{"id":236529,"date":"2013-10-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-05T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/san-diego-film-festival-continues-to-expand\/"},"modified":"2013-10-05T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-05T07:00:00","slug":"san-diego-film-festival-continues-to-expand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/san-diego-film-festival-continues-to-expand\/","title":{"rendered":"San Diego Film Festival continues to expand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Morgan M. Hurley | Redactor del centro<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Gaslamp Quarter has turned into one of two \u201cfestival villages\u201d of the 12th annual San Diego Film Festival this week, acting as a venue for premiere and independent films, red carpets, film panels, and celebratory after parties during the five-day festival, which runs through Sunday, Oct. 6.<\/p>\n

Arclight Cinema in La Jolla\u2019s University Town Center is the center of the second festival village, creating a balance in the screening of over 100 films in five different categories. Organizers said over 1,200 films were submitted for consideration to this year\u2019s festival, and were eventually pared down to 108 for inclusion, with 65 of those being short films.<\/p>\n

\"(l<\/a>
(l to r) Festival Chairman Dale Streck and Vice President Tonya Mantooth arrive at San Diego Film Festival’s tribute to honor Judd Apatow at Museum of Contemporary Art Oct. 3. (Photo by Rodrigo Vaz\/FilmMagic)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was just last year that the festival\u2019s reigns were taken over by Chairman Dale Streck, President Kevin Leap, and vice presidents Tonya Mantooth and Patti Judd, a team with filmmaking and marketing savvy that has infused both renewed life and breadth into the annual event.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe original founders were looking for someone or a group to take over the nonprofit foundation and to grow the festival into what its potential was,\u201d Strack said. \u201cWhat we discovered was that a film festival, done right, can bring a tremendous amount of economic advantage to the city that hosts it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Strack said they looked at Tribeca, Sundance in Salt Lake City and festivals in Santa Barbara and Palm Springs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey all were much larger than what we had here and yet our city is equally as big as the infrastructure Toronto has,\u201d Streck said. \u201cIt showed us that the infrastructure San Diego has could warrant a large film festival. We \u2026 saw that if we build it, it could bring $70 or $80 million dollars of benefits both tax wise and business wise to San Diego.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, Streck said festival organizers have a five-year goal to expand the event to ten days, add more festival villages around the county, and bring attendance up to 100,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cSan Diego has the footprint for that to happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s festival launched on Wednesday Oct 2 with the screening of \u201c12 Years as a Slave\u201d to a packed house at Reading Cinemas on Fifth Avenue. The film earned rave reviews at its Toronto Film Festival premiere and is based on the true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped away from his wife and children in upstate New York before emancipation and sold to slave owners in the South for over a decade, when his true identify was finally revealed and he was set free.<\/p>\n

After the film, producers Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner along with screenwriter John Ridley took questions from Festival Host and Honorary Jury President Jeffrey Lyons and the audience.\u00a0In response to one viewer who asked why films like this still need to be made, Ridley, who called himself a \u201cblack man in 2013\u201d said the film and its topic of slavery was \u201cpart of our history\u201d and \u201cimportant,\u201d adding that he wants his own children to be informed. Immediately following was an after party at Bang Bang, a new restaurant and lounge located on Market Street Downtown.<\/p>\n

Thursday, Oct 3, writer and director Judd Apatow was honored with the festival\u2019s \u201cVisionary Filmmaker Award\u201d at the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the thing about film that I find so impactful,\u201d said Tonya Mantooth, vice present of San Diego Film Festival. \u201cIt really spans \u2026 illness \u2026 life change \u2026 catastrophic situation, it sort of allows you to touch on all of those things \u2026 that is the power of film.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the many films in the 2013 lineup that addresses life-changing experiences is \u201cBrave Miss World,\u201d a film by Cecilia Peck, the daughter of legendary film star and San Diego native, \"Fading<\/a>Gregory Peck. \u201cBrave Miss World\u201d tells the true story of Israeli beauty queen Linor Arbargil, who was kidnapped, stabbed and raped just months prior to being crowned Miss World in 1998. A decade later she finally addressed her demons and is now a voice for others. The film screens Sunday, Oct. 6 and Peck will be present for a question-and-answer period afterwards.<\/p>\n

There are even a few films of direct relevance to San Diego this year. One is \u201cFading West,\u201d a documentary about local band Switchfoot, which chronicles the band\u2019s transformation from freewheeling surfers and friends to band mates and then family men. \u201cFading West\u201d screens\u00a0Saturday, Oct. 5 at 4:30 p.m. at Reading Cinema.<\/p>\n

\"Minnesota<\/a>
Minnesota Rep. Tammy Baldwin is profiled along with San Diego Interim Mayor Todd Gloria in “Breaking Through.” (Courtesy SD Film Festival)screens Saturday, Oct. 5 at 4:30 p.m. at Reading Cinema.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another film with San Diego ties is \u201cBreaking Through,\u201d about openly LGBT elected officials across the country and the impact that being out through that political process has had on their lives. Interim Mayor Todd Gloria and District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis are both profiled in the feature-length documentary and will be present for the screening.<\/p>\n

Other notables are \u201cAugust: Osage County\u201d based on a play of the same name and has an all star cast including Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts screens Friday, Oct. 4 at ArcLight Cinemas; \u201c2 Jacks\u201d a comedic adaptation of a Leo Tolstoy short story screens Friday, Oct 4 at Reading Cinema; \u201cRunning from Crazy,\u201d a documentary exploring the personal journey of actor Mariel Hemingway screens Sunday, Oct. 6 in La Jolla and Hemingway will receive a Humanitarian Award from the San Diego Film Festival the night before during a presentation at the Joan Kroc Peace & Justic Institute at UC San Diego; and the West Coast premiere of The German Doctor, a foreign film about Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele, showing Friday, Oct. 4 at ArcLight Cinemas.<\/p>\n

The San Diego Film Festival runs through Oct. 6. VIP, Festival and Day passes are available, as well as tickets for individual films and special events. For tickets and more information visit, sdfilmfest.com.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Morgan M. Hurley |\u00a0Downtown Editor The Gaslamp Quarter has turned into one of two \u201cfestival villages\u201d of the 12th annual San Diego Film Festival this week, acting as a venue for premiere and independent films, red carpets, film panels, and celebratory after parties during the five-day festival, which runs through Sunday, Oct. 6. Arclight Cinema […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":236530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"San Diego Film Festival continues to expand","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11547,11551,11600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-features","category-news","category-sdnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}