Hollywood Film Fest puts the social action into lights and cameras

Change has become a theme for the newly reorganized and reenergized Hollywood Film Festival. Looking to create a space for itself within the crowded fest landscape in Los Angeles, the event has changed its focus to emphasize social-impact filmmaking and in the process will be featuring films about creating change in the world.

Depending on how you want to count it, this is either the 18th year of the Hollywood Film Festival — its second under the stewardship of circuit veteran Jon Fitzgerald — or the first under the full ownership of Fitzgerald and his organization, CineCause. Running Thursday through Sunday at the Arclight Cinemas in Hollywood, the festival has a proverbial “under new management” sign hanging over the door.

“The truth is the Hollywood Film Festival has never realized its full potential,” said Fitzgerald in a recent interview.

“From a consumer, audience standpoint, it was never really on the radar,” he added. “So we’re planting our flag, and for a lot of people it’s the first time they’re hearing of the festival.

“We wanted to show another side of Hollywood,” he said. “There are a lot of industry veterans and filmmakers who are making movies and using entertainment to create change. So let’s show that film and media can actually make a difference.”

Among the films screening will be documentaries touching on the global water crisis, “Slingshot” and the Sharon Stone-produced “My Name Is Water,” social media with “#ChicagoGirl” and living with disabilities in “Becoming Bulletproof.”

In line with its mission to connect audiences with causes and social activism, the festival will also feature a series of special presentations that will allow audiences to learn more about various causes and donate or get involved right there. Along with events dedicated to “Water Crisis” and “Music and the Mind,” there will also be presentations on “Homelessness,” “Displacement,” “Sex Trafficking” and “Disruptive Education.”

Brad Parks, managing producer of the festival, said, “It’s a way to combine that social-impact filmmaker world with the Hollywood community. It represents not trying to get a seat at the Hollywood table, but really building a new table in Hollywood especially for social-impact filmmakers.”

Lest anyone think the weekend will be filled solely with good intentions and serious subjects, there are some lighter selections among the films as well. The wayward comedy “Fort Tilden,” which won the Grand Jury Prize at the South by Southwest Film Festival earlier this year, stars Bridey Elliott and Clare McNulty as two young women struggling through a long day of just trying to make it to the beach. “Alex in Venice,” directed by “The Mindy Project” star Chris Messina, stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead as a hyper-focused lawyer who finds her priorities shift after her husband leaves her.

“Sold,” executive produced by actress Emma Thompson, stars Gillian Anderson and David Arquette, while “Sister” stars Barbara Hershey as an unstable widow. “You Must Be Joking” features rising stars Hannibal Buress and Katherine Waterston; “Pancakes,” having its world premiere at the fest, intertwines its characters in a Tokyo-set romance.

The documentary “Slingshot” covers two tracks — one being a portrait of inventor Dean Kamen, holder of more than 400 patents but best known for his Segway scooter, with the other being Kamen’s efforts to create a small water-purification machine for turning dirty, undrinkable water into safe, potable water.

“I knew very little about the world’s water crisis, I was very naïve,” director Paul Lazarus said. “I took water for granted, just like everybody else. It’s been for me a very large evolution of my own attitude about water.”

Lazarus, a veteran television director with credits including “Friends” and “Pretty Little Liars,” has made many short documentaries with Kamen, chronicling the various programs and ideas with which the inventor has been involved. Yet Lazarus could tell right away that Kamen’s water purification system was different.

“I said to him, I think this is the biggest thing you’re ever going to do,” said Lazarus. “You’re talking about something that affects billions of people and you’re talking about a situation where the need for your technology is dire. Let’s see if we can go from an idea in your head to what it takes to put that into reality.”

“Becoming Bulletproof,” which had its world premiere last week at the Vancouver International Film Festival, is another example of what social-impact filmmaking can mean. The movie follows thirtysomething A.J. Murray, born with cerebral palsy, as he participates in a program through the Vermont-based organization Zeno Mountain Farm to film a Western featuring people of diverse abilities.

“Really it’s a film about equality and inclusion,” director Michael Barnett said. “We’re telling a much bigger story than we thought we were. I thought I was making a really personal, really intimate story, just this little film about filmmaking seen through a different lens. But it spoke to a lot of people, it ended up being something very different from that.”

Barnett is excited to see his film showcased at the Hollywood Film Festival alongside others with an eye toward social change, perhaps opening minds along the way.

“I think they were kind of just a film festival before, without an exact agenda,” he said. “I think it’s extraordinary to have a social-cause festival.”

Whether it competes with such tentpoles of the local festival scene as the summer’s Los Angeles Film Festival and the fall’s upcoming AFI Fest remains to be seen, but the new Hollywood Film Festival is staking out ground all its own. Attendance last year was up nearly 15% from the year before, and advance ticket sales indicate even more people should be turning up this year.

“It’s starting to get through to people that the festival has changed and is trying to do something different and relevant,” Fitzgerald said.

“The industry is definitely giving us the benefit of the doubt. ... We’re not going to make excuses for what happened in the past, we’re doing some really cool programs here.”

mark.olsen@latimes.com