Blog: Film festivals

The Sacramento Film and Music Festival's mission is the celebrate and showcase the best in filmmaking from around the world and to be the leading sponsor and facilitator of the art of film in California's Capital region. In our 20th year we will be actively looking for material that has been produced in the Sacramento region.
The Sacramento Film and Music Festival is the longest running non-genre-specific festival in the Sacramento region and, as such, has played host to local, national and international filmmakers, from first-time writer/directors to working industry professionals to veteran Hollywood producers.
Each year we select movies in all genres, lengths and formats, from all around the world, and the Festival enjoys an extraordinary track record of picking those that go on to win major awards and/or achieve distribution beyond the festival circuit. Furthermore, we actively pursue those business and creative opportunities for our filmmakers with our industry partners and sponsors.
We pride ourselves as an established member of the California arts community and as a premiere showcase for the best of the best in worldwide film arts and were thrilled to be voted Best Film Festival in Sacramento by the readers of the Sacramento News & Review! We are also a repeat recipient of financial support from the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission, as part of a competitive grant program, in recognition of our pro-active approach to arts promotion.
We also complement our many days of exclusive film screenings with a single evening of live music, interspersed with music videos that we commission each year as part of a much-heralded and pioneering program, Sac Music Seen, that matches local talents in music and film-making. Over the past ten seasons, we have produced over 200 music videos and we also accept and respect the music video format in our regular submission pool.
It is of vital importance that we recognize the new generation of filmmakers and our Student Days program regularly features works by students from such leading film schools as NYU, USC, UCLA, AFI, and Chapman - but we also look for high quality films from unaffiliated and high school students.
As a member of the Sacramento Alliance of Film Festivals, the Festival works with our genre festival partners (Sacramento's Jewish, French, Gay and Lesbian, and Black film festivals) and we will pass on especially noteworthy submissions if we are not able to screen them ourselves and if they seem well suited to one of our partners. We happily screen in all genres ourselves, however we simply cannot accommodate every movie we are sent, regardless of how exceptional they might be. The Alliance allows us to share our success and pass on the added value of referrals to our contributing filmmakers, when appropriate, and without additional submission costs. Additionally, we consider "off-season" films for our occasional Gold Circle screening series throughout the year.
The Festival also partners in collaborative projects with the Capital Film Arts Alliance (formerly the Sacramento Film Group), another noteworthy winner of local Arts Council funding, and the oldest uniquely dedicated networking group of filmmakers in the Capital region.
We have been fortunate over the years to receive great attention from the press and it is our pleasure to work to promote the work of our filmmakers in advance of each year's Festival. There are some advantages to being the senior all-genre festival in the area and we are extremely grateful to our partners and supporters.