Film Society to hold spring festival in Philadelphia

    Yes, Virginia, there will be a film festival this spring. The Philadelphia Film Society will create a new one to replace the canceled Cinefest.

    It was on…it was off, and now a springtime film festival is on again. The Philadelphia Film Society will create a festival to replace the canceled Cinefest.

    The film landscape of Philadelphia resembles the plot of a Bette Davis movie. After an acrimonious split last year, the two entities that used to put together the Philadelphia International Film Festival each set out to put on its own festival, one in the spring, one in the fall. But earlier this year the spring festival – called Cinefest – was canceled due to financing. Now the fall festival has stepped into Cinefest’s absence.

    Andrew Greenblatt of the Philadelphia Film Society says he will put on a short weekend festival in April because Philadelphia has had a spring festival for nearly twenty years.

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    Greenblatt: Everybody expects to see some type of festival in April – including me. I was a film fan long before I was with the company. When the other event canceled we started thinking what could we do. We can’t do anything huge because there’s no time – but we wanted to create something.

    Because of the short lead time, Greenblatt says he will not be soliciting films, but rather pulling entries from other festivals like Sundance and Toronto, similar the program last fall.

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