Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.Where: Great Escape movie theater, 7440 Crown Point Ave.
Tickets: $75 all-access pass, which includes all screenings and nightly parties; $45 all-films pass; $45 weekend pass that includes all Saturday-Sunday screenings and the filmmaker conference; individual screenings $6 each, except opening night film “Ceremony,” which is $10.
Parties: A chance to mingle with filmmakers nightly after the screenings. Food and drink specials. Party venues: North Sea Films on Wednesday, Jake’s Cigars & Spirits Thursday, Julio’s West Friday, Hilton Garden Inn Saturday and Lucky Bucket Sunday.
Award ceremony: 4 p.m. Sunday at Great Escape
Information: online at www.omahafilmfestival.org
The keyword for the sixth Omaha Film Festival, which kicks off Wednesday evening at the Great Escape 16 movie theater, is short.
The festival has been shortened from nine days to five.
The number of short films accepted for screening has increased to 62, up from 39 last year.
The popular shorts with Nebraska ties have more than doubled, expanded to three screening blocks, up from one last year.
And travel time will be shorter for those attending the filmmaker conference, since it has been moved from the Creighton University campus, near downtown, to Great Escape, near 72nd Street and Sorensen Parkway, to simplify the setup for festivalgoers and volunteers.
The conference, at which Hollywood filmmakers talk about their craft, overlaps film screenings on the final two days this year for the first time. The weekend conference opened past festivals, and film screenings followed.
Marc Longbrake, the festival's program director, said the event was shortened largely because of that overlap, plus the fact that films will each be screened only once this year. Past festivals offered two screenings of most films.
“A lot of big festivals don't have duplicate screenings,” Longbrake said. “If we were selling out our first screening, it would make sense to have a second one. But with ticket sales what they are, I don't know that that's necessary.”
Festival attendance, which doubled in the second year and doubled again in the third, has hit a plateau around 3,500 in the two years since, Longbrake said.
Jeremy Decker, the festival's director and co-founder, said overlapping the conference and film screenings avoids a problem from past years: Those who made films shown at the festival often arrived in Omaha after the conference speakers had already left.
“We've been trying to come up with a way to get them all here at the same time, so they have a better chance to interact,” he said. “We're hoping that compressing the overall schedule will make the festival a little more user-friendly and accessible without so much spread over so many days.”
Longbrake said the change has meant more thoughtful scheduling of screenings. Many time blocks will have contrasting genres screening simultaneously in three or four auditoriums — adult or horror films, family films, documentaries and shorts. The hoped-for result is that there will be something for a wide spectrum of movie lovers at any one time. Those who want to see mostly one genre can choose to do that in each time slot.
Also viewer-friendly: Non- Nebraska shorts will be screened in themed blocks. They include drama, action, animation and comedy. Shorts blocks run 86 to 107 minutes each.
While double screenings were eliminated, the number of films being shown has increased.
In competition are 12 narrative fiction, seven documentaries, four OFF the Edge (experimental, horror) and 62 shorts competing for $12,000 in movie-making merchandise awarded as prizes. Special screenings add seven more titles, for a total of 92.
That compares with last year's 10 narrative fiction, six documentaries, three OFF the Edge and 39 shorts, plus six special screenings for a total of 64. The prize total is about the same.
In addition to juried awards for best feature, documentary, short, OFF the Edge film, screenplay and Nebraska short, a new cinematography award will go to one of the Nebraska filmmakers this year.
Audience awards will be presented for best feature, documentary, short and OFF the Edge film.
Among familiar names appearing in this year's films: Aidan Quinn and Andie MacDowell (“The Fifth Quarter”), Daniel Madger and Steve Austin (“The Knockout Kid”), John Rhys-Davies (“Sophie”), Zach Gilford, Kathleen Quinlan, William Devane and William Hurt (“The River Why”), Jenna Fischer, Chris O'Donnell and Lesley Ann Warren (“A Little Help”), James Gandolfini and Famke Janssen (“Down the Shore”), and Elliot Gould (“Removal”).
For film synopses, screening times and more, go online to omahafilmfestival.org
Contact the writer:
402-444-1269, bob.fischbach@owh.com
Copyright ©2012 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
