Santa Catalina Film Festival

Santa Catalina Film Festival Announces 2011 dates, May 6-8th 2011

The inaugural Santa Catalina Film Festival will be held May 6-8, 2011, in Avalon, Santa Catalina Island. Guests in attendance include actor and environmental advocate, ED BEGLEY, Jr. who joins Multi-platinum Grammy Award-winners ALL-4-ONE, Emmy-winner and Grammy-nominated WAYNE BRADY, along with the cast of Disney's Wizards of Waverly Place. In addition, All-4-One (I Swear, I Can Love You Like That) will perform at the iconic Casino Theater on opening night in the 1,200-seat historic world's first-ever sound theater, where Cecil B. DeMille and Charlie Chaplin came to screen their very first talkie films.

Steeped in Hollywood history, this is where the Santa Catalina Film Festival's Red Carpet arrivals, Opening Gala, and premiere film kicks-off. The Santa Catalina Film Festival (SCFF) is a three-day festival celebrating independent film with screenings all weekend in addition to discussion panels with top film industry executives. The first SCFF Call for Entries are now open. Submission guidelines, applications, and more information can be found at www.CatalinaFF.org.

SCFF will award films in various categories, but the “ISLA Earth Award,” for the Conservation Series, will be presented by the Catalina Island Conservancy to honor a film that has a similar mission in protecting, educating and promoting the power of nature. The Conservancy is a world leader in wildlife, plant life, marine life, and endangered species protection. The Catalina Island Fox is touted as the fastest endangered species recovery in the world; now there are over one thousand on the island today! In 1925, 14 American Buffalo were brought to the island for the film production of The Vanishing American based on Zane Greyʼs novel, now a heard of over 150 buffalo can be seen roaming the island today.

Santa Catalina is the only resort island on the West Coast of the United States, right in Los Angeles County. A perfect place for a film festival, it is positioned twenty-six miles off the coast of California, and for almost 100 years this beautiful sub-tropical paradise has been a playground to some of Hollywood's biggest stars today as well as the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Ronald Reagan, Robert Wagner, Natalie Wood, John Wayne, Cary Grant, Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, and Jayne Mansfield. Visitors will find fine-dining and casual restaurants, bars, nightclubs, zip lines, scenic golf courses, and crystal clear blue water 50 feet deep for their enjoyment. Filmmakers from around the world will come to celebrate the art and entertainment of independent film.