By Valerie Milano
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 4/7/23 – “I was just convinced that I could do it. And so that snowballed and I went on to do many films after that, and wanted to make them bigger, and better.” Acclaimed Filmmaker, director, and creator of the Davinci International Film Festival, Chadwick Pelletier recalls his creative beginnings as a novice in the grueling film festival circuit, and when he decided to create a film festival that was a bit more geared to a multitude of different creatives that all share the passion and intimacy for the historic artform.
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Getting its start in 2017, Pelletier desperately wanted to fill the gap in the film industry with DIFF. Frankly, any filmmaker can host screenings in a building and call it a film festival, however, with Davinci, there is an inherent and intentional difference. Chadwick explains, “[The difference] is in creating that intimate community that I mentioned earlier. You’ll go to a lot of these film festivals, and they’re great ones, but their official selection is huge, it’s massive, and you really become a number, you just kind of blend in. So, it starts with our format being very small, and out of thousands that enter we only screen 24 films that are in competition for our Leo award. Something that I am very excited and proud about is the Junior Leo Awards which is going to open up to the arts and sciences part of our platform. We are looking to honor sculpture, fine arts, invention, and eventually music and dance and really pay homage to the [Leonardo] DaVinci name. We are really going to be spotlighting the multi-creative across the arts and sciences, keeping it small and honoring our burgeoning filmmakers.”
DIFF will be at the beautiful Grove in Los Angeles during the weekend of October 20th! Open to the public, the film festival will not only showcase brilliant cinema, but will also host several industry panels including a Writer’s Corner for screenwriters and a panel covering NFTs and the future of filmmaking. Visit The Grove this October to experience the DIFFerence DIFF is making in the lives of creatives!
