Special Report by GG Gianfranco
This week, starting March 01, 2008, the notifications begin for filmmakers for the ReelHeART International Film Festival (RHIFF)
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ReelHeART runs its 4th season June 16-21 in Toronto, Canada, screening 100+ films submitted from over 35 countries. This season their are 9 categories of competition for films ranging from Music Video, Animation, Experimental, Dance, or Music Related, Short or Long Form Documentary, Short or Long Form Film, Feature Documentary, and Feature Films.
A new category was introduced this season called “Off the Shelf”, for films that are 5 years or older. This category was initiated to “breath new life into overlooked films”, says ReelHeART Director, Shannonn Kelly. She goes on to explain, “Every season, during our pre-submission research, we were finding great films and documentaries that had never really seen the light of day. We wanted to give those films some more exposure and hopefully give their filmmaker another shot at finding either a new audience or distribution interest.”
Another category of competition is the ReelHeART Screenplay Competition, which was launched in 2007, to great success. This year is “bigger and better”, according to Kelly, “last year two of the top 3 screenplays were so vastly different yet were submitted by the same writer! It was a fun kind of drama befitting our screenplay category; so I think we might have some more interesting developments this year. I think other writers were hoping to meet that challenge this season, because we had a few multiple submissions this year as well. I’m looking forward to it.” Announcements for this category begin at the end of March.
With 6 days of parties, a “Lunch n Learn” series with film industry professionals and filmmakers, dinners, daily meet and greets, late night networking and of course films, the ReelHeART International Film Festival (RHIFF) has the feel of a “filmmakers boot camp”, says Carl Liberman, literary agent of The Characters Talent Agency where both audience members and filmmakers get down to the business of making films and are having a ton of fun while they’re doing it.
Advance online ticket sales for ReelHeART begin April 15, 2008.
