DALLAS — The 2024 Oak Cliff Film Festival is this weekend, with plenty of international and local films of all kinds to remind movie-lovers that movies are all around us.
Texas Theatre Owner Barak Epstein, who also helps organize the festival, said movies being all around us was the theme for this year's festival.
"Which basically means, like, anything you see on the street, you sometimes look at it. You're like, man, is that a story? What's going on with that? Is that a character?" Epstein said. "And often you see that kind of stuff just wandering around Jefferson Boulevard here in Oak Cliff."
This year, the 13th annual for the festival, saw a record number of film submissions, Epstein said. Along with submissions, the team also curates films from other film festivals both national and international.
"We go to other film festivals like Sundance and South by Southwest and we pay attention to the programs that are coming through and we sort of try to find movies that haven't come out yet and present them here for people in Dallas," Epstein said.
Epstein said the festival organizers think there is room in Dallas for movies that don't often get shown here. And smaller movies playing on a random Wednesday night may not get a crowd, but put into a festival setting as part of a larger collection would be more conducive to a larger audience.
When the Texas Theatre first started back up in 2010, the original plan was to play festival movies daily, but they quickly realized that smaller films would need to be contextualized into a festival form, which is how Oak Cliff Film Festival got started.
The festival also features a number of competitions--with submissions from local filmmakers and others--for both narrative and documentary features and shorts. This year, they have 58 short films and 27 features in total.
This year, winners of each of the competition won't just get the honor of winning, but will also go home with new filmmaking equipment to help make their next movie, such as a Sony Cinema Camera or professional headphones.
Oftentimes, local filmmakers are trying to get eyes on their films. To have a festival like this available to them, with crowds and interactive feedback, Epstein said it's a whole other level of filmmaking.
The festival also features a panel on how to make a short film and then take that into a feature and a workshop by the Austin Film Society on getting grants to fund making short films.
Oak Cliff Film Festival kicks off at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and runs through 10 p.m. Sunday. To see a full schedule of events, click here.
