We just got word that Jitensha has been invited to be part of the 2010 International Competition of the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in France. This is widely considered to be the top film festival in the world dedicated to short films. I’m particularly excited because short films tend to fall into the background at feature-driven festivals like Venice and Sundance, but at Clermont-Ferrand they are the main attraction. Plus, this festival attracts some of the largest film-going crowds of any festival in the world with 137,196 admissions and over 2,800 professional delegates in 2009.

Here’s a blurb from the Daily Variety article on the 50 unmissable festivals: “The ‘Cannes of short films’ overruns a university town in the shadow of active volcanoes, attracting such devoted audiences that the closing ceremonies are performed three times in a row in order to seat 4,500 spectators. The hyphenated city considers the event so vital that it built a permanent year-round headquarters for the programmers. The winter fest’s accompanying market is a marvel of organization.”

After doing a little research, I found out that my alma mater, USC, has had one film screen in competition at Clermont-Ferrand in the past eight years. With over 2,000 film submissions to this year’s International Competition alone, Jitensha is continuing to defy the odds and pave the way for future generations at Biola. Seventy-eight films were chosen from fifty-nine countries.

Congrats to Team Jitensha, who put their hearts into making this film, and thanks be to God for allowing Jitensha to continue to travel.

For more info, please visit: http://www.clermont-filmfest.com/index.php?m=134

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 8:54 pm and is filed under Film Festival, Screenings, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.