This year the Las Cruces International Film Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary, April 9th through the 13th. The festival’s executive director and NMSU film professor Ross Marks recently spoke with Scott Brocato for a preview of this year’s festivities, featuring Oscar-winning special guest Helen Hunt.
Scott Brocato:
Well, this year's Las Cruces International Film Festival is celebrating a milestone: ten years. What are some of the biggest changes from that very first festival ten years ago to this one?
Ross Marks:
Oh my goodness. I mean it's like, you know, what do you learn in a lifetime? (Laughs) You know, from when I was 18 and, you know, now 30-40 years later? I'm much more knowledgeable. (Laughs)
For one thing, we've got a lot, lot bigger, a lot bigger. I think we had about 3500 people that first year. We had Danny Trejo as our special guest, and that was about it. It was great. It was student-run. The idea always from day one for me was, I thought, how do I replicate the Sundance Film Festival for my students? Because that was so important to me as a filmmaker, and I knew I couldn't do a field trip. That was the idea was, I'm going to bring Sundance here to them, to the students.
So now here, ten years later, his year, our attendance will be north of 12,000. I think that first year we had about 60 films; this year we have 168. This year we've got a huge lineup of guests. Like I said, the first year we brought in Danny Trejo; I think this year we're bringing in, like, 26 guests. And that's all in our dime. We’re flying them in, we're putting them up. Our budget has exploded, which is great as the festival's grown. The community and various entities have supported us and allowed us to grow. That's been the biggest challenge: how do you continue to grow something that's doing so well? We've added more theatres.
So just the main difference is the size. We've grown to what was kind of a student-run festival to now the largest student-run film festival in the country, with 12,000 attendees and 168 filmmakers this year.
Scott Brocato:
How many (film) submissions did you receive?
Ross Marks:
A little bit over a thousand. A little over a thousand. That's the other thing: so the first year we probably had a couple hundred submissions, if that; and this year we had I think about 1200 submissions.
Scott Brocato:
And how many people are involved with the whittling down process?
Ross Marks:
So that's all part of the teaching experience. I have a class, and it's called Film Festival Prep. And I get a group of students, 18-20 students, and I divide them up into categories: narrative features, narrative shorts, full length documentaries, short documentaries, animation, and so forth. And then they whittle through the submissions.
But the reason why our submissions are so high, and the reason why our programming is so good, is rather than just wait for films to come to us--and we have a film freeway account as do most film festivals; it's the platform where probably 99% of film makers and film festivals gather--but rather than wait for submissions, our students actually find films, find filmmakers from all over the world, reach out to them, and ask them to submit. So the quality of our films is much, much higher than a festival our size would normally have, because we're not just evaluating films. We're actually recruiting and scouting for great films around the globe.
And the students narrow it down, film by film by film, until finally--along with our artistic director Natalie Streander, who is a graduate of the CMI/NMSU program and was in the Film Festival class herself as a student, and is now our employed Artistic Director--she and the students make those final decisions. But it's really the students. And I tell them at the beginning of the semester, “You are now the program coordinator, or the category director for this particular category. And that will always be on your resume, and that makes you more employable, that you did this at a major film festival.”
Scott Brocato:
Let’s talk about the opening night film, “Brewmance”.
Ross Marks:
Pretty excited about that one, because one of the big mandates, the big focuses for us always at the Las Cruces International Film Festival, is not just to bring in world-class films and celebrities and people like Helen Hunt, Giancarlo Esposito, William H, Macy, Ron Perlman, Brandon Frazier, Richard Dreyfuss; so we’ve had some really great guests. But we want to grow the film industry in Southern New Mexico. And this is a film shot in Southern New Mexico, by a Southern New Mexico filmmaker, a CMI/NMSU alum--
Scott Brocato:
Keagan Karnes.
Ross Marks:
Yep. Keagan Karnes directed it. It was an all-Southern New Mexico crew. So this is...you know, if the film is good enough—and we're not going to program the film if it's not good, we're not going to jeopardize our reputation for quality programming, and you know, really discerning decisions on great films--if the film's good enough, we'll program it. But we really try to find films that highlight the great work that's being done in Southern New Mexico. So we're really fortunate that Keagan made this film.
I have to confess I was one of the producers, so I knew about it intimately. I knew it would be good because the script was good and Keagan's a talented filmmaker, and it really is a great film. I think audiences are going to love it. And people in Las Cruces, one thing I know for sure: they love seeing Las Cruces on the big screen. So I think Las Cruces audiences in particular are going to really dig this one.
Scott Brocato:
You mentioned the special guests. The "main event", if you will, is Helen Hunt and Michelle Hurd.
Ross Marks:
Yep. So we wanted...it was really important for us this year to honor women. We've had, in the past nine years, the only woman that we've honored with the Outstanding Achievement in Entertainment Award was Cybil Shepard. And it wasn't by design that we just kept honoring men and bringing back men. But we made a conscious effort to bring in a woman. And there’s nobody as decorated an actress as Helen Hunt. She's got the Academy Award for "As Good As It Gets”, and four Emmy Awards for her work on “Mad About You”. So we're really excited to bring her in. We're going to screen "As Good As It Gets”, which was the Oscar winner for Best Actress for her, Jack Nicholson for Best Actor, Best Director for James L Brooks, and Best Picture. So that's going to be a great film.
And then I met Michelle Hurd because I'm doing a film called "Holiday Hearts” and cast Michelle. And the more I got to know Michelle, I said, boy, this is somebody that really deserves attention being honored for an incredible body of work, from “Star Trek” to “Law and Order”. She's just done so many amazing things and is such a wonderful person. So the two of them are sort of the face of the festival.
Also, going back to “Brewmance”, all the actors from "Brewmance” are going to be here: Alex Moffat from SNL, Steven Ogg from The Walking Dead, Kennedy McMann from Nancy Drew, Zoe Coletti from American Horror Story. So it's just a huge slate.
In addition--which I don't think you're aware of because we haven't announced it until just this morning--we're doing a big Star Trek panel. That's going to be Saturday, April 12th at the Rio Grande Theater at 1:00 PM, exploring the Star Trek universe. Michelle Hurd and several other actors from the different Star Trek show. I think there's about six Star Trek panelists representing four different Star Trek shows and "Generations”. We've got three actors, two writers, and I believe a director. So it's for people who are Star Trek fans and there's a lot of them.
Scott Brocato:
Oh yeah, it'll fill up.
Ross Marks:
This is going to be a cool yeah. This will be a cool thing to experience.
Scott Brocato:
What kind of financial impact does the festival have on Las Cruces?
Ross Marks:
It's pretty significant. You know, first of all, our ad spend, both in kind and cash, is north of $200,000. And KRWG is one of our media sponsors; but most of the major radio stations, whether it be billboards, social media--we employ our marketing company, a wonderful group called NMCO. We work with the Las Cruces Bulletin. You know, we're a hometown festival that has a big reach and international reach.
And that's one of the ways—you asked, how has the festival changed and grown? When it first started, I had to do a lot of outgoing calls. Now I get a lot of calls, and one of the reasons about how do we get Helen Hunt? Well, her agency reached out to me. And because they also represent George Lopez, and George told (them) what a cool festival we have. So they said, “Hey, can we get involved? And would you like to have some of our clients?” So we've grown to the point where people are now calling us, and asking if their clients and guests can participate.
But we have about a $200,000 direct media spend, and then the economic impact in terms of hotels, restaurants that we have in the Las Cruces community, is also about $200,000 to $300,000. The festival, which is the largest event in Southern New Mexico--that's coming from the state. I spoke at the legislature on behalf of the State Tourism Board as the representative for the event. Las Cruces is it's the largest event in in Southern New Mexico. We're so wonderfully supported by Visit Las Cruces, the city. And this year, I'm also excited that Doña Ana County has become one of our presenting sponsors.
So we've worked really hard over ten years to create this event, to give back to our incredible community. And the community has given right back to us, whether it be local businesses, whether it be state, the county, the university--it's a wonderful marriage of town and gown, as they say.
Scott Brocato:
And where can folks go online to purchase passes and tickets?
Ross Marks:
The website has everything: https://lascrucesfilmfest.com/. You can buy your tickets, you can see the schedule, you can read some of our news releases, you can volunteer if you want to work on the festival, you can become a sponsor.
