By Charly SHELTON

On Friday, filmmakers from around the world will come together for the Glendale International Film Festival. The annual event, now in its fourth year, will once again celebrate “all creatures great and small in the animal kingdom, especially cats, dogs, and horses.” While the festival doesn’t require all films entered to be about animals, it definitely doesn’t hurt.

“Basically, those films are given absolute precedence, along with films that are made by women and also the screenplays which are written by women,” said Velvet Rhodes, festival organizer. “We support the entire filmmaking community, however; we do have a lot of female filmmakers who we encourage and [to whom] we give special awards as well. So yes, we have a lot of films that have to do with cats, dogs and horses.”

The whole event, which runs through Oct. 22, kicks off on Friday with a special screening at the historic Alex Theatre in Glendale.

“This year we’re having a very grand opening night at the Alex Theatre and on Friday the 13th. This is our opening night gala party for the filmmakers and we’re going to be screening the fully restored ‘The Godfather’ as our kickoff film for the festival. So it should be really nice.”

After the opening night screening, the festival will take place spread across several days at the Pacific Theaters 18 at the Americana at Brand from Oct. 14 to Oct. 19, and the United Artists 8 in La Cañada from Oct. 20 to Oct. 22. Each short film is sold either in a block with other like short films or as a stand-alone with a Q&A. Features are sold as stand-alones or in a double feature.

Documentaries will be screened at the recently renovated Glendale Central Library Oct. 15-21, Rhodes said, “along with our screenplay reading contest, our Filmmaker’s Journey panel discussion and the Screenwriters’ Journey panel discussion. And we also have another wonderful panel discussion on Oct. 20 which is entitled ‘Women in Film’ and that is going to be led by Laura Friedman and members of different establishments in the filmmaking community, along with the California Women’s Law Center. So we have quite a spectacular festival this year.”

At the end of the festival on Oct. 22, awards will be presented to just about every film submitted. Rhodes said this is important because “I think there’s nothing worse than going to a film festival [and] coming away with nothing. So we like to give everybody a nice thank you.”

Tickets are available as a weekend pass, as a single-day pass, per film or film block, or as an all access pass to the whole festival. And, as a non-profit, the GIFF will be donating 20% of the proceeds of the festival to Glendale Unified School District schools to implement and strengthen filmmaking and screenwriting classes.

“I believe that making movies, writing screenplays and furthering any kind of artistic expression is the most important thing we can be doing right now to uplift and elevate, and to create comedy, laughter, joy and [positive] thoughts as well,” Rhodes said. “And the entire film festival has such a great line-up of different films from around the world, but with the emphasis here in our neighborhood so we have many people who live here screening their films.”

For tickets and the full lineup of films, visit GlendaleInternationalFilmFesival.com.

  Charly Shelton