The inaugural Gold Coast Film Festival, set for the first week in June, aims to hearken back to the Jazz Age when Long Island’s Gold Coast entered the American cultural consciousness through novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”.
“It’s about geography, history and audience,” said Sean McPhillips, senior programmer for the festival. “The whole ‘Gatsby’ angle is big. You do have the opportunity to sort of bring things back.”
So the festival will seek to set the stage with an ambience that mirrors the sensibility of that bygone era. McPhillips, formerly vice president of acquisitions for Miramax Films, is currentlythe programmer for the Furman Film Series in Great Neck, which screened the New York metropolitan area debut of “The King’s Speech” last fall among other films.
“There’s no limit to the size of the movie. The sky’s the limit in terms of selection,” McPhillips said.
The Gold Coast festival will present a balance of studio films, independent films and short subjects June 1 through 5 at several venues, including Great Neck Squire Cinemas, Manhasset Cinemas, Port Washington Cinemas, Roslyn Cinemas and the New Hyde Park Gerricks Cinema 4. Special screenings will be held at Adelphi University, Hofstra University, the Nassau Museum of Art and the Great Neck Arts Center.
“There’s an audience here that’s diverse and affluent,” said McPhillips, who said that interest in the festival has mushroomed since it was announced last fall.
McPhillips is scrambling to line up entries for the festival, and said the festival will offer a range of flims to match the diversity of its audience, which includes Indian Americans, Israelis and Korean Americans. McPhillips said the festival will be revealing some of its entries in the next several weeks.
“It’s got to be a balance,” he said. “It’s a populist festival. We feel we’ll be able to appeal to everyone.”
“This festival has taken off like a rocket,” said Regina Gil, founder and executive director of the festival. “We’re not saying we’re going to be the world-wide premiere of any film in particular. We can certainly say we’re premiering and previewing films that people haven’t seen before.”
The festival will feature 40 screenings in five days, a relative whirlwind of events compared to the month-long schedule the Furman Film Series maintains. The festival will start with a opener will be a red carpet event with at the Hempstead House.
“It’s going to be an intense week,” Gil said.
The festival is lining up sponsorships, according to Gil, who said announcements about sponsorships are imminent.
Opening and closing night sponsors will pay $250,000 to participate, with sponsorship of filmmaker events going for $150,000 or $75,000. Other levels of sponsorship are being sold at increments of $25,000, $10,000 and $5,000, offering acknowledgement in press releases, placement of sponsor’s logos on the festival Web site and signage on-site as benefits.
The Town of North Hempstead is providing seed money for the festival, according to Gil, who said that Nassau County is also a sponsor of the event. “It really does highlight our history, showcases our communitites, and gives our local businesses a chance to thrive,” said Town of North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman. “Ultimately we do see this as a great economic development vehicle but it also gives our local residents a chance to appreciate our local culture and history.”
Vic Garvey, who is overseeing the creative and business sides of the event, compares it to the production of the nine Olympic Games he handled when he worked at NBC.
“It reminds me very much of setting up an Olympics. You have different cultures and different agendas and you really have to sort of marry them,” said Garvey, who has overseen the Nantucket and Savannah film festivals in the past.
The opening night red carpet event will feature a “major talent,” according to Garvey.
He said the atmosphere of the festival will be “fan-friendly” for videophiles and a “perfect place” for sponsors and marketers.
“It’s a jazzy thing. It’s a really terrific thing,” Garvey said. “Based on the conversations I’ve had in Los Angeles and in Europe, this is going to be a terrific environment.”
