What a wonderful meeting on Friday, October 13! We had a new member induction - welcome to the club, Bryce! After all Rotary business items were discussed, Katie Gingrich introduced our speaker for the day, Michael Chaney, who is with the SCAD Film Fest.
Michael began his presentation with a brief history of film festivals dating back to Venice, Italy in 1932. Currently, there are 3000 film festivals worldwide. He then asked the question, "why should we have film festivals?" Some of the reasons were to celebrate art, to help filmmakers network, and for the economic impact of the cities where they are hosted.
The SCAD Film Fest began in 1998. It has had 6 billion media impressions and is the largest university film fest in the world. Since it started, 180 films that were shown have received Academy Award nominations. They typically have over 2000 submissions each year for 100 spots. He then highlighted some of the offerings (gala screenings, signature screenings, documentaries) for this year's festival and encouraged everyone to attend. To learn more and to purchase tickets to events, please visit https://filmfest.scad.edu/