The Knowlton Film Festival has new movie-going experiences in store for its upcoming fourth edition, including its very first short film competition. 

The Knowlton Film Festival was started in 2018 with a mission to showcase  and promote a varied cinematic program of film creations from the Eastern Townships, Quebec, and more. The festival attracts cinematographers, movie producers and directors, from near and far whom have the opportunity to share their films with the Brome Lake community. 

As the Knowlton Film Festival continues to grow, the festival’s organizers  are taking things in a different direction this year. In addition to its short film competition, festival organizers are providing new viewing experiences for the public by collaborating with a number of cultural organizations in Brome Lake.

Julie Bradet, responsible for management and planning of the festival, said that the goal for this year’s event is all about “grounding” it within the local community to provide a meaningful experience for festival goers and those in the movie business. 

“Movies are made to be shared between people. It’s not the same experience to see movies in your home. It can be fun, but it’s also fun to do it in a community to gather people around films. I think it’s adding to the quality of the relationships between people when they have something like a movie to share together and to talk about,” said Bradet. 

"This year, I wanted to ensure that I reached the entire public," noted Bradet, including families and children. To accomplish this, the Knowlton Film Festival decided to grow their partnerships this year with other organizations, such as the Lac-Brome Museum; Galerie Blanka; amateur theatre group The Knowlton Players; and the Town of Brome Lake to create a diversity of movie experiences for festival goers. 

The Lac-Brome Museum will be showcasing films in the Old Courthouse that are related to its collections and current exhibition on the British Home Children, for example, and the Town of Brome Lake is supporting the installation of a projection screen in Coldbrook Park to present movies for families and children.

The hope, according to Bradet, is to get the entire community involved in the festival. “This is the first year that we thought about the festival in this way. I want to grow from this principal. I thought that would be a better strategy and more [significant] if it’s grounded in the community,” she noted. 

While the focus of this year’s event is all about community, festival organizers wanted to ensure that they were also providing a more meaningful experience for those directors and producers looking to submit a film to the Knowlton Film Festival, leading them to introduce a short film competition for the very first time. 

Over 100 films were submitted to the short film competition and a selection committee made up of members from the community narrowed that number down to 15. The chosen films will be presented during the festival and there are four prizes up for grabs.

“Short films are kind of the first step in becoming a movie director of long feature films. When you have all of the young movie makers, it’s a possibility for us to also follow them in their career and maybe have them back with their first long feature film,” Bradet highlighted. “It brings an energy to the film festival. We have a section of the competition that is devoted to films of the region. (…) So it’s also a chance to show films from here and from people who are trying to make it [in this wonderful business that is cinema.]”

Other new additions to this year’s festival include a “People’s Choice Award” for the best long feature film and ‘mini-events’ following the film presentations, including a live band at restaurant Le Sapin and a DJ at Le Pantry. 

“What I really did like about organizing this year’s film festival is creating those events around the movies because it becomes more festive,” mentioned Bradet. 

The Knowlton Film Festival is running from August 18 to 26.  Knowlton Film Festival schedule can be found here.

Listen to the full interview with Bradet below for more information on the Knowlton Film Festival: