New Orleans Film Fest wants you to give it another shot
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The New Orleans Film Festival will take place across 17 venues in 2025. Photo: Courtesy of the New Orleans Film Festival
The New Orleans Film Festival returns this week, and it'll be the Film Society's biggest ever, says interim executive director Dodd Loomis.
Why it matters: The expansion is a bid to reenergize the city's premier annual film event.
The intrigue: Loomis knows the film fest has, for at least the last several years, been kind of blah.
- When he came into the interim leadership role earlier this year, he took a look at the numbers and "that was not telling a good story." Then he started talking to folks, and that wasn't a good story, either.
- "We did have excitement, we did have vitality, and we seemed to have lost that. The community wants us to be great …. and it seemed we had maybe lost our way," he says.
- But instead of shrinking into that reputation, Loomis says, the New Orleans Film Society decided to blast it apart.
Zoom in: The Film Society refocused its attention on the uniqueness of the city that hosts it. Plus, Loomis says, he didn't want to be afraid of entertainment.
- "There's still plenty of room for things that are esoteric and interesting for film nerds, but also tons of stuff that are just plain fun," he says.
- To make sure he was on the right track, Loomis set up a "Spinal Tap II" premiere with Harry Shearer that sold out so fast they added a second showing, which also sold out, and a screening for 600 people of the 1931 "Frankenstein" with a live orchestra.
Between the lines: Those events were so successful that Loomis figured he was on the right track. "We're scaling it up. It's getting even bigger," Loomis says, even with the film industry on the rocks nationwide.
- "We refuse to stick our tail between our legs and hope for better times. ... So we're throwing the biggest festival we've ever thrown by a lot."
If you go: The 2025 New Orleans Film Fest is, for the first time, working with other New Orleans nonprofits like the Historic New Orleans Collection and the Jazz Museum to create one-of-a-kind experiences.
- Think live podcast recordings, fireside chats with big industry names, custom lectures to contextualize films, hands-on film workshops, musical performances that play off the work, an opening night party at James Michalopoulos' studio after a showing of the documentary about the artist, and a red carpet "flex-off" tied to a documentary about body builders on the West Bank.
- Loomis says there will be over 500 hours of programming across 13 venues.
Go deeper: The film fest runs Oct. 23–27, and virtually through Nov. 2. See the full event lineup.