Pat Battistini runs the All Sports Los Angeles Film Festival here in the San Fernando Valley. The festival’s third annual screenings will be at the El Portal Theater on November 11 – 13th, the same time we will be at the Whitefire Theatre. Altogether, it should be a great filmgoing weekend in the Valley.
The All
Sports Los Angeles Film Festival promotes the art of
screenwriting and filmmaking in the world of sports and competition. It is one of only three festivals in the U.S.
solely dedicated to this genre, and the only one west of the Mississippi. I wanted to talk with Pat about the festival
to learn more about it.
James Latham:
What led you to develop the All Sports Los Angeles Film Festival (ASLAFF)?
Pat Battistini:
I’ve always enjoyed sports films and watching “Real Sports” on HBO, so I
was surprised there wasn’t a festival solely dedicated to this genre. After toying around with the idea for a couple
years, it finally came down to one of those things that, if no one else is
going to do it, I need to.
JL: What background
prepared you for developing the ASLAFF?
PB: I played football
and wrestled in college; then coached college football for four years. After realizing that I really wanted to work
in film and TV, I transitioned to the “biz.”
This work has included writing, directing, producing, and editing eight
short films of my own. Also, from
submitting and going to festivals, I learned a lot about how they work. My friend Denise Gossett, who runs Shriekfest, also has been very helpful
with the many challenges of developing a film festival.
JL: The VFF is pretty
wide-ranging in terms of genre, while your films focus on sports
competition. But there’s a huge range of
possibilities within that one category.
What are some of the more innovative films you’ve screened?
PB: We’ve had some
very surprising and interesting films about events that I didn’t even know
existed. The documentary that won our
first year was Bicycle Dreams. It’s about racing across America, coast to
coast, on bikes…in less than twelve days. The riders at the front of the race
sleep as little as 90 minutes a day.
It’s an incredible feat. Another documentary we screened was
about solar powered cars racing across the continent of Australia. Others that were just as interesting were
about Iraq’s Women’s Rugby Team (scarves and all), Beer Pong, and
Freediving. These films are a lot more
fun to watch than people expect.
JL: What are the
latest trends in the films you’ve screened, for example in their subject matter,
styles, or production technologies?
PB: We have a lot of
boxing, martial arts, and mixed martial arts showing up this year. It has really exploded as a popular sport,
thus more people are making stories about it.
As far as styles go, a lot of it is driven by new technologies. Because decent cameras keep getting smaller
and more economical, we have a lot of DPs and athletes strapping them on to
themselves and getting into places a lot of people could never go. For example, we’ve had POVs on surfboards
riding through amazing waves, or on bicycles and motorcycles ripping through
city streets and the countryside.
JL: Your filmmakers focus
on competition in its many mental and physical forms. What have you learned about competition from
this festival?
PB: No matter what
the subject matter is, the will to finish or win is incredible. We had a doc on junior high school kids
competing to build a robot that could play soccer. They were happy with the fact that they built
this incredible machine, but they wanted it to be able to score too. We also had another film about athletes
running a 100-mile race through the mountains in less than a day. Getting first place wasn’t the most important
thing. It was the drive of just being
able to finish that made these people train so long and hard.
JL: Los Angeles is a large
media and sports hub, which I assume provides a lot of local people for you,
such as filmmakers, sports professionals, and audiences. What types of filmmakers tend to screen the
most at your festival? Film students,
sports professionals, fans?
PB: Like most films,
the filmmaker is connected to the project through his / her passion. Thus, I think that about 75% of the
filmmakers are sports fans who have been dying to tell their story for a while
and the other 25% stumble on a story that they feel connected to and want to
share.
JL: What are the
demographics of your typical audiences?
PB: You would think
it would be male dominant, but it’s been pretty even, partly because some stories
are about women’s sports, such as professional football and roller derby. As for the ages of our audience, it’s pretty
much as if you would look up into the stands of a high school football
game. It’s so diverse because everyone
loves a good sports story.
JL: What luck have
you had attracting distributors to screenings?
PB: I’ve actually
found it more difficult than I thought, but we do occasionally have
distributors approach our filmmakers.
However, the deals haven’t been very beneficial to the producers of the
films, thus they’ve passed.
JL: Do you or any of
your associates attend many other film festivals? Which is your favorite one, besides your own,
and, of course, The Valley Film Festival?
What makes a great festival?
PB: We try to go to
more and more festivals each year. The
folks at the Bare Bones Festival in Oklahoma are so warm and friendly. Palm Beach has a great fest, too. But I think my favorite so far has been
Austin, where the panelists, guest speakers, and honorees have been so
approachable. They aren’t shuffled in and
out like in a lot of festivals in L.A. I
remember one time I was sitting on the curb outside a restaurant eating and Herschel Weingrod
(writer of Trading Places, Kindergarten Cop, Brewster’s Millions) just came up and sat down next to me to chat
and eat. That doesn’t happen around
here.
JL: There are only a
few other film festivals that specialize in sports. Have you looked into possibly collaborating with
any of them in some mutually beneficial way?
Regardless of that, what do you think are some general areas (if any)
where small independent film festivals might sensibly collaborate?
PB: We are
collaborating with the Federation Internationale Cinema Television Sportifs out
of Milan and the Georgian Bay (Canada) Extreme Film Festival. I would like to work more with them in
exchanging films to help the filmmakers get their work out there. Social networking is another area. I think the smaller fests (ourselves
included) should start cross promoting more through Facebook, Twitter, etc.
JL: What elements, if
any, would you like to change about your festival; for instance to expand upon?
PB: My biggest goal
right now is to get more people in the theater.
L.A. has so many fests that you can call in favors only so much with
your friends. Premieres are easy to get
people to attend, but three days worth of films is a tough thing to do to
continually get people out to watch films.
My other endeavor is to give a Sports Achievement Award to actors / athletes
who have made contributions to the sports world through film / cinema.
JL: What parting
words of advice would you have for filmmakers who want to submit to your
festival?
PB: Don’t be afraid to show us your work. We love any kind of film or documentary that
touches the element of physical and/or mental challenges. Your film on the haunted baseball stadium
will be just as entertaining as the documentary on a junior high spelling bee. Also, we do our best to get as many films in
the fest as possible. If we have to add
screening times, we will!
----
The regular submissions
deadline for the All Sports Los Angeles Film Festival has passed, but latecomers
have until September 21st.
1 comment:
nice written
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