Cleveland, Ohio is hosting its 42nd Cleveland International Film Festival this week. The Festival began April 4 and will close on Sunday, April 15. The festival will feature screenings of 600 international films and will host other invents including awards ceremonies and receptions throughout the city.
Here is a brief history of the Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF).
1977
The Cleveland International Film Festival began on April 13, 1977 and lasted eight weeks, closing on June 2. The festival featured screenings of eight films from 7 countries. Two films were screened each week at the Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Local filmmakers’ work was shown before each feature film. The opening film was the 1973 French film “F is For Fake” with Orson Welles. The first festival closed with a screening of the 1975 Italian film “My Friends” by director Mario Monicelli. The mission of the CIFF is to “promote artistically and culturally significant film arts through education and exhibition to enrich the life of the community”. Developed as a subscription series, the CIFF immediately caught the attention of the media and had a large attendance which has continued to grow.
Growth
In 1991, the Cleveland International Film Festival changed its venue to the new downtown Cleveland Tower City Theaters. The event was held from April 5 to April 14 and screened 57 feature films and 67 short films from 20 countries. Many of the films featured social issues such as feminism, environmentalism, Jewish and Israeli issues, and LGBT issues. The festival opened with a tribute and retrospective to Cleveland native, Debra Winger. The festival closed with the 1991 Blake Edwards film “Switch”. British director Hal Hartley attended the screening of his 1990 film “Trust”. Two Czech films, “The Ear” and “The Funeral Ceremony” were screened at the CIFF although the political films were banned by the Czech government. The festival has continued to feature socio-political films and family friendly films.
Since 1991, screening and events of the Cleveland International Film Festival are held at several venues throughout Cleveland. This has helped increase the media attention and attendance to CIFF events. Along with the Tower City Theater venue, films and receptions are held at Cleveland’s museums and the city’s famous Playhouse Square. Five opulent theaters were built on Cleveland’s Euclid Avenue. The location is the second largest performance arts center in the United States next to New York City. The Playhouse Square district and theaters were fully renovated.
The Cleveland International Film Festival continues to grow in popularity and attendance. Since its move to downtown Cleveland, the event has grown 600 percent. In 2013, screenings and events were expanded to include the Akron Art Museum and the Akron-Summit County Public Library as well as the city of Oberlin’s Apollo Theater. Last year, attendance at the festival was 106,504.
Awards
The Cleveland International Film Festival honors filmmakers with several awards including Best Documentary and Best Central and Eastern European Film. The Greg Gund Memorial honors films focusing on social justice and activism. The award was established in 2006 after the death of Cleveland philanthropist, Gund, in an airplane crash. Since 1988, the CIFF has awarded the Roxanne t. Mueller Audience Choice Award in honor of the late Plain Dealer Newspaper film critic.
2018
This year’s Cleveland International Film Festival will be the biggest yet. The event will include screenings of 214 feature films and 253 short films representing 72 countries. The opening film is the Irish “The Drummer and The Keeper” about a friendship between a two teenagers, one is a drummer with bipolar disorder and the other is a young man with Asperger’s Syndrome. The closing film on Sunday, April 15 will be Janus Metz’s film “Borg vs. McEnroe” which stars Sverrir Gudnason and Shia LaBeouf as tennis greats Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe and their meeting on the court at the 1980 Wimbledon Championships.
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