Loft Film Fest returns to Tucson

Jeff Yanc sees the Loft Film Fest as a sample platter of films from Sundance, Venice, Toronto and Telluride.

Cinephiles can check out the assortment at the Loft Film Fest through Thursday, Oct. 19, at The Loft Cinema.

“The idea was also to have a real kind of community feeling to the festival, so we always made sure to have some local films by local filmmakers and program the festival with an eye to our community,” said Yanc, program director at The Loft Cinema and the co-director of the Loft Film Fest.

This includes looking for Indigenous as well as Hispanic films that speak to the population in Tucson.

The cost to attend the festival varies for the Film Festival Badge, which gives access to all the movies; for general customers, it is $200, and for Loft members, it is $150. For tickets to individual films, general tickets are $12; the cost for Loft members it is $10.

The Loft Cinema has been in Tucson since 1972, so it is a well-established theater and has had a well-established audience base for many decades. The cinema already had the infrastructure to do a festival, as they have theaters and screens, but most festivals have to rent screens and theaters because they don’t have a home base.

According to Yanc, the fest also wanted to have the opportunity to show smaller international films that the theater doesn’t always have room for year round.

“For example, this summer we were showing ‘Oppenheimer’ on 70 millimeter, which is obviously a huge Hollywood studio film, and that ran for eight weeks here … so that takes up a lot of room on our calendar, which doesn’t allow us to show a lot of these other kinds of great smaller festival-type films,” Yanc said.

Yanc emphasized that film festivals give people the ability to take a chance on a film and discover a new kind of film. It is also a curated experience of different films that may allow people to discover new passions.

This year at the film festival, due to the actors/writers strikes, the festival did have some guests drop out, so that changed the focus. Typically, the festival has a lot more writers and actors coming, but this year there is a larger focus on the film.

“You have to be flexible, but luckily, there’s literally thousands of great films out in the world that you can bring, so that’s the hard part is just curating it down to a small selection,” Yanc said. “We’re never lacking for film, so it was easy to pivot away from a lot of guests to more films.”

During the past 13 years, Yanc said the festival has evolved with higher attendance, as well as focusing more attention on community. It really started connecting with the Indigenous community here and looking for films by Indigenous filmmakers and bringing in guests from that community over the past few years.

“We saw the need and the desire for that here and the need for space for that,” Yanc said. “So that’s just how it evolved, being responsive to what Tucson and Southern Arizona wants from a film festival.”

Yanc is excited about the closing night film, “Perfect Days,” saying he believes that it is going to be an Oscar contender. The film is directed by Wim Wenders, and was filmed in Japan. The film has been played at a lot of festivals and received a lot of attention. Yanc said people seem very excited about the film.

Yanc also is looking forward to a performance by Boston’s Metropolis, a touring rock band that scores silent films. The band will be scoring an Italian silent horror film from 1911 called “L’Inferno,” which was the first feature film released in Italy, as well as the first feature-length horror film.

The film fest’s goal, according to Yanc, is to give people access to great films but also to create a space where people in Tucson can come together to watch and talk about movies.

“People come, and they stay all day because we have films from morning until night, and a lot of people buy the all-access badges, stay there all day and meet other people,” Yanc said. “A lot of people say, ‘Over the years, I’ve met great friends here at the fest, because I found a shared interest because we liked the same kind of film.’”

Yanc hopes the festival will bring more guests, which is fun, he said. The theater is raising money for its expansion that will add indoor and outdoor screening options, as well as a bar.

“Our theater is an old theater, so it doesn’t have a lot of spaces for gathering, and there’s no bar area, so that’s going to be very exciting,” Yanc said. “It’ll give people more space to sort of mingle-and hang out.”

Yanc said, overall, the festival is a great way to expand one’s horizons.

“You may not know that you’re going to love these films, because you may not have heard of them, but once you see them, you will know why we chose to show them,” Yanc said.

Loft Film Fest

WHEN: Various times through
Thursday, Oct. 19

WHERE: The Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Boulevard, Tucson

COST: Prices start at $10

INFO: info@loftcinema.org,

520-795-0844, loftcinema.org

This article appears in Oct 5-11, 2023.