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Being brave means telling the story that most scares us but conquering our fears anyway. That’s a definition plucked from the personal lexicon of Tony Gapastione, founder and executive director of BraveMaker, a Redwood City-based nonprofit film festival, now in its sixth year.
The festival will take place July 11-14 across seven locations including Cinemark Century theaters (screens 15 and 19), the Fox Theatre, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, San Mateo County History Museum, Redwood City Courthouse Square, Redwood City Downtown Library and The Yard Coffee.
Over four days attendees will have the opportunity to watch films, network with film professionals and attend panel discussions in which experts will talk about pressing issues in the movie business — from strikes and AI to the fate of streaming and theaters.
While the movies that will be showcased at the festival are varied and represent different genres, they have thematic through-lines — they’re all “brave” stories told by people from under-served and under-represented communities, said Gapastione, who is expecting around 4,000 people to attend the festival.
Gapastione was an actor for several years before he became a filmmaker and it was around the time he pivoted to filmmaking that he started noticing all the injustices around him, including those concerning women, people of color, people from the LGBTQ community and people with disabilities.
“Starting BraveMaker was to search for films that can speak to the human spirit, films made by storytellers that needed to be heard, and stories that ask really good questions about humanity,” he said in an interview with this publication.
During this process, one eye is always on the production quality of the films, something a lot of “indie” films struggle with. Sound quality, for instance, is often the reason a film doesn’t make it to the program, he said.
Movies for the festival are curated through a portal called FilmFreeway, an online platform used by many film festivals. Every film is then put through at least three viewings by a jury team of around 15 people and is given a rating based on which the final lineup for the festival is selected.
“Our mission is to entertain, to educate and to create a community for justice, diversity and inclusion with film,” Gapastione said. “We’re definitely seeing a lot of people from the LGBTQ community submitting, which is really exciting.”
All the films will have open captions for audiences who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Other than the logistical challenges of planning a four-day film festival — “it’s like making five feature films and throwing 17 weddings,” Gapastione joked — he is braving the problem of shrinking resources from corporate donors and dwindling support from partners in the entertainment business.
“It’s mind-boggling how economically impacted nonprofits like ours have been — everybody is cutting back, laying off.” he said. “But we’re going to make it, come hell or high water; creativity always finds a way.”
Besides movies, the festival will also host several expert panel discussions on pressing issues that matter to the film community. Television screenwriter Lauren Wells, for instance, will participate in discussions about the state of the industry in Hollywood and the challenges facing women in the entertainment business. Among other things, she hopes to discuss the difficulties of being a woman in a writers’ room.
According to Wells, though things are much better than they were a few decades ago, there’s definitely room for improvement. “I do think it’s gotten better; when I meet female comedy writers who came up in the ’70s or ’80s, it was a very different climate. There was a lot of sexism in writers’ rooms then — crappy nicknames and misogyny.” she said. “I feel very grateful because the writers’ rooms I’ve been in have been balanced and diverse.”
BraveMaker for her is an opportunity to meet with other creators, who are in different stages of their careers. “I really value mentorship; there were so many people who brought me up when I was trying to pick their brain and figure out how to get into a writers’ room — I want to pay that forward now,” she said, acknowledging how hard it is to infiltrate the right circles in the business, especially if one is not from Los Angeles or New York. “I also want to see if there are people I could potentially collaborate with.”
BraveMaker’s opening festivities kick off on July 11 with a live podcast with VIPs at 1 p.m. followed by a 2:30 p.m. workshop on filmmakers’ mental health at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative; a red carpet preceding a 6 p.m. screening of “Daughters” at the Fox Theatre; a selection of shorts showing at 8:30 p.m. in Courthouse Square; and back at the Fox Theatre, an 8:30 p.m. opening party followed by a 10 p.m. screening of a “secret LGBTQ+ drag feature film,” according to the festival schedule.
The BraveMaker Film Festival takes place July 11-14 at various venues in Redwood City. Passes range from $150 to $225 and single tickets are $22 per screening. For more information, visit bravemaker.com/film-fest/