Nov. 15, 2017 By Tara Law
The organizers of the Kew Gardens Festival of Cinema announced last week that the festival will be returning for a second year next August.
Jayson Simba, the founder, said that the success of the inaugural event this year left little doubt that it would return. The festival attracted 3,000 attendees over the 10-day period with 157 films being screened.
The films were shown at the Kew Gardens Cinema and at the Queens Museum.
Simba said that they have just begun accepting film submissions for the 2018 event, including, for the first time, music videos and web serials.
The cost of entry is $25 for short films and $40 for features if submitted before Dec. 7. The cost will go up $15 for films submitted after that date but before the April 8 deadline.
The festival is scheduled to take place from Aug. 3 to 12.
Simba said that the festival’s mission is to give all filmmakers–no matter the length of their film or the topic–a place to share their work. For the 2017 festival, 400 films were submitted from 24 nations.
The Kew Gardens Festival of Cinema places an emphasis on independent films with small budgets, Simba said, and spends time promoting every film equally.
“We want to focus on the truly independent artists that don’t get a chance to get their movie seen,” said Simba.
He said the festival gives “genre films” such as horror, comedy and crime stories equal weight to other films. The goal, he said, is to show the “best of everything.”
Simba personally watched every film submitted last year, and promises all filmmakers that every film submitted will be watched from beginning until end.
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