Hill Country Film Festival 2017

HILL COUNTRY FILM FESTIVAL APRIL 27–30, 2017 • FRI T ZTOWN C INEMA • FREDERIC KSBURG

8th Annual

SEE INSIDE F OR: A LOCA L FILMMAKER’S “WE ST SIDE STORY” • THE HEAR T BEHIND FRI T ZTOWN C INEMA • HOW A LOCA L MOVIE FA N BECAME A FE STIVA L IN SIDER • S P O T L I G H T O N T E X A S F E AT U R E F I L M S

FEST FACTS

What’s this thing again?

Hill Country Film Festival (HCFF) is a long weekend filled with independent short and feature-length films you may not see anywhere else, great people – including filmmakers and actors – and easygoing social events designed to get you talking with all your new friends who love movies as much as you do.

Where is it?

HCFF headquarters is Fritztown Cinema, just south of town on Highway 87.

After-hours parties rotate among various Fredericksburg hot spots like Auslander Biergarten & Restaurant, West End Pizza Company, and the Nimitz Museum, and our Sunday sendoff is at Pedernales Cellars, just outside of Stonewall.

GUTEN TAG! We are Hill Country Film Society. It’s very nice to meet you. What is a film society you ask?

And what’s this insert in my weekly paper?

Great questions! We’d love to tell you more so grab a cup of coffee and put your feet up. We promise it won’t take too much time.

Hill Country Film Society is a nonprofit organization that encourages discovery through visual storytelling by creating experiences that engage, educate and inspire. That’s the technical answer. The better answer is that we are an organization that loves film and feels strongly about its place in our creative culture.

The society hosts the annual Hill Country Film Festival, a summer film camp, a filmmaker in the classroom component called Focus on Film, and free independent film screenings throughout the year. Within this insert you will find articles relating to the various programs with a focus on the film festival. It’s coming up soon!

Why Fredericksburg you ask? Another good question and the long story short is that two of the founders, Chad Mathews and Amy Miskovsky, spent childhood summers in Fredericksburg and Stonewall with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. These two have more relatives in the area than they can count.

They come from a long line of Peach Queens, which is another story entirely.

Watching the area evolve over the years and embrace a flourishing art community and tourism destination, Chad felt strongly that visual arts (a film festival) would fit nicely and would complement the existing art scene.

What other fun facts can we share? You may not have thought to ask this question, but we are storytellers after all. Our team is entirely volunteer – we organize the film society and its programs because we love film and we love Fredericksburg. Many of our team members are related or married. We joke that we should provide an org chart to explain which staffers are connected and how.

We started the festival in 2010 and started with just over 40 films. This is our 8th season and we will screen more than 100. Over the years, filmmakers have traveled from New York, Chicago and Los Angeles to attend the fest, many of them coming to Fredericksburg for the first time. All are impressed with the town and community you have built and for that, we thank you.

We have produced four short films in Fredericksburg, two by local high school students at film camp. We love being members of the Fredericksburg Chamber of Commerce. The past two years we have screened Christmas themed animated films at the Marktplatz following the BEST lighted Christmas parade in the state. We could go on and on – come see us at the fest and we’ll tell you even more stories. And please read on. The articles within offer a first-hand experience of our film festival and more.

Again, it’s nice to meet you. We would love to make your acquaintance in person soon!

Sincerely,

Hill Country Film Society

Hill Country Film Festival

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www.HillCountryFF.com

How much does it cost?

All Access Badge — $200 + service fees.

Enjoy all the festival has to offer, including access to all screenings, plus perks like priority seating, panel discussions, onsite VIP Lounge, festival parties including the filmmaker welcome, closing night party and awards and Sunday sendoff.

Film Pass — $90 + service fees. Enjoy access to all film screenings on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Individual Tickets — $10 Single block tickets will be available for purchase onsite, subject to availability, during the festival. Purchase at Fritztown Cinema day of show. *Early Bird Pricing is available until April 24. Visit hillcountryff.com/tickets for details.

More info?

Purchase badges and film passes, find detailed schedules and additional information at hillcountryff.com. Printed programs will be available at Fritztown Cinema. Please note that viewer discretion advisory information can be found in the event program. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for breaking news and real-time updates.

Local Filmmaker Shares the “West Side Story” behind His Inspiring Film, Victor

By Matt Ward

Brandon Dickerson was an auslander – or outsider, if you’ll pardon the irony of the explanation – the first time he attended the Hill Country Film Festival. His film Sironia, about a singer-songwriter who moves from Los Angeles to a small Texas town, took home the Best Texas Film award in 2012.

Now when Dickerson returns to HCFF this weekend with his new feature, he’ll be right at home in Fredericksburg after moving to town earlier this year.

Victor, a faith-based feature starring Patrick Davis, Matt Angel and Josh Pence, will screen at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, April 28 at Fritztown Cinema “It’s an inspiring true story of a Puerto Rican immigrant who moves to Brooklyn in the 1960s and gets involved with drugs and gangs,” Dickerson said, noting that the film’s faith-based redemption story honors a man who used his journey back from death’s door to help others.

“What drew me to the story was when I met the actual Victor Torres, who’s now in his 70s and continues to help youth through addiction. That was really a spark for me,” he said. “I have always liked true stories, because I feel like there’s something interesting about seeing a great true story.”

It didn’t hurt either that Victor’s story of Puerto Rican immigrants engaging in gang warfare on the streets of Brooklyn is also the setting for one of Dickerson’s favorite movies, West Side Story. He often jokes that Victor is “West Side Story without the singing and dancing.”

When the two first met, Dickerson bonded with the real-life subject of his film over a love for the Academy Award-winning musical.

“I said, ‘Look, your story is a West Side Story, being in a Puerto Rican gang the year that West Side Story actually came out. How did you guys react to that?’ And he said, ‘We loved it,’” Dickerson said. “Which was totally surprising to me. They would all go watch that movie together. Even though there’s singing and dancing, they’re like ‘This is us on the big screen.’”

This mutual connection between director and subject, not to mention the obvious parallels with the Natalie Wood classic, led Dickerson to include it in the screenplay.

“I ended up actually referencing West Side Story in the film because it felt like an elephant in the room. This Puerto Rican gang in the 1960s watching this movie of their lives,” Dickerson said. “When he told me that, I wrote into the film that Victor goes on a date to see West Side Story, and then surprisingly admits that he loves Fred Astaire movies, something that you wouldn’t expect from a gang member.”

The film, which Dickerson directs and co-wrote with Thomas Ward, is based on Victor’s 1977 novel “Son of Evil Street” and conversations with Victor himself.

“There were so many surprising things as I dug into his story,” Dickerson said. “Greg Wilkerson, who I had worked with 10 years before, brought me a memoir he had the life rights to called “Son of Evil Street.” The stories in there are what was interesting. It didn’t read at all like a film, so it wasn’t until I met the real-life Victor and started interviewing him that I said, ‘Oh, there’s totally a film here.’”

Much of Victor follows two rival gangs as they jockey for street turf and begin dealing

Hill Country Film Festival

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heroin, ultimately putting most of it into their own arms. Heroin addiction is a tricky subject to capture on film, but Dickerson was determined to ensure Victor had a PG-13 rating so that wide audiences would be able to receive the film’s inspirational message.

“When you hear it’s a film about kids and addiction, you don’t know what you’re getting into. I think it’s helpful to know that this is a faith journey,” Dickerson said. “It was a challenge to make a heroin addiction film (with a PG-13 rating), but I think I pulled it off in a way that my daughter can watch. I think that speaks to the redemptive faith elements that are in there.”

Victor has had a strong showing in Puerto Rico, where the film opened “number one per screen,” Dickerson said. Currently it’s arriving in theaters across Mexico and Latin America. While screenings in America have been limited so far, U.S. distribution plans are in the works.

The Fredericksburg resident is excited for audiences in his new hometown to check out Victor, especially to see the work of lead actor Patrick Davis, who plays Victor in the film.

“Patrick does an incredible job. I’m really excited for people to see it because anyone that’s seen it goes, ‘That guy’s a star.’ I feel like it’s going to be one of those things where you remember the first time you saw him (when he hits it big),” he said.

Dickerson also encouraged local audiences to enjoy all 100+ films this year’s HCFF has to offer, and that it’s not as daunting as it may seem.

“If you like films, a festival is a real treat but it can be overwhelming. What I love about Hill Country is that I feel that it’s one of the most approachable film festivals,” he said.

“I’ve talked to people that have been and they’re always like ‘Wow, I didn’t know what I was getting into and then I saw a couple films, met a filmmaker and got to participate during a Q&A.’” “It’s another level of film fandom,” Dickerson added. “The filmmakers that attend are passionate about talking about their movies.

If you’re passionate about film in any way, you need to go to a festival and I think that the Hill Country Film Festival is one of the best.”

www.HillCountryFF.com

Meet the Heart Behind Fritztown Cinema, Hill Country Entrepreneur Sloan Ruth

By HCFF Staff

For more than 15 months, Fredericksburg was without a movie theater.

If you lived in town from late 2012 through winter 2013 and wanted to catch a new release in theaters, the closest spot was in Kerrville about 30 minutes away.

Hill Country Film Festival was fortunate to find a home with the nearby Fredericksburg Theater Company.

But for HCFF to keep growing, and especially for Fredericksburg moviegoers, having a full time movie theater was a necessity.

Enter Sloan Ruth.

The Brownwood native moved to Fredericksburg with an eye on saving the closed Stagecoach Theater and giving it a breath of new life, which she did after reopening the venue under the new name “Fritztown Cinema” in mid-November 2013.

“It’s one thing for Sloan and her wonderful family to have simply gotten the move theater up and running again; the town needed that. What Fredericksburg has now is something more than any of us could have possibly hoped for,” Matt Ward, HCFF programmer and local resident, said. “Walking in, you can feel the care and love Sloan and her team have put in to creating a modern space for movie lovers to enjoy.”

Since the theater reopened under its new marquee in 2013, Sloan has installed a full kitchen serving pizza and sandwiches Thursday through Saturday, increased and diversified the types of films shown, and built a fully stocked bar with locally sourced beer, wine and mixed drinks for patrons to enjoy in the theaters.

Thanks to a dedicated group of family and friends who put their hearts and souls into revitalizing the venue, Fritztown Cinema has become a comprehensive cinema experience you can’t get anywhere else in the Texas Hill Country outside urban areas like Austin and San Antonio.

“We are incredibly lucky to partner with Sloan and Fritztown Cinema,” HCFF festival director Amy Miskovsky said. “She is just as passionate about film as we are and devoted to providing an experience that sets her theater apart from others. That’s something we truly appreciate.”

Fritztown Cinema also shares their projection booth with HCFF tech staff before and during the festival, enabling them to use the latest technology to provide the best screening experience possible.

“As more and more independent filmmakers began

HCFF technical staff show their appreciation for Fritztown Cinema owner Sloan Ruth. using Digital Cinema Packages (DCP), the same technology used by major movie studios to store and distribute their films, it became imperative for the festival to screen films this way,” Chad Mathews, HCFF executive director, said. “Sloan opened Fritztown Cinema to us night and day, allowing our tech team to test films well in advance and deliver consistently high quality screenings.”

Recently, Sloan has expanded her offerings through the development of “The Backyard at Fritztown,” a live music concert venue which opened earlier this month and played host to Cody Canada and the Departed on April 15.

“Beyond being a champion of the big screen, Sloan is just a great person to work with,” Miskovsky said. “She always has a smile, she is calm in the face of adversity, and she will do whatever it takes to ensure festival guests and filmmakers have a top-notch experience. We couldn’t make Hill Country Film Festival the event that it is without her and her amazing team.”

Hill Country Film Festival

— Parties! — Our Thursday and Friday parties are open to the public. Come raise a glass with us!

9 p.m.

Thursday, April 27 Auslander 9 p.m.

Friday, April 28 west end pizza

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www.HillCountryFF.com

Just a Guy, Standing in Front of a Filmmaker, Asking Him ... Nothing.

By Matt Ward

I only attended one screening the first year I came to this festival in 2012.

Film festivals seemed like such a foreign concept to me, something that people more sophisticated than I would attend and have intellectual discussions about obscure arthouse movies I’d never seen.

Movies are my passion, but I have to admit I was nervous about going to three-anda-half days of screenings, parties, panel discussions and more. It felt daunting.

But a film festival in Fredericksburg and less than five minutes from my house? I couldn’t entirely pass that up.

I had read about a romantic comedy that was screening and it seemed pretty interesting, so I bought a single ticket and went to 6 Month Rule. I went by myself, knew no one at the screening and sat quietly at the back.

I loved every second of the film and enjoyed the question-and-answer session afterward with the film’s writer, director and star Blayne Weaver, but couldn’t bring myself to ask a question. Out in the lobby, Blayne was greeting filmgoers and chatting with audience members who had additional questions or thoughts.

“But that’s the great thing about Hill Country

Film Festival...we all just love movies and want to have a good time.”

I wanted to tell him how much I enjoyed his film and how refreshing I thought it was in a genre where every story starts and ends in basically the same way. There were so many things I wanted to tell him.

But I didn’t. Nerves got the better of me and I high-tailed it out of the screening.

Four years later, Blayne came back to Hill Country Film Festival with his action-thriller, Cut To The Chase. He didn’t remember me, but I sure remembered him.

Because I had a lot of practice talking to

Matt Ward (left) and filmmaker Blayne Weaver at the 2016 festival. filmmakers by then, I felt comfortable enough to chat with Blayne not only about Cut To The Chase, a film I helped program and really enjoyed, but about 6 Month Rule, the movie that got me into film festivals in the first place. I told him how I attended the screening that year and was too hesitant to talk to him after.

We had a great conversation about that moment and about how audience members who aren’t in the film industry but just really enjoy movies don’t always know how to approach filmmakers on a one-on-one level.

He wished I would have come up and said “hello” back then. I wish I had too.

But that’s the great thing about Hill Country Film Festival (HCFF). Everyone who spends even a short time at Fritztown Cin-

ema during those four days – filmmakers, staff, friends, family, random kids who come to one screening but are too scared to talk to a director – we all just love movies and want to have a good time.

HCFF is the perfect film festival for those who’ve never been to one before. Our filmmakers enjoy talking about their projects and are happy to talk with anyone who wants to join the discussion. It’s casual conversation, usually over an adult beverage or two, among people who have a common interest.

It took me a while, and several years, to figure that out. But I’m so glad I did.

Come out and join us April 27–30. I promise you won’t regret it.

Don’t miss out on the Fritztown Cinema Special – All Access badges for only $125 each.

Available in person at Fritztown until April 24.

Cash or Check.

Hill Country Film Festival

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www.HillCountryFF.com

Many Thanks to Our 2017 Sponsors

Sunday Send-off at pedernales cellars

April 30 • 11 a.m.

Come mix and mingle with filmmakers and movie-fans along with a glass of award-winning wine.

Panel Discussion on Filmmaking Panelists will discuss the artistic struggle of letting go of the old and creating anew.

2916 Upper Albert Rd. • Stonewall, TX 78671 Hill Country Film Festival

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www.HillCountryFF.com

Film Society Promotes Community Outreach Year-round In addition to the annual festival, Hill Country Film Society (HCFS) hosts a variety of yearround programming, including summer film camp, independent film screenings, and other community events. The society also hosts “Film Affäre,” an annual fundraiser celebrating the emotional connection between food and film.

During the festival, HCFS will launch “Focus on Film” at area schools and also welcome the local Boys and Girls Club to a screening of the family film, Annabelle Hooper and the Ghosts of Nantucket, hosted by two of the filmmakers.

“We are thrilled to continue to grow our community outreach efforts, especially those that reach and inspire kids,” said Wade Lee, HCFS director.

Read about these and other happenings throughout this insert, learn more at our website, hillcountryff.com, and follow along on social media for the latest information on upcoming events.

The Hill Country Film Society (HCFS) is a nonprofit organization which encourages discovery through visual storytelling. We create experiences that educate, inspire and engage.

HCFS relies on members to help us achieve the mission and ensure the future of film as a part of our vibrant, creative culture. Thank you for your support. hillcountryff.com/film-society

Students attending the 2016 camp gained valuable hands-on experience making their own short film, “Out of Place.”

Hill Country Summer Film Camp: Episode III – The Return of the Summer Filmmakers

Film society staff, working with Fredericksburg Independent School District’s Community Education program, will host their third annual summer film camp for students entering grades eight through twelve.

Campers learn story structure, theme, character development and fundamental elements of visual storytelling. Students also experience the ins and outs of a movie set as they make a short film, led by filmmaker William F. Reed, a returning camp instructor.

“The kids who attend are so creative and full of ideas that, as a filmmaker myself, I can’t help but be swept up in the ex-

citement that comes from collaborating on something as unique and challenging as filmmaking,” Reed said. “Mark my words, one of these young people will be the next Steven Spielberg.”

Campers and their family and friends will be invited to attend a casual reception and screening of their short film at Fritztown Cinema after the completion of camp.

More information on the 2017 Summer Film Camp, June 12 – 15, will be available shortly via Fredericksburg ISD Community Education.

Festival Filmmakers to Visit Area Schools as HCFS Launches “Focus on Film” Program In support of their educational mission, Hill Country Film Society (HCFS) has partnered with local middle and high school campuses to present “Focus on Film,” which will bring filmmakers directly to area classrooms on Friday, April 28.

Filmmakers will lead discussions on a variety of visual arts topics including screenwriting, acting, and other areas of independent filmmaking.

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“We draw a significant number of talented industry professionals to Fredericksburg for the festival each spring and wanted to use that power for good,” said executive director Chad Mathews. “We are encouraged by the warm reception we received when we approached local schools with the concept and we are excited for students to learn firsthand from the artists themselves.”

www.HillCountryFF.com