Santa Clarita Film Festival Undaunted by Earthquake

It isn’t easy launching a new film festival--even under the best of conditions.

It can be difficult to generate enough attention to draw a large audience. And competition for films, in an age when it seems most medium-sized cities boast of a local film festival, can be stiff. Good speakers are hard to find, and the amount of organizational work is enormous.

And a large earthquake makes things even tougher.

But the recent quake hasn’t stopped the fledgling Santa Clarita Valley International Film Festival, scheduled for March 18-24 in an area hit particularly hard by earthquake damage. The show must go on, and it will, though with some changes in the program.

“We decided we would go forward with the festival, and we originally thought we would have to make real programming changes,” said festival director Chris Shoemaker. None of the scheduled speakers, including Jerry Mathers of “Leave It to Beaver” fame and writer Michael Medved, has canceled, and while the festival will now run seven days instead of 10, only two seminars of 17 have been dropped. It is difficult to predict what effect the earthquake will have on attendance, especially with damage to key freeways in the area, but the festival’s director is optimistic.

“It’s hard to say how ready people will be to travel, but we hope people will want to go to something relatively close (to Los Angeles),” Shoemaker said. “And it could be an important part of the healing process.”

The idea for the festival grew out of the film committee of Santa Clarita’s chamber of commerce. “We’re losing part of our film industry to out-of-state and out-of-country film concerns,” Shoemaker said. “The festival will focus on Santa Clarita as a film-friendly community.”

The festival will screen family-oriented films, with a special concentration on animation and Westerns. A definite screening schedule has not yet been set. The festival will also include tours of Santa Clarita Valley and a special showing of “Tumbleweeds,” the last film of William S. Hart, a longtime Newhall resident who acted in early Westerns. A lifetime achievement award will be presented to Warner Bros. animator Isadore (Friz) Freleng, creator of Porky Pig.

Festival organizers are recommending Interstate 5 as the best route from Los Angeles to the Santa Clarita Valley. Though the festival will focus on family-oriented films, it will be “sensitive to the fact that our concept of a family is being broadened,” Shoemaker said.