Nantucket Film Festival Grows

More than 10,000 Attend Annual Four-Day Screenwriting Celebration

Oct 7, 2008

The Nantucket Film Festival offers film lovers an intimate island setting and the opportunity to experience the stories and styles of today's top screenwriters.

Each June, on an island 30 miles off the coast of Massachusetts, the Nantucket Film Festival honors screenwriting with a week of screenings, workshops, and discussions with varying degrees of formality.

The festival’s intimacy often gives attendees humanizing glimpses of many of the film industry’s storied personae, says executive director Jill Burkhart, who founded the festival in 1996.

Last year, for example, the festival honored three-time Academy Award winner Robert Benton, whose credits include Kramer vs. Kramer and Places in the Heart.

Benton talked about his Texas childhood and the many movies he went to with his father, and told stories about some of the legends he’s worked with, including Dustin Hoffman. But mostly he spoke about how blessed he felt in his success. “He’s an amazing storyteller, humble, egoless,” says Burkhart. Emmy award winning actor Joe Pantoliano ("The Sopranos") told Burkhart that listening to Benton was “like being in church.”

The festival’s famed Late Night Storytelling events often find legends and locals on the same stage.

“Marli Guzzetta from the Nantucket Independent told a story about online dating on Nantucket and was step for step with the stories of Brian Williams or Peter Farrelly,” says Mystelle Brabbee, the festival’s artistic director.

Nantucket Film Festival Highlights

Festival films, which include studio and independent productions, documentaries, and shorts, are selected based on superior screenwriting and storytelling. The festival also screens beach-worthy films each night at Children's Beach just after sunset (about 9:00).

Actors present staged readings of screenplays from both established and emerging writers, enabling them to gage their effectiveness. The 2005 reading cast for Stacey Weiss and Dan Chariton’s screenplay Spectacle included Ben Stiller, Macaulay Culkin, and Lake Bell.

Nantucket Film Festival Special Programs

Informal hour-long sessions during which prominent guests relate such things as what happened offscreen while their films were being made.

Panel discussions on screenwriting and film industry nuts and bolts featuring filmmakers, writers, and producers. Past panels have included James Lipton of "Inside the Actor’s Studio."

Among its most popular events, each festival features six presenters (writers, actors, filmmakers, and locals) telling tales both awe-inspiring and amusing, keeping alive the ancient art of storytelling without notes or scripts. Past storytellers include; Jim Carrey, Jerry Stiller, Tina Fey, Brian Williams, and Olympia Dukakis.

A seven-day program teaching ten Nantucket High School students story development and digital technology fundamentals. Filmmakers and technicians help students create short films that premiere on the festival’s final day.

Nantucket Film Festival Honors & Awards

In addition to its Audience Awards for Best Feature and Best Short Film, and the juried Best Storytelling in a Documentary, each festival presents the following six awards:

This award, sponsored by NBC and Universal, celebrates screenwriters who have brought distinction to the film writing craft. The 2008 award went to Judd Apatow (The 40-Year Old Virgin, et al). Past honorees include Ring Lardner Jr., Robert Benton, and Steve Martin.

Meg Ryan received the inaugural 2008 award, which honors an actor whose stature inspires writers to create roles especially for them.

A $5,000 grant in honor of independent filmmaker and past NFF juror Adrienne Shelly, murdered in 2006.

A jury recognizes the Teen View the most inspiring short film on contemporary social issues.

A month long, all-expenses-paid Nantucket retreat for select writers to workshop screenplays with guidance from industry mentors in the creative seclusion of Almanack Farm near Nantucket's cranberry bog conservation land.

The copyright of the article Nantucket Film Festival Grows in North American Film Festivals is owned by Andrew Leibs. Permission to republish Nantucket Film Festival Grows in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.