Four years ago, my friend Mark Compton launched The Southern Appalachian International Film Festival as his graduate thesis in Tourism. The festival, which takes place in Johnson City, Tennessee, took root and is now going in to it's fourth year. I asked Mark to share with us some information on this year's festival. For more info, please click the post's title. SOAPIFF is accepting film submissions through the end of July.
Jaz

I just have one question: Why should people get excited by SOAPIFF and what's up this year?

SOAPIFF has expanded to ten days and has added new, interesting, and fun events. One of the consistent complaints from years past was- we really would have loved to seen this film but we had to decide. We're hoping that by expanding the number of days and the number of times we show films we'll solve this issue.

This year we're conducting our student film festival on i-Tunes U and offering an Audience Choice Award. So students, get your films to us and find international exposure amongst your peers. We're the first festival to do so and we're real excited about that!

This year we're offering Around theWorld in Eight Days, international foreign language screenings that will take our audiences into various world cultures and into lives and stories that will elevate our insight into our universal humanity. We already have a number of US premieres coming out of China.

SOAPIFF's cultural minorities and gender issues screen will expand from just two days to four days and move to larger venues.This year we are showing the silent film classic Stark Love at theParamount Theater in Bristol. The Paramount is a fully restored ArtDeco theater with a Wurlitzer that will play to accompany the silent classic. This is a rare screening; the film was thought to be lost for decades. There are only a few copies and we're lucky to have MoMA's copy for the event. This is then followed by a world premiere of a documentary on Stark Love. Stark Love was considered one of the top ten films of 1927 and was shot in Appalachia with Appalachians in starring roles.

There is one more event I'm working on and we'll know if it's a go in just a few days. I'm truly excited about this year's festival. All of you filmmakers out there get your films into us, our deadline is August 1st. We're on Withoutabox.