The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival is making the move toward year-long programming, starting with a rebrand.
The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival will now be known as ATL Jewish Film, an umbrella term that will cover both the yearly film festival and the organization’s year-round programming. The rebrand, along with a host of other initiatives, was announced at a donor event on Aug. 12 held at Assembly Studios.
“ATL Jewish Film will serve as a new identity and carry all of our programs under one roof, helping the community recognize not only the overall breadth of our organization but every event, screening, and conversation being part of the same vision you helped build,” Board President James Anderson said.
The rebrand coincides with the film festival’s 25th anniversary. Earlier this year, the festival announced the Kenny Blank Vision Initiative, named for the festival’s Executive Director Kenny Blank. That initiative started the process of transforming the organization from one yearly festival to year-round programming. The pillars of that initiative are the festival, community relations, access, innovation, education, and a new filmmaker fund.
“We’ve used this anniversary really as a catalyst – a catalyst to unveil this vision initiative that I am proud bears my name and these exciting new growth opportunities for the organization in the future,” Blank said.
The ATL Jewish Film Filmmaker Fund, which the organization was able to start through the support of Kathy and Jason Evans, will allow the festival to not only show films, but invest in them as well.
“The idea is really simple, but it’s very, very powerful: provide direct financial support to filmmakers so great Jewish stories can get made,” Jason Evans said. “Get made, get finished, and get shared with the world.”
The filmmaker fund will operate in partnership with Jewish Story Partners, a nonprofit co-founded by Robert Grossman and Caroline Libresco that supports the making of independent Jewish film. According to Evans, Jewish Story Partners will share a slate of films still in progress with ATL Jewish Film, and then ATL Jewish Film will select one or more of those films to fund.
Under the education pillar, Kaylin Berinhout, Sr. Manager of Education & Community Engagement, talked about the festival’s new Student Filmmaking Competition, which is open to all Georgia high school students and kicks off on Aug. 27 at The Westminster Schools. Students will work on their own films before premiering those films at a public screening and awards ceremony on Nov. 19.
Blank also announced some of the movies that will be featured at ATL Jewish Film’s 25th Anniversary Gala Concert, which takes place on Oct. 20 and will feature the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra playing excerpts of iconic scores from Jewish films. Some of those films include “Chariots of Fire,” Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments,” “The Prince of Egypt,” and musicals like “Funny Girl” and “Fiddler on the Roof.”
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