Mill Valley Film Festival
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Mill Valley Film Festival is an annual, non-competitive film festival presented by the California Film Institute. Known as a filmmakers’ festival, the annual Mill Valley Film Festival offers a non-competitive environment for exhibiting independent and world cinema.
Founded in 1978 by MVFF Director Mark Fishkin, the Festival has established an impressive track record for launching new films and the careers of new filmmakers and is well known for the quality of its programming.[citation needed]
As the only prominent fall film festival in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Mill Valley Film Festival is also an important industry resource — both for its emphasis on films that have not yet secured US distribution and for fall launches and northern California Academy Awards campaigns.
The Bay Area continues to be a significant market for independent and international film[1], and MVFF provides a forum for introducing new films to West coast audiences. The festival has attracted international movie stars like Gael Garcia Bernal and Helen Mirren, as well as Hollywood actors like Forest Whitaker, Tim Robbins and Billy Bob Thornton.[2]
Each year, the 11-day festival sells over 40,000 tickets and welcomes more than 200 filmmakers from around the world[3]. Festival sections include the Official Premiere Selection, World Cinema, US Cinema, Valley of the Docs, Children’s FilmFest, 5@5 (daily shorts programs) and VisionFest (programs embracing cutting-edge filmmaking and technologies).
Screen International has named Mill Valley a Top 10 US film festival.[citation needed]
The 31st Festival runs October 2 – 12, 2008 at the CinéArts@Sequoia and 142 Throckmorton Theatre (Mill Valley) and at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center (San Rafael).
The Mill Valley Public Library maintains a collection of films in both VHS and DVD format from past years of the Mill Valley Film Festival, selected with the assistance of Zoe Elton, director of programming for the Mill Valley Film Festival: Zoe's Picks. Films can be checked out for one week and renewed for one additional week.
