The economy may be going through a bumpy ride right now, but that doesn”™t mean that people aren”™t going to the movies.
The Connecticut Film Festival is expected to have a positive impact on the economy to the tune of $1 million, according to the Northwest Connecticut Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Executive director Tom Carruthers says the nine-month moveable festival has the potential of attracting future film, video, music and digital and multimedia production facilities to all the cities that participate.
“The festival dovetails with Hartford’s Hollywood East Task Force”™s recommendations to expand, statewide, the Connecticut Film Festival’s scope, and expand the main festival into a two-week-long event; similar to Austin, Texas”™ ”˜South By Southwest”™ festival and conference,” said Carruthers, a task force member. “An event partially responsible for triggering the renaissance that Austin has experienced.”
Doug Martin is the technical director of the festival. He grew up in Connecticut and studied film in Boston at Emerson College. He has competed with his own short films internationally and was technical director of the Independent Film Festival of Boston. But he has come back to Connecticut because the General Assembly is offering a 30 percent tax credit for film.
“I”™m concentrating on getting involved with the emerging film industry here, and to help it grow,” said Martin. “Those incentives leapfrog New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island”™s production incentives and are among the best that any state has to offer the film and digital media industry.”
Clerks working in American Apparel and Soup Alley on North Main Street in South Norwalk said they noticed an increase in foot traffic during the recent event in their town.
The festival has been traveling around the state since September with a package of selected independent cinema.
“He takes the films; he chooses and packages them all together; and travels from city to city all across Connecticut,” said Susan Cinoman, a screenwriter featured in the festival, speaking of Carruthers. “It”™s a concept that allows for the festival to come to you.”
The main festival in May in Danbury features six days of screenings and festivities.
“This is a start that opens the door to the theater and helps weave it back into the fabric of the community,” Carruthers said.
“There will be between 90 and 110 films screened during the May festival in half a dozen different (Danbury) venues still to be finalized,” said Jean Tait, festival programming director.
The festival has 45 scheduled days and is billed as Connecticut”™s largest “signature arts and entertainment festival.”
“We want to conjure a sense of ownership with the city residents and its very diverse community,” said Carruthers. “The festival will introduce Danbury to a new audience who would ordinarily never have visited the city.”
