A film festival with a twist will hit the big screen soon here in San Antonio, and Urban 15 puts it on.
“The Josiah Media Festival is a film festival exclusively for young people 21 and under,” said Jonathan Anderson, the festival’s project manager.
“It mainly receives submissions that are from the states, but we are getting an increasing number of international entries each year," he said. "We received more international submissions this year alone than all of the previous years combined, and this is the eighth year that we are doing this festival."
As Anderson notes, the international nature of the film festival necessarily gives it a different feel.
"They have a very different perspective. They have a different aesthetic, they have a very different way of telling a story," he said. "We have three nights, about 36 films. Most of them are around 5-10 minutes. All of them are shorts.”
There are film delineations but the subject matter is up to the individual filmmaker.
“There’s four categories that we use: Narrative, Doc, Experimental and Animation," he said. "Some are very straightforward dramas, some are really interesting comedy pieces that are sort-of mind bending, sort of breaking the fourth wall, and some that are just straight forward horror movies, and then you have the doc categories."
It’s all held July 10-12 at Urban-15’s full-blown media facility that Anderson said features “a really big 20 ft. film screen with HD projectors, with really good sound."
The festival is free to enter, but substantial prizes are given to the top winners.
“We’ll announce the best of show on the last night," Anderson said.
- For more on the Josiah Media Festival visit: www.urban15.org
- Animated Film: http://vimeo.com/92251271
- Fourth Wall Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rsTGYDk2N8
