Hybrid 2020 Klamath Independent Film Festival schedule announced
/
Slated for Sept. 18-20, this year’s eighth annual Klamath Independent Film Festival will take a familiar form across new platforms in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Presented in-person at the Ross Ragland Theater limited to audiences of 100 people, the festival for the first time will be simultaneously offered online via Eventive Virtual Festival, providing an on-demand style viewing experience at home.
Klamath Film, the Klamath Falls-based nonprofit that coordinates the annual festival, announced the schedule of this year’s films – 37 in total spanning comedy, sci-fi, documentary, drama, animation, and even puppetry. The film festival exclusively welcomes films made in Oregon or by Oregon filmmakers within the past calendar year.
Due to COVID-19 crowd restrictions, added safety protocols are being planned for the Ross Ragland Theater. All patrons will have temperatures checked, be required to wear masks, and will be contact traced prior to permitted entry. With limited crowd capacity, the festival is being offered online through a paywall-protected platform allowing access to the entire festival via streaming available online and on Roku.
Opening the festival on Friday, Sept. 18 will be an online kickoff party, replacing the street fair held last year. The feature film starting at 8 p.m. will be “The Last Blockbuster,” a nostalgia-filled documentary profiling the last existing Blockbuster Video store in Bend – which made its world premiere in July at a temporary drive-in in Bend.
Saturday, Sept. 19 is a slate of feature-length films starting at 11 a.m. Films include the documentaries “At the Video Store,” “Illegal,” and “This is Tim: A Musical Life,” as well as the comedy-horror story of a family of serial killers, “1 Dead Dog.” Following each film presentation will be a question-and-answer session with the filmmakers, presented both in-person and livestreamed by Klamath Film.
Sunday, Sept. 20 features short films starting at 11 a.m. with a collection of K-12 student films and productions created this summer during a week-long teen film camp presented by Klamath Film. Short films will be split into categories designated at s Northern and Southern Shorts as well as “Long Shorts” – lengthier films that still fall under the 40-minute standard criteria to determine feature-length productions.
Selected short films include a documentary filmed in Lakeview about Eastern Oregon environmental efforts, “Other Side of the Hill,” a stop-motion animation film “The Sandcastle” created by a six-year old student in Medford, “an all-puppet look at teen witches, “The Spooky Girls: Before the Fall Preludes,” and more. Subject matter delves from abstract sci-fi and serious matters such as illegal immigration and date rape, to lighthearted comedic romps and fascinating documentaries.
Due to Klamath County’s low overall COVID-19 numbers, the Klamath Independent Film Festival is in the somewhat unique position nationally at present to be able to present a film festival in-person, with the online platform offered in case new crowd restrictions are announced in the lead-up to the festival dates.
“We are incredibly proud of the eclectic lineup of entertaining films this year,” said first-year Klamath Film executive director Kurt Liedtke. “We are putting in a lot of effort to provide a fun, engaging, and interactive experience for those at the theater and joining us online. We paid close attention to Ashland Independent Film Festival when they turned virtual back in May, and we hope to follow in their success in the switch to digital platforms.”
In-person ticket availability will be announced soon, while online passes for the Klamath Independent Film Festival will be made available via eventive.org.
For more information visit www.klamathfilm.org.