Across Friday and Saturday of Veteran’s Day weekend, Johnson City became a hub for filmmakers and film lovers alike. The first ever Johnson City Film Festival brought a crowd of hundreds in attendance. The festival had over 40 films shown across three different locations in the two-day event with the festival being programmed by Dr. Chelsea Wessels and Dr. Matthew Holtmeier of the Film Studies minor program.
“Dr. Holtmeier and I served as the programming directors, which meant we were in charge of watching all the submissions culminating in nearly 90 shorts and features from around the world and whittling it down to 50 or so films to be screened,” Wessels said. “Then we organized the program, including shorts blocks and schedules across the venues. We also put together the film summaries and streams listed in the program.”
Screening for the films were blocked together by type of film and spread across JRH Brewing, The Willow Tree Coffeehouse and The Main Street Theatre. Shown throughout the two days were a mixture of films ranging in shorts, sci-fi/horror, documentaries and feature length projects in a mixture of student, local and outside artists. The festival also had streams of many other films in categories such as international, genre, LGBTQ and regional films.
“Most of the films had 10-plus people which is really impressive for screening across three venues around town and our first year,” Wessels said. “I was so happy to see people turning out for shorts, experimental films and just generally the kind of films you’re not going to see anywhere else. Our final screening of ‘It All Begins with a Song’ had nearly 100 people in attendance too.”
The festival partnered with ETSU to host an Adobe Certification course at ETSU and also had free workshops on the 2nd day of the event split between ETSU and Skillville in topics of filming a fight scene, no-budget filmmaking, screenwriting, filmmaking for teens and kids, how to shoot a comedy scene and how to be a working actor.
“We’ve both worked on festivals for years before coming to Johnson City, so it was exciting to be involved with the inaugural festival downtown and helping launch it from the ground up,” Wessels said.
The festival culminated in an awards ceremony at the Main Street Theatre. Brett Hanover (“Ruckus”) won best directing; Curt Willis (“Papa”) won best male lead actor for males; Ashley May King (“Warden”) won best female lead actor. “Terror Road” won best music; “Honor Among Thieves” won best visual effects; “Friend of a Friend” won best writing; “Watching The Storm” won best editing; “Ouroboros” won best cinematography. “Dante” won audience choice, and “Trapped” won the State of Franklin Award. The film jury also decided on three awards for “iRony,” which won best student film; “Wanted: Serial Killer” won best short; “Zoro’s Solo” won best feature.
“Developing partnerships between ETSU and the community, especially around independent film, is so important, and I’m really happy that it was so successful,” Wessels said. “We’re already starting to plan for year two.”
