Organizers hope to return to Granada Theater next year after renovation
Published in the March 2-15, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Marty Cheek
Photo by Marty Cheek
Jon Mockabee takes a photo of two attendees at last year’s Poppy Jasper Film Festival at the Granada Theater.
This spring, the Poppy Jasper International Film Festival will temporarily leave Morgan Hill. It will be held the weekend of April 22 and 23 at Gavilan Community College’s Gilroy campus.
For the 12th year for the popular film festival, the Gavilan site was chosen because its usual home, the Granada Theater in downtown Morgan Hill, is now undergoing a major remodeling job by new owner Frank Leal, said Bill Leaman, a festival organizer. There were no other venues available in the city to hold the festival.
“We hope to have it there at the Granada again next year,” he said. “Luckily, we were able to get into Gavilan College. We’re showing the films at Gavilan on three screens. The main screening will fit 600 people and the other two will have short films such as animated shorts on them. We have also two rooms where we’ll do film-making workshops.”
After the festival weekend, the Poppy Jasper organizers hope to take the “best-of” films selected from this year’s festival and show them in Los Gatos in the downtown theater as well as at Cupertino’s Bluelight Cinema, and a movie house in Livermore, he said. The festival is accepting films submitted for judging until March 1, he said.
“We have got quite a few films in already from all over the world. Iran is one place we have received a film. We’ve got some English ones. Short ones that are less than 15 minutes. We have several that are 40 minutes or less and we have 10 which are full length from 80 minutes to 120 minutes.”
The films submitted to the festival will be judged by a team of jurors led by Gavilan instructor Grant Richards.
With a community college campus site, education will be an important component of this year’s festival, Leaman said. The festival organizers want to work more closely to get films submitted by Bay Area student filmmakers.
“Grant has been working with the University of California in Santa Cruz and other colleges around here to get information to their film schools,” he said. “With the keynote speaker, it is also all about education and working with the students.”
The festival is now talking with the Ford Store dealership in Morgan Hill about doing a live shoot doing a commercial, he said. The idea is to bring a new car into one of Gavilan’s media classrooms and have the students work together with professional filmmakers to put together a TV spot. They will learn many of the basics of camera and sound work as well as how to put together a 30-second advertisement that will grab viewers’ attention, he said.
The festival will also show several specially invited films selected by Richards. The titles of these films will be revealed at a later date, Leaman said.
“Grant has gone out and got exceptional films that were not entered to be judged but we thought they needed to be seen,” he said.
Festival organizer Ted Farone, who has business connections with the movie industry, is working on getting a keynote speaker for this year’s festival who will most certainly draw many film lovers. The individual is a well-known director who has a strong connection to the Bay Area, Leaman said.
“He’s one of the biggest stars in the industries, one of the biggest director in history who really doesn’t go to film festivals. But he’s talking to us about going to ours because the Poppy Jasper Film Festival is really education based,” he said. “All the pieces are coming together.”
However, the festival does not want to announce the individual’s name until he is confirmed as the keynote speaker, Leaman emphasized.
The festival will also have several workshops to educate the public on the art and craft of movie making. Among the confirmed workshop instructors is Victor Miller, the screenwriter of several films (such as the original “Friday the 13th” movie) and TV shows who will be leading a writing class for aspiring screenwriters. Some actors and actresses involved with the movie-making industry are also expected to attend and share their expertise, but these people’s confirmed appearance to the festival have not been finalized.
In 2003, Leaman came up with the idea of the Poppy Jasper as a fundraiser for the Morgan Hill Access Television public access station.
“I suggested we do a film festival. And so we surrounded ourselves with all the people who can do the things I couldn’t do — kind of a dream team,” he said. “None of us knew how to put on a film festival, so we all learned how to do it together.”
As with every creative arts enterprise, it took months of hard work and dedicated volunteer effort to organize the first Poppy Jasper Film Festival back in November 2004. That first year, Oscar-winning special effects artist John Bruno (“Terminator,” “True Lies,” “Titanic” and “The Abyss”) was the keynote speaker. The following year, keynote speaker Victor Miller was so impressed by the supportive atmosphere of a small-town film festival that he continued on as a member of the board of directors. The third year, the event became an “international” festival with many films produced outside the United States.
“Over the years, we’ve had some very talented keynote speakers. We’ve had Academy Award winners. We’ve had unbelievable people,” Leaman said. “Over the last 12 years, we showed close to 1,100 films. We’ve got a lot of really good films. And each year they keep getting better and better.”
The Poppy Jasper has had several of its judged festival films go on to be nominated for an Oscar in the Academy Awards. Most recently, the 2011 Best Science Fiction Film “Time Freak” was nominated for Best Live Action Short Film at the 2012 Academy Awards. The festival organizers definitely cheered for filmmakers Andrew Bowler and Gigi Causey on Oscar night that year, Leaman said.
“For a film festival to stay in business for 12 years is a miracle in itself,” he said. “The average film festival makes it only for about three years. When we started doing this, there weren’t that many film festivals. Everyone’s got a film festival now. Everyone.”
One of the keys to the Poppy Jasper’s success is that it’s not the standard film festival about the Hollywood stars stepping out of limos for red carpet strolls, Leaman said.
“Over the years, we’ve had lot and lots of people come and enjoy the films,” he said. “It’s about the mechanics of the films, which is kind of neat. And for 12 years, no one has been paid, This is 100 percent volunteers making this happen. There aren’t too many film festivals that are totally done by volunteers, so it shows the passion for the Poppy Jasper Film Festival.”
Putting the thing on is a lot of work, but when it happens, it’s magic, he said.
“We have about 10 people working on this and putting it on and marketing and getting volunteers and that kind of thing,” he said. “People are really what make it happen. We have about 30 volunteers at the festival itself. This year, we’ll have students from Gavilan helping out as well, which is kind of nice.”
Crystal Nadeau, an organizer in charge of social media marketing for the Poppy Jasper, believes the festival brings a high quality of cinema arts to the South Valley region.
“It’s a way for people to see films that otherwise wouldn’t be offered in this area,” she said. “This year, it includes student films as well, and that will allow area student programs — high schools and college levels — and potentially fourth-to-eighth-grade workshops that will give students an opportunity to showcase their films as well. Not only is it about films from the world but it’s also about films from local filmmakers and students. So the combination will make for a really interesting movie-going experience.”
