Thank you to all who came to the 3rd Annual Shortz Film Festival. The fest was a huge success and a great time was had by all who attended. If you missed it, well you missed a wonderful time of short films, filmmaker networking, and great food and drink.

Congratulations to our winners:
Audience Choice:
1st Rachel Nichols – “The Inbetween”
2nd Ben Hausler – “The People Who Were Never There”
3rd Bo Campbell- “Anti-Hero”

Judges Choice:
1st Rachel Nichols – “The Inbetween”
2nd Ole Christoffer Haga – “Stick”
3rd Colleen J. McShay – “Commonplace”

Brief (2 minutes or less)
1st Matthew Thayer – “Mans Best Friend”
2nd Leonard Vine – “Rise & Fall of a Pea”

The Shortz Film Fest featured 28 submitted films this year including a student block from The House of Blue (students from PV High School), films from the Bay Area, Redding, Los Angles, Norway, Canada and of course several films made right here in Chico. We also featured a block of past favorites, films from the past two years of our film fest. Two days of films and free popcorn make the $10 admission price a pretty good deal. The films delighted our audience with their creativeness, special effects, and stories. We were lucky to have so much talent share their creations with us and we look forward to more amazing films next year!

We want to thank all of our sponsors of this year’s festival.  Vistanet for hosting our website that allows us to run as an all digital festival as well as your cash donation. Fifth Sun for the amazing t-shirts. Graphic Fox for printing the programs, flyers, posters, and other printing needed.  Digital Print and Design for printing our two 3 x 6 foot banners and large format prints displayed at the El Rey.  Videomaker Magazine for cash and giveaways. Upgraded Living Magazine for the terrific article in the July issue and for a local outlet for our tickets sales. Chico Theater Company for giving us an online outlet to sell tickets and advertising at the theater. That Jack Show for the additional advertising segment on CW10.  Matador Motel.  Cyberlink software for free software to give away.  And of course our filmmaker dinner and after party hosts Grana Restaurant.  And what fabulous hosts they were, providing all the food for our filmmaker dinner on Saturday night as well as giving us their lovely patio for our “after the show parties” Saturday and Sunday nights. The food was amazing and the atmosphere was perfect. We could not make this film festival happen without all our sponsors and we hope to continue these relationships in future film fests.

We want to thank all of the folks from out of town who made the trek to Chico for the film fest. We hope you enjoyed our town, and that we made you feel welcome. Chico is a wonderful town and we love to share it whenever we can.  Remember submissions start March 1st, 2014....a mere 7 months away!

Thank you all again for coming out to enjoy the films and support independent filmmaking. If you liked what you experienced please tell a friend, or better yet make a donation on our website and help us bring you more films from these amazing filmmakers.

We hope to see you all again next year.