Final preparations are underway for a Birmingham festival that highlights filmmakers from around the country. The Birmingham Sidewalk Film Festival is celebrating its 26th year next month in the historic theater district. The event runs the week of August nineteenth. Nick *Adrian is the marketing director for the Birmingham Sidewalk Film Festival. He says that this event has grown to be a festival that people around the world and in the Magic City have come to cherish.
“We are an annual film festival. It's going on our 26th year this year,” he said. “We originally started kind of small little at first, and eventually grew, not just showing like films from Alabama, but at this point films from around the country and even around the world.”
Adrian says anywhere from four hundred to five thousand volunteers work alongside the Festival’s professional of ten to put on the festival every year. These guest workers perform any task from selling festival merchandise, to food service, to actually screening the films visitors come to see. Adrian adds that among the artists whose work will be featured at Sidewalk are more female and queer directors
“This year is very exciting because this is the first year in the sidewalk history that our opening night film is going to be a narrative film by a black director, and that's going to be huge. We have a lot of black directed films, a lot of female directed films, a lot of queer films. So it really is, truly is like something for everybody and a big celebration of everybody.”
The whole process begins early in the year when a programming team watches all the films that are submitted to Sidewalk. These movies are ranked on whether they’re considered good or bad, but also whether these offerings are a good fit for the festival. The committee watches two to three films a night during this process.
