Planning is underway for the 25th annual Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, set for Oct. 7-16, and according to Courtney Pledger, HSDFF executive director, "everything is coming together beautifully."
Though she can't give away too many of this year's surprises just yet, Pledger said one of the festival's events will feature silver anniversary cocktails at artist Longhua Xu's "magnificent" international art gallery to commemorate this quarter-century anniversary. She added that the popular filmmaker's special guest sponsor lounge will also be bigger and better this year.
"One thing I can say is that people are always really, really in love with the filmmaker's special guest sponsor lounge and this year it's going to be even more central to the festival, larger and really in the middle between the two screening venues. So, for all access pass-holders, it will just be the place to stop in between screenings. Food and drink and special guests in there -- people you can talk to from all over the world. We've kind of enlarged that this year," she said.
Deltic Timber Corp. will return as HSDFF's Exclusive Presenting Sponsor for the second year and Pledger said Mountain Valley Spring Water Co. has recently joined as a major sponsor on the executive producer level. The company will be "heavily participating in the festival, including giving us the use of their building for a couple of key parties," and a Mountain Valley Spring Water Best U.S. Documentary Award will be presented during the festival.
Emmy Award-winning actor Ed Asner will attend this year's festival along with his "Lou Grant" co-star Robert Walden.
Asner will discuss his life, career, charity work and activism as the subject of the documentary "My Friend Ed," a news release said. A screening of the film will take place on Oct. 15 and a question-and-answer session will follow.
"Ed Asner has always been a hero of mine. Our paths have crossed a few times; he had a grandson at the same school as one of my kids so we would cross paths every once in awhile," Pledger said. "Just the fact that, all politics aside, he really stands up for the things he believes in and really does something. He puts himself out there to help people raise money for causes and he's a real-life hero. I think it's going to be very exciting to have him and very exciting to have his former co-star Robert Walden, who is also an award-winning actor.
"It's just going to make that evening even more personal because they know each other. It's going to be a terrific night followed by a terrific one-of-a-kind party at the Mountain Valley Spring historic building, and there will be live music at that party, to be revealed soon."
Close to 1,300 films were submitted to the HSDFF this year for a total of almost 1,500 total films being considered for this year's available screening slots.
Featured again this year will be the Academy-sponsored "Women Behind the Lens" series, which Pledger said is a recognition of the importance of the diverse female perspective in documentary filmmaking.
"Last year we did 'Women Behind the Lens: Black and Latina Filmmakers' and then we applied again to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and they gave us a grant for the second year in a row, so this year we decided to make it more inclusive, more diverse, and we changed the subtitle to 'Women Behind the Lens: Diverse Perspective' so we could include possibilities from all cultures, all perspectives, as long as the filmmaker is female," she said.
Pledger said she attributes the festival's continued success to two things: "One, programming for the community where the festival takes place. We very much keep in mind who our audience is, even though we have people come from everywhere. We still very much keep in mind the Arkansas audience and the regional audience in terms of subject interests.
"We also look at the big picture; we look at the choices we make in terms of where the festival sits on the larger canvas of festivals to keep it relevant and to make it increasingly attractive for filmmakers from around the country and around the world to come and bring their films to us," she said.
"It's going to be some event, I can tell you -- or I should say, some collection of events."
Local on 08/23/2016