's wonderful being here, and it's fun to be able to talk film, but, yeah, I've been doing film since high school. So, you know, me and my friends were those kids who were convinced the english teacher to let us make a movie instead of write a paper. So that's kind of where it all got started. And then I went from there to doing computer animation for an oil company. And then I ended up bringing all my friends, went to film school. We started our first film company. I'm gonna date myself here in 1998 in Austin. And so we've been. I've been doing film, basically, you know, my whole life. It's been my passion. And I always tell people dating myself. Once again, Blockbuster was my film school.
So I would go and I got a job at Blockbuster, worked for three months, had a list of 120 movies I needed to watch. And then after I watched all 120 movies, I quit my job.
And so that's. I've been loving film and doing film my whole life. And now I moved here and I was working on one of my own projects, so I was working on documentary.
I realized that my cinematographer and this other person I was talking to to help me out with sound and lighting, they lived in the same town, didn't know who each other were. So selfishly, I created the River Valley Film society in order to start bringing all these people together so I could get to know who the filmmakers were out down in the river valley. And that's kind of what got everything started. And then that kind of grew into the point where we were highlighting different filmmakers each month. And then we were showing Clay Pruitt's the 24 and 340 people showed up, and I was like, maybe we should do a film festival. And so that's kind of what got the Fort Smith International Film Festival started.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: And you've done this three times now. This is year number four.
[00:02:50] Speaker C: This is year number four.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: So.
[00:02:52] Speaker C: Starting to figure it out.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I was gonna ask. I've got to imagine that there were challenges, that there have been successes and some lessons learned. I wonder if you could speak a little bit to that.
[00:03:02] Speaker C: Well, the first year of any festival, you're just happy that it happens. You're like, yay, we did it.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: We did it.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness.
[00:03:10] Speaker C: So, yeah, that first year, it was great to have that happened. You start figuring out not only just trying to do the festival, you start figuring out what your identity is. And one of the things that we like to pride ourselves on is showcasing films from our region. Yes, we're an international film festival. We have brought films submitted from over 80 different countries.
But what I think helps grow a film culture is not only to try to help grow the local people, but to show them films from around the world and bring films here. And then we all learn from each other, right? And then, so our identity is kind of like, how do I grow this region? And that idea is what's led us to the next new thing for this year, where we're adding on the film market. So we have the mid America film market this year. And the idea is, if you want to grow a film community, they need to be able to do it for a living.
And so this will start bringing in opportunities where they can talk to distributors, buyers, so they can possibly sell their movies. If you can sell your movie, you can make a living doing a movie, which means that you can start hiring crew and paying crew, and then that starts, you start creating an economic ecosystem. And so that's kind of this next step. So kind of like the first year of the festival, I'm on my first year of the market. So I'm like, let's see if we can make this market happen. So it's a kind of a new little addition that we're adding on to the festival this year. And what that addition is doing, what that's going to give to the viewers, is we've increased our number of feature length films. So we're going to have 34 feature length films this year, all the way from California to Oklahoma.
And then we're adding on episodics. So that's another feature of the film market, is tv episodes. So if you want to think about what distributors and people are buying. Just look at what you see when you go and watch streaming things at home. That's the things that we're going to be showing. And so hopefully, the possibility is that you see something at our festival, and then maybe in six months or a year, you might see it on a streaming service or even a cinema, because we're going to have the major cinema people who work with them here, too.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: That's exciting.
[00:05:27] Speaker C: That's great.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: How do you feel that? I know you're bringing in all this international and national like you're talking about all these other distributors and other filmmakers and stuff, but how do you feel that the Fort Smith, the River Valley, and the northwest Arkansas communities are responding to the festival? As far as people going and experiencing it, what's the reception been like?
[00:05:52] Speaker C: Well, to give you an idea, this year we're going to be featuring 80 Arkansas and Oklahoma filmmakers.
Oh, God. Yeah. But that's the thing is, I want to show off the stories that we have here. And what I've noticed over the years is the way I try to have a filmmaker focused festival, because that's who I need to nurture and try to help grow. And the way is to create a space where they can get together. And one of my favorite things is the filmmaker lounge and hearing the conversations. So you have people from all over the state, and they're talking to each other, and guess what?
All of a sudden are now making movies together. And that's what I love about it, about bringing the community together into one spot. And it's a beautiful thing, as I say at our festival, you know, in the back room, sometimes baby movies are born.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: That's great.
You know, kind of. Kind of feeding off that. When people think filmmaking, I think a lot of times, even if you're from around here, you don't immediately think Arkansas or the river valley or northwest Arkansas, even Oklahoma. But there are a lot of movies and shows, films that are being put together around here. There is that scene, a true detective filmed here a few years back. The film sovereign was shooting up here. There's a film, I don't know the exact name of it, but it's shooting in Fayetteville this week and I think down in Van Buren in a week or two. So what do you see in terms of trends of filmmaking in this region and the state at large?
[00:07:30] Speaker C: What I've seen and what I love is we have an alumni section of the festival. And so what I've seen is I've seen filmmakers who have started off on shorts and are now making feature films. So one of the guys who was doing shorts just finished a feature. And so you're watching, it's kind of like graduation. It's kind of like film school. You know, you're watching them graduate to bigger and bigger levels. And so the. The more people do stuff, the more people work together, the better their product going. And so that you see that ecosystem growing and growing and that creative economy and more people are making stuff. And then we have such beautiful locations here. I hear when someone comes here and shoots, they just love being able to shoot in Arkansas because it's just a beautiful place to shoot. And we have, like, the film you were talking about that's about to come down to Van Buren. We have wonderful historic downtowns that people can use in their films.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Well, I think it's a western. And they're going to, like, bring dirt in and put dirt all over a section of street that they're going to close off for a week. And you think about the architecture down there, you think about what it looks like down there, and you go, yeah, that would transport me back in time.
I would be back in maybe the old west or slightly, slightly thereafter, and Fort Smith the same way. I mean, there's parts of town where just, it looks very old, and I. It really could transport you back in time.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: We're going to take a quick break.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: And stay with us.
[00:08:55] Speaker D: If you're enjoying this podcast, consider a newspaper subscription to the northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette or the River Valley Democrat Gazette. We have a special offer for our podcast listeners, so visit nwA online.com nwapodcast to get started. You can also click the subscribe button on our websites, nWA online.com and rivervalleydemocrategazet.com dot or call us at 479-684-5509 and be sure to say that you're a podcast listener. Now back to the show.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: All right, so we've already talked a little bit about this year's festival, 34 new films market, the vendor market, some tv episodes. You got a lot of stuff coming. Are there any specific films or events? I mean, you said the vendor market, for one. But are there anything else that you're just like, I'm really excited about this particular film or this particular event or anything like that.
[00:09:50] Speaker C: Yeah. So to give you kind of an overview of the whole thing, we're going to show 201 films this year.
So it's more films than we've ever shown. And so we're going to be in two locations. So we're going to be at Temple live, and we're going to be over at the bricks. And as part of that, we're having what I call our offsite and pre events. So we're gonna be having. So we're actually gonna have on the. On Wednesday, before the festival starts, we talked about Van Buren. We're gonna have. We had some paranormal films made at the King Opera House, so we're gonna show those. So we're gonna have a paranormal night on Wednesday before the festival at King Opera House.
The Fort Smith is, you know, we have General Darby there. General Darby died in northern Italy. Well, we have twinned with the city where he died in. And the same day that he died, 24 Ranger mountaineers died in a duck boot accident. And the people up there have written, done a documentary on that, and they're bringing it to our festival, and it's going to be their first time, the people from northern Italy coming to Fort Smith, and we're going to show that at the history museum. So we kind of have some pre events there. And then on that Thursday, I'm doing a thing with a Fort kids museum that they're going to build in Fort Smith. I found a thing called toy Cart, where they were getting these toys together for a children's hospital. So I try to find films that kind of connect to groups around. And so we're going to show that at the bakery. And then for the first time, we're going to have films down in Greenwood, at the pavilion in Greenwood, because we are the River Valley Film Society. So I try to make the festival as much as I can represent that. And so that's one exciting things I'm excited about having is all those different locations. And we've expanded our high school. Instead of just having a high school block of films where, you know, the high school, we're actually going to pretty much have a high school film festival at Northside on Saturday, and we're going to be showing international high school, national high school, and regional high school. And so, you know, we talk about growing things. If we can get high school kids excited about making film and having their own festival and celebrating them, that's where we build that from. And so those outside events have had me real excited and trying to bring in the community from all over. And then when we had the festival, I know a lot of people with today's attention span, you know, a feature length film, sometimes, if they don't know who it is or whatever, do I want to really spend some time on that. The majority of our films we probably have close to, once we take out the high school and other stuff, we probably have around 90 short films. So do you like comedy? Do you like action? Do you like Sci-Fi come out and just watch a short from them. They're ten to 20 minutes long. You don't have to. It's not a huge commitment of time. And that way, if you're like, ah, you know, it's something you're interested in, but you may find something that, oh, my goodness gracious. And that's the fun thing about the short film format is. So what we do is we have blocks of film, so we may have, like, five or six comedies, and then you can come in and watch those and be like, oh, let's check out some action films, and you can do some shorts. But then on top of that, we have all the features that are going on at the same time. So it's a fun mix for basically whatever kind of film you like.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: And you were telling me before we got started about a special guest speaker this year, keynote speaker. You want to talk about him a little bit?
[00:13:29] Speaker C: Yes. So one of the things that we're looking at doing as part of the market is we want to embrace new technology. It's coming. AI is coming. AI is here. And you know, what better way to embrace it? By bringing in a keynote speaker who knows and can speak on it. So we have Matthew Loon. So he started off on the Simpsons. He ends up going to Pixar. He's worked on every single Toy story, Ratatouille Monsters, Inc. His wife is the associate producer on Inside out two. And what he's going to talk about is what's going on right now with AI is what was going on in the nineties when they're first going to computer animation.
And so talking about how do you use it as a tool and learn to use those tools? And yes, AI is not doing great things right now, and those things will get litigated out over time. But if you don't start learning how to use them as tools, then you may get behind. And that's what happened to some animators in the nineties, is people got left behind because they didn't want to go to the computer side of things.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, you've got to adapt.
Anybody in the news business is very well aware of they have publish or perish in the academic world, and we have adapt or die in the news world. You better learn to adapt and learn to do new technologies. I went to school, to learn to do newspapers, and here I'm sitting here doing a podcast.
[00:14:57] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: You better get used to it. And, yeah, AI is coming for sure. And there's, I think every industry is going to see it having an impact. So it is a question of how to use it as a tool and mitigate the risk and things like that. So it'll be interesting. I'd love to be in there for that conversation, hear what he has to say.
[00:15:17] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:15:17] Speaker C: What's great is he's spoken to, like, all the major tech companies, right? So, like, this is not only just a conversation for filmmakers, these are. This is a conversation for just tech in general.
And so that's, you know, he gives keynotes and speaks to them all the time. And so, you know, that's the thing, too, is, you know, not only helping hear filmmakers, here's something that you use for tool wise, but on the tech side, here's some ethics and maybe some responsibilities.
[00:15:44] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:45] Speaker B: Oh, the importance of ethics.
So let's do a little acting. Let's pretend I'm a listener, someone watching this video on YouTube, and I'm in. I want to go to this year's Fort Smith film festival. What are the dates?
What do I need to do to get tickets? What are my timeframes? What am I looking at in terms of cost or any special preparations I need to make? What would you tell somebody if you're like, hey, I want you to come to the festival.
Here's what it is. Here's what it's going to cost you. What are your options?
[00:16:15] Speaker C: All right, well, so this year's film festival will be August 22 through 24th. So that's a Thursday, Friday, and a Saturday. And so what we'll have this year is we'll have day passes. So it's $20 if you want to come. I mean, we're going to have at least ten feature films each day, so think about what it costs just to go see one film. And, you know, so you'll have access, you know, to the films each day. We'll have three day passes, so, which are $50. And then that gives you access to all 210 films. And then we have our. Of course, you got your vip, and of course that gets you into the lounge where the filmmakers are, and you get first choice of seats because you could put up a vip section in a theater. But the whole idea is you want to sit where you want to sit, and by giving them the first choice of where they get the seat in shows and do that, prepare for that you can go to fortsmithfilm.com to get it. And during the month of July, we're doing an early bird special where everything is 20% off. So if you try to make some plans for August, you can go ahead and make them now and save couple dollars and go ahead and get your passes or that. And one of the things that you'll get to see is by us bringing in and doing these extra events, we have some special parts of the films. We're going to have one film that's going to be probably the last time on screen for Sidney Poitier, we have Louis Gossett junior s last probably time on screen. It's a movie about dementia in the african american community. If you're a Trekkie, we have, I am one of the main stars from the tv series Discovery is a star in one of the films that we're going to be showing.
If you're a country music lover, we have a really interesting film because when I talk about the interesting stories that we have here in mid America in Joplin, when the tornado hit, all these kids told stories about butterfly people rescuing them. So these people did a documentary interviewing these kids who saw these butterfly. Well, Tracy Lawrence wrote a song about it, too. So Tracy Lawrence is in this documentary. And where else other than this part of the country do you get a movie about, you know, tornadoes and butterfly people?
[00:18:38] Speaker B: I don't know where else in this world you would get that particular combination.
[00:18:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: It's very unique.
[00:18:44] Speaker C: Yeah. And so. Yeah. So just all you have to do is go to fortsmithfilm.com. you can get your tickets there. We'll also have some special rates on hotels. So if you want to come in and stay for a few days, we'll have some good rates for you at some downtown hotels.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: All right. Well, the festival sounds like a lot of fun. I hope you have a successful year trying some new things this year. I hope it goes well. Thanks for joining me. I really appreciate it.
[00:19:07] Speaker C: I appreciate you having me here.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: In other news coming soon, Tracy Neal writes about how the city of Little flock recently had to demolish its city hall after realizing the damage to the building was too great to repair. After the May 26 storms, Thomas Sinte gives an update on plans to add more space to the Centerton Police Department.
Tom Sissom introduces us to Joe Lloyd, the new CEO of the Jones center in Springdale. Stacy Ryburn explains how the city of Fayetteville is considering significantly raising fees it charges to developers in the river valley. Sadie Lysicero tells us about new preservation guidelines being planned for the Van Buren Historic District. And Monica Brick writes about the Fort Smith Visitors center, which is moving out of the historic Miss Laura's building.
In sports, we'll be keeping up with our local minor league baseball teams, the Northwest Arkansas naturals and the river valley marshalls. In what's Up, Becca Martin Brown and Monica Hooper bring us music news galore with previews of shows featuring Sean Harrison, Lake Street Dive, Greenland Station and so much more.
All this and more will be available to subscribers in our print and replica editions, on our tablet and smartphone apps, and online at nWA online.com and rivervalleydemocrategazette.com dot. Know the news is a weekly podcast produced by the newsrooms of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette and the River Valley Democrat Gazette. As always, I want to thank you for listening to this point and for supporting local journalism. We'll see you next time.
