SLCFF IN SLUG

The SLCFF is still rolling along and we've got a pretty good article in SLUG this month. Check it out.

SLUG -- While most people’s attention will be turned towards the stuffy old celebrities, pantiless pseudo-celebrities and the handful of serious independent filmmakers inhabiting the streets of Park City this January, the organizers of the Salt Lake City Film Festival will be hard at work putting together the third installment of their annual event. Taking place every August, the SLCFF has featured a wide variety of independent films, from critical favorites like Best Worst Movie to local documentaries like Cleanflix and a number of obscure features and shorts that live and die in the film festival circuit. Even though this year’s festival doesn’t take place until the end of August, the organizers have been busy expanding their brand and planning for the future. On December 16, the SLCFF celebrated the launch of their new website and the opening of submissions for the 2011 festival at their monthly HEFFE’FILM’IN film screening at Brewvies. SLUG spoke with the Salt Lake City Film Festival’s organizers about what happens behind the scenes during the film festival’s off season and how the festival has evolved over the past few years.

The second annual Salt Lake City Film Festival concluded on August 15, 2010. However, the event’s organizers kept working. “After the first year we ended the festival and we were stoked about it, so we decided to take three months off, and that was a mistake,” says Matt Whittaker, one of the festival’s co-directors. Now that the film festival is entering its third year, the organizers are applying the lessons they’ve learned from past years to make organizing and running the film festival easier and more efficient. “We try to figure out new ways to organize ourselves every year. The first year we didn’t have online ticket sales, which was pretty nuts. Then we got online ticket sales for the second year, and it was even crazier to deal with that monster,” Whittaker says. “We’re slowly becoming nerdier and nerdier when it comes to organizing this thing, which is good.”

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