This past Saturday I spent the day with filmmakers from across North America. The 1st Annual River Bend Film Festival in South Bend Indiana, is a continuation of the IU South Bend Independent Video & Filmmakers Festival. This year the festival starts it’s new life off campus and in the heart of South Bend. The venue was Century Center, South Bend’s premier convention and events facility. By separating from the University festival chairman Tim Richardson says they have received much greater support from the community at large.

This was the first time I have setup a table at this kind of event to promote IndyFilmNews.com. The reactions were great. The number of people that already knew of and frequent the site was very reassuring. At the time I confirmed my table I had let Tim know I was available for any panel discussions that he thought would be appropriate. As things turned out one of the main guests, Stephen Susco, had some travel problems and couldn’t make it to the festival. This made them pull together a panel of filmmakers to fill the time slot. I was very pleased with how the panel worked out.

The Panel covered many of the hurdles of Indie films. Financing, Copyrights, Distribution, Budgets, etc. The panel consisted of Myself, Kate Chaplin(Karmic Courage), John Klein, Cole Simon and Mike Molenda(all from Glass City Films), Scott Dokey( President of Mid America Filmmakers) and Moderated by Festival Charman Tim Richardson.

For an impromptu panel it went really well. The room was packed with filmmakers and would-be filmmakers. They had lots of questions. we swapped war stories and all seemed to agree on most of the points. Even though I had never met most of the panel we go along great. Kate’s Karmic Courage productions is based out of Indianapolis and I have worked closely with Kate on many projects.  Glass City Films is based in Toledo Ohio, though they spend a lot of time in Chicago and South Bend.  the Mid America Filmmakers is a group of filmmakers that help each other with their projects, they were the sponsors of the festival.

The evening session had a great turn out. it featured films from the Mid America Filmmakers and several foreign shorts. The Festival main event was the showing of Stephen Susco’s latest film “Red”. They managed to setup a video link via Skype and Stephen Susco was able to introduse thefilm as well as do a Q&A session afterwards. It worked out really well.

The Mid America Filmmakers are a great group and I look forward to working with some of them in the future. They put on a festival that was fun to attend and even better to be a part of. I’m sure I’ll go back to next year’s River Bend Film Festival.

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Posted by admin on May 3rd, 2009 :: Filed under Film Shoots
Tags :: Cole Simon, Glass City Films, indyfilmnews.com, John Klein, Karmic Courage productions, Kate Chaplin, Mid America Filmmakers, Mike Molenda, River Bend Film Festival, Scott Dokey, South Bend, Stephen Susco, Tim Richardson
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