The 12th annual Sacramento Film and Music Festival opens its SummerFEST program tonight by honoring another long time Festival director.  This year's Film Arts Service Award will be presented to Cecile Mouette Downs, director of the Sacramento French Film Festival.  Cecille has worked previously for the Film Department of the French Embassy in New York City, and as a Press Officer for the Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel in Paris. She has a master’s degree in history, is a regular contributor to “France Today” magazine, and was the 2010 recipient of the Arts Executive of the Year Award from the Sacramento Arts & Business Council. This is the fifth Film Arts Service Award to be presented

Programming a film festival is an odd and varied process. Some events go out and pro-actively seek the best films that they can find, in an extensive search process – and we see this approach in such local great events as the Sacramento Jewish, French, Japanese, and Gay and Lesbian Film Fests. Other events are submission-based: A call for films is distributed, and filmmakers from a given area submit their works in the hopes of making it to the top of the pile. This latter approach, perhaps best exemplified on a grand scale by the Sundance Film Festival, is also used (on a more modest level) by the Sacramento Film & Music Festival and that given area is the entire world. This year, films

Sacramento Film & Music Festival New dates and “Pitch Sacramento” filmmaking competition for 2011 For the past 11 years, the Sacramento Film & Music Festival has screened the best indie films from around the country and the world. And for the past 7 years, it has established a reputation for local filmmaking competitions, with approx. 150 music videos made for the Sac Music Seen program and 100 short films made for the 10x10 Filmmaker Challenge. For 2011, the Festival is making two major changes: A split into two separate seasonal events and a new competition for local filmmakers. Rather than continue as a 10-day Summer Festival, the 12th year for the Sacramento Film & Music Festival wil

 The people of Sacramento better be geared up for a week full of local, independent and foreign film and music as the 11th annual Sacramento International Film and Music Festival kicks off its first showing Friday. The festival is organized by co-directors Nathan Schemel, who also founded the festival, and Tony Sheppard, and will show more than 140 films from July 23 through Aug. 1. The festival is different from most Sacramento Film Festivals in that it does not have any specific focus. “The specialty of the festival is that, essentially, we don’t have a specialty,” Sheppard said. “We are all genre, international, submission based. Our programming model is to basically have films sent

If you happen to see people filming around town, and if they also seem to be in a hurry, there's a good chance they're making a film for this year's 10x10 Filmmaker Challenge, a program of the 11th Annual Sacramento Film & Music Festival.  Now in its 7th year, the 10x10 challenges filmmakers to make a 10 minute film in 10 days, on an assigned theme and using assigned elements such as quirky props and the Festival's mini-poster. Last night, filmmakers and prospective cast and crew members arrived at the Art Institute of California, Sacramento (a Festival sponsor) in enough numbers to require a move to a larger room.  In fact, the 26 teams that signed up to participate caused the maximum ru