What to know about a three-day film festival headed for Pueblo in April

Pueblo cinephiles will have more than enough content to satiate their love of film at the first Pueblo Film Fest, set to kick off next month.

The three-day film festival will take place April 26-28 and feature a launch party at Blo Back Gallery, two-hour blocks of short film screenings, a red carpet awards show and live entertainment. It will highlight short films, some of which are up to 40 minutes in length.

It's the inaugural year for the Pueblo Film Fest. The event’s board members have spent well over a year organizing the effort to highlight Pueblo’s creativity through diverse storytelling.

“We’re very excited about this event,” said Jeff Madeen, board president of the Pueblo Film Fest and gallery director of Blo Back Gallery. “There are a lot of filmmakers in Pueblo. It’s a very creative town.”

As of early March, there had been 115 film submissions. Several of them came from people in foreign countries, but the majority were submitted by people in Pueblo and other parts of Colorado.

Some of the best films will win awards. A panel of judges will score the films based on different standards, such as sound and lighting, among others. The festival winners will be screened at the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center on the final day of the festival.

During an award ceremony Saturday night, presenters will hand out “Steelies” to filmmakers, with award categories such as best narrative short, best documentary short and best mini short, among others.

“There’s a wide diversity of films that were submitted and the ones that I did see were very, very diverse and coming from different perspectives,” Madeen said. “The magic is that it’s a voice from somebody who is from here or not here, but it comes from their mind.”

There are several ticket options for those seeking to attend the Pueblo Film Fest, including a VIP pass, which offers access to all of the festival’s events, or day passes. The price for each of the passes will increase after April 20.

Madeen and the other board members are hopeful the film festival can become an annual event and one that becomes a “really well-known film festival in the circuit.” Next year, they plan to expand submissions to include feature films.

“We want to be a complete film festival,” Madeen said.

Pueblo joins dozens of other Colorado cities to host a film festival. Boulder, Aspen and Telluride have some of the more well-known film festivals, but smaller towns such as Ouray and Crested Butte host their own, too.

Pueblo Puzzleworks and Visit Pueblo are some of the festival's sponsors.

Here’s what else people can expect at Pueblo Film Fest.

Launch party at Blo Back Gallery to kick things off

At 7 p.m. on April 26, Blo Back Gallery will host a launch party to kick off the festival. There will be a live performance by Spyderland as well as film screenings by the Youth Documentary Academy.

There will also be food trucks during the Friday event as buzz stirs about what’s in store over the next two days, Madeen said.

Screenings, vendors and awards show on tap for day two

Starting at 10 a.m., the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center will host multiple two-hour blocks of short film screenings. For example, one of those blocks will contain only short narrative films while another screens documentary shorts.

There will be food vendors during Saturday’s festivities.

At 7 p.m., the red carpet awards show will take place with live performances by Jeremy Kitchen and Underground Improv. Winners will take the stage to accept their “Steelies” during the show and share a speech.

If there are winners who don’t reside in Pueblo, festival organizers want to arrange travel for them so they can expect the award in person, Madeen said.

“We want to take care of them so that they come back and tell their fellow filmmakers that this is a really good festival and is of high quality,” he said.

Festival wraps up with more screenings, Q&A

Attendees can return on April 28 to watch the films that were deemed winners during the festival. “Mirasol,” a documentary short by the Palmer Land Project that highlights local families who grow the Pueblo Chile, will also be screened.

An unaired TV pilot from Dennis Leoni, a film producer, and Tony Plana, an actor perhaps best known for his role on the TV series “Ugly Betty,” will air on the final day. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Leoni and Plana.

“Pueblo is a creative town,” Madeen said. “It’s worth people’s while to come here and check it out.”

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Chieftain reporter Josué Perez can be reached at JHPerez@gannett.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @josuepwrites. Support local news, subscribe to The Pueblo Chieftain at subscribe.chieftain.com.

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Pueblo to host Pueblo Film Fest, a three-day film festival, in April