 Hello everybody and welcome to an Arlington International Film Festival update. My name is Tyler Valenquart and today we're going to be talking posters, grills and COVID-19. Joining me today is April Rank, one of the co-founders of the International Film Festival. April, thank you for joining us today. How has the film festival been faring lately? Well, thank you for having me, Tyler. We're thinking virtual and almost everything that we're planning for this year. We just completed the poster contest award, which we held on Zoom and unveiled the winning poster that you have behind you. The winning poster this year was by Reina Walters, who is a graduate of Mass College of Art from Centerville, Massachusetts. So we're excited about her work and being the face of the festival for this year. Now, April, you've been doing this for about 10 years. Is that right? We are in our 10th year. This is our big 10-year anniversary. And in the beginning of the year, we were really disappointed in thinking that we weren't going to be able to have the festival in November and congregate at the Capitol Theater as we have been. And then in early March, we just decided to start thinking virtually and sought out a streaming platform and made our decisions to take the festival virtual. It's been a good choice because now everyone is scrambling for platform space because it's the norm for at least the remainder of the year. And I feel as though we really acted early enough that it served us well. We're also working with an advertising, a marketing and advertising company that is going to help us with our visibility this year via social media. Not only help us, AIFF, but also all the sponsors that are supporting us this year. So those are two major changes that we've been working on. Now when you're referencing the festival, of course you're talking about the independent festival that you do every year, but you also have two other events each year. We talked a little bit about the poster contest, which is also a mainstay of the film festival. But you also do a film festival specifically dedicated to high school student filmmakers. Is that correct? That's correct. So the three components of the festival is the annual poster contest. For the last three years, we've been holding that exclusively with Mass College of Art and Design illustration department, Bob Maloney's class. And then we have the high school filmmakers competition, which has been listed with UNESCO for the last four years. And we've been getting international filmmakers, high school filmmakers from all over the world. We have a two hour screening program on Saturdays, typically. And then we have, which is followed by a reception. We generally have an experienced filmmaker or people that are teaching film in the field of either editing, technical aspects to speak with the students after the screenings. We've also had college filmmakers that have screened their films and come to speak at the reception to the high school filmmakers. That's worked really well. And then of course the international film festival with the ND filmmakers, which we have a lot of amazing local filmmakers right here in the Arlington and Greater Boston area, as well as nationally and internationally. So we have a large pool of filmmakers to draw upon to curate a really amazing festival. Yeah, I mean, the name is almost misleading even though it is the Arlington International Film Festival. You never really know with festivals like this just how international it is. But it seems that you guys really excel in pulling together filmmakers from all corners of the world. I read on your website that it says you even have pulled in filmmakers from as far as Siberia before. Exactly. And this year our jury pool, our selection committee has expanded to Nigeria, Iran. We do have a person from Siberia as well that's on the judging panel. It's wonderful to get a different view of film from these professional filmmakers. And so we're not only receiving films, but they're also being reviewed by international filmmakers. Now, April, if I could pull the scope back just to Arlington again. I've been told that there is a raffle going on through the AIFF, which is raffling off a grill just in time for July 4th. Would you like to tell us a little bit about that? I would love to. I encourage anybody that wants a new gas grill to go on our website. We have one ticket for 10, three tickets for 20. And this is a next grill for burner gas propane grill that was donated by Home Depot who is sponsoring us this year. And we are delighted to be raffling this off and announcing the winner on July 4th. And we're happy to deliver it on the same day so you can cook your July 4th meal. Now, if that interests you at all, you can go to aiffestival.org slash raffle to go straight to the raffle website. Or you can go to aiffest.org, go up to the events tab and simply click on the raffle link there. Now, April, even though there's not going to be an in-person screening for the film festival, you seem to have found a way around that. Would you mind telling us a little bit about that? Yes, we have secured a screening platform and the film festival will be streamed online from November 5 through 15. Again, I'm directing everybody back to our website because starting in August, we're going to be streaming one of our films that we've shown previously that are award winners as a lead up to the festival. So in August, we'll be screening All Me, The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert by Vivian Ducat, which was one of our award-winning films that we showed in a previous festival. Again, it's really important to keep checking back on the website. We are updating our website to accommodate this virtual world that we're all being driven to live in and it will be much more navigable and informational. We also want to encourage people to go to the website aiffest.org and take a look at all of the poster submissions for this year. We're hosting an Audience Choice Poster Award, so you can vote for your favorite poster. We're going to announce that on opening night of the film festival November 5, so you have plenty of time to go on and look at the posters. So vote for your favorite poster and buy some raffle tickets for the grill. April, it's great to see that you guys are still managing even in these trying times. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Tyler. This has been an Arlington International Film Festival update. Thank you so much for joining us.