Las Vegas Film Festival

This is a review for the 7th Annual Las Vegas Film Festival. It has moved from the LVH Hotel to the Inspire and Scullery Theatres, part of the Downtown Project. I sent a correction to Yelp HQ and they changed the URL but not the location. Go figure!This would get 4 stars from me but for several hopefully first time problems. One, the times listed on the schedules are merely guides to what the actual time will be. I believe that only one of eleven screenings I did started with 5 minutes of the actual scheduled time. There were a number of problems with equipment. At the Scullery Theatre, one film had to be restarted 3 times before they corrected the problem with the narration track being audible. We saw the first five minutes of the movie 4 times and it was Groundhog Day. At the Inspire Theatre, a DVD player had to be changed out because it stopped working properly. I hope this is first timer problems but one would think the staff would be trained with the equipment before the festival.With screenings occurring only in 2 theatres, there are no films that are repeated during the five days so choose wisely. I started to compare this to CineVegas which was at the Palms and had multiple screenings of each movie. I had to rethink how I did a film festival with these limitations. Also, the distance between the two theatres is two long blocks. But since the schedule is only a guide, you shouldn't be late for any screening.I found the staff, both programmers and volunteers, to be very friendly and helpful. Make sure that you use the scheduling program at the website. When you build your schedule, it also creates an RSVP for you and you will be on the list if they have both a general admission and a VIP line.I look forward to attending again next year and I hope I can upgrade my rating.

PARTY LIKE A ROCKSTAR!!...OR ACTOR/ACTRESS...I've always wanted to attend a film festival and I finally did thanks to yelp! There was a giveaway to win a couple VIP passes and I was one of the lucky winners! Bang Bang was the film I really wanted to see and the screening was on my day off. I brought fellow film buff Angela along and she was the perfect choice. The film was very good. After the film rap artist and star of the film, Thai Ngo performed 2 songs. Then they had an Audience Q&A session with director Byron Q, producer James Bak and a few of the actors from Bang Bang. Next we headed over to Benihana for the SDAFF After Party. Free Asahi and Tyku sake! We got to hang out with the cast and crew from Bang Bang. Most of our time was spent chatting with actors David Huynh and Vanna Fut. These guys are real down to earth. The free drinks ended at midnight so David invited everyone up to his room to continue the after party. Stayed there for a couple hours and left when everyone decided to head over to Revolution. So far it has been effin awesome! I might try to hit up the screening for Model Minority before going to work. Hit me up if you want to meet up.

I had a film in this festival, as well as others, and I'm telling you... this festival is BY FAR more organized and better than so many others. This is a 'young' festival, only five years now but you wouldn't know it, feels like a 15 year festival. Other five year festival struggle with finding good venues and sponsors... this one has EASILY the best theater around, the amazing 1,700 person LVH Theatre with a huge screen, great sound, and great seating. Honestly, as a filmmaker, you work your whole life to see your film on a screen like that. On top of that, they really take care of the filmmakers and the audience. Every night, there is some kind of event for people to attend, and it's not some douchey "networking" vibe to it... it's a party to celebrate great films and good people making them. I've met some great friends because of this. They have panels for the audience to attend, which is a great tool that I wish I had when I was an up and coming filmmaker. I wanted to 'give back' in whatever way I could so I was on all three panels and I made sure to stay around until every single person in line got talk with me as long as they wanted to, an hour on average... I'm just honored people thought I had something to decent to say! I'm not just flattered that my film won, but I'm telling you, I could have gotten zip and still would have had glowing reviews about this festival. It was way beyond expectations. Keep it up!!!