From its star-powered opening night to its raucous Award Celebration at OHM Nightclub to its additional two days on the calendar this year, HollyShorts cut its widest swath yet.
The eleventh annual HollyShorts Film Festival ran August 13th-22nd and continued to establish itself as a hub for short film in Los Angeles and beyond. This was their first year as a ten-day event, continuing past their usual Thursday-to-Thursday run with two more days of screenings that included selections of festival winners, a specialty curation of “Films That Inspire the World” and a selection of Chinese shorts in partnership with the inaugural Chinese Hollis Short Film Festival.
This expansion, much like everything else at HollyShorts, is clearly a labor of love by founders and directors Daniel Sol and Theo Dumont and their team, who bring a sense of community to every space the festival inhabits.
One such space was Ignited Spaces, a shared office space that hosted this year’s HollyShorts Film Conference and hummed with activity all week as the conference brought in waves of filmmakers to whom they offered snacks, an open bar and complimentary massages as they presented a series of panels covering a range of topics including filming in LA, microbudget production, distribution, women in film, narratives, funding, digital innovation, music videos, and film festivals.
That last topic was presented that Sunday in a panel called “Film Festival Directors Dish on what it REALLY takes to Get Your Movie into the Fest,” which I had the pleasure of, well, dishing, on in the great company of:
- Sharon Badal, Director of Shorts Programming at Tribeca Film Festival
- Larry Laboe, Director of NewFilmmakers LA
- Jon Gann, Director of DC Shorts
- Joey Horvitz, Executive Producer of Lexus Short Films
- Daniel Sol, Co-Founder of HollyShorts
We covered what types of films we look for (“good films,” was pretty much the universal answer), our submission and selection processes (more on ours can be found here, complete with a cool little infographic about what happens to your film after its submitted) and a bunch of other things.
Here we all are, smiling together with moderator Alex Ben Block, former Senior Editor of The Hollywood Reporter:
Newport Beach Film Festival Alumni Films Honored
The NBFF Shorts Team is very proud that quite a number of NBFF 2015 alumni films were represented in the line-up, and would like to congratulate those awarded by HollyShorts this year, including:
Dead Hearts (directed by Stephen W.Martin), Best Action
The Oceanmaker (directed by Lucas Martell), Best Animation
Zawadi (directed by Richard Card), Best Drama
Blackwell (directed by Ed Barnes), Best Student
Congratulations, Stephen, Lucas, Richard and Ed! The full list of HollyShorts winners can be found here.
While HollyShorts is done for the year, you can still catch them at their year-round Monthly Screening Series and get a head start on submitting for the 12th annual HollyShorts, as submissions are now open!
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