The El Paso Community Foundation’s Plaza Classic Film Festival is in the podcast business. The Plaza Classic Podcast is now streaming on the Plaza Classic Film Festival website and streaming platforms.
The Plaza Classic Podcast is hosted by KVIA news anchor and three-time Regional Edward R. Murrow Award-winner and Borderland Crimes podcaster Stephanie Valle and EPCC Mass Communication Professor Lisa Elliott. Valle and Elliott are members of the Plaza Classic Film Festival Program Advisory Committee. The podcast is produced in partnership with EPCC and the El Paso Community Foundation.
Each episode features guests ranging from committee members to filmmakers who delve into a different aspect of the city’s No. 1 feel-good summer event, including this year’s schedule, the Local Flavor showcase, screenwriting competition, and more.
Episode 1, which examines the history of the festival and the popularity of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, is streaming now. The second episode features committee member and UTEP administrator Jaime Mendez and will be posted May 30. Episodes will be posted weekly through the end of the Plaza Classic. Future episodes feature El Paso filmmaker Josh Pulido, screenwriting competition coordinator Austin Savage, and 2023 screenwriting winner Carrie Silva.
“The Plaza Classic Film Festival is a gift to El Paso. We wanted to share behind-the-scenes details and introduce the people involved in the process,” Valle said. Added Elliott: “There’s also more to say about the films featured than can be covered in our introductions before festival screenings. A podcast was a natural way to do that.”
The 17th annual Plaza Classic Film Festival will be July 18-28, 2024, in and around El Paso’s historic Plaza Theatre. The festival will include movies based on Stephen King stories, a film noir thread, the Local Flavor Showcase and Awards, and movies such as Sunset Boulevard, The Shawshank Redemption, and our 16th annual FREE outdoor showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Passes are on sale at plazaclassic.com/tickets. Individual tickets go on sale in June.
Good writing will be rewarded in the El Paso Community Foundation Plaza Classic Film Festival’s third annual screenwriting contest — including a $500 first prize.
The third Plaza Classic Film Festival Screenwriting Competition is accepting entries through July 3, 2024.
It will award a $500 first prize, a $250 second prize, and Final Draft 13 screenwriting software to the top two finishers.
The first prize winner also receives a consultation with El Paso writer-director Lucky McKee (Poker Face, Old Man, The Woman, May), and a table read of their screenplay.
The contest is open to anyone 18 and older. Entries must be feature-length scripts of no more than 120 pages. There are no genre restrictions. Go to plazaclassic.com/screenwriting or Film Freeway to enter.
The deadline is 11:59 pm July 3, 2024. Cost to submit is $30 through June 13, $40 from June 14 through July 3. An entrant may receive written feedback, or coverage, for an additional $15.
Screenplays must be uploaded in PDF format only, must be anonymous and include a cover sheet with only the screenplay’s title (name and contact details are on the entry form), a logline, and payment. Entries will be graded on a point system, with a 50-point maximum. Scripts will be awarded up to 10 points each for premise, plot, characters, dialogue, and the script’s prospects.
The top two finishers will be announced before the 17th annual Plaza Classic Film Festival, which is July 18-28.
The competition is sponsored by Final Draft, Coverfly, the El Paso Film and Creative Industries Commission, and the Texas Film Commission.
Plaza Classic Film Festival tickets go on sale in June. Passes are on sale at plazaclassic.com/tickets.
Details: 915-533-4020, local@plazaclassic.com.
Submissions for this year’s Local Flavor Showcase and Awards are now open.
A total of $3,650 in cash prizes will be awarded to filmmakers this year, including new awards for students films.
The deadline to submit your films is 11:59 pm Monday, June 17. It is FREE to submit. You can enter your film here.
The Plaza Classic Film Festival’s Local Flavor Showcase and Awards is accepting short and feature-length films (works-in-progress will not be accepted). Projects must have been completed on or after January 1, 2023 and must be made locally, set locally, or have a connection of some kind to the El Paso-Juarez-Las Cruces area, which should be noted in the online entry form’s Synopsis window.
A panel of judges will review all of the submissions and select finalists for this year’s showcase and awards program, which will be in the Plaza Theatre during this year’s Plaza Classic.
This year’s awards include the $1,500 First Prize, $1,000 Second Prize, and $750 Third Prize. A $250 Audience Favorite Award will be determined by a live text-to-vote during the showcase.
New this year: a $100 First Prize for a film by a college student; and a $50 First Prize for a film by a high school student.
Local Flavor is sponsored by the El Paso Film & Creative Industries Commission, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and the El Paso Community Foundation.
This year’s Local Flavor Showcase and Awards will be curated by El Paso-based, Emmy Award-winning Producer Javier Gonzalez; award-winning Las Cruces filmmaker and NMSU Creative Media Institute associate professor Ilana Lapid ; and Asia Saucedo, a member of the El Paso Community Foundation staff and longtime Plaza Classic Film Festival contributor.
Call 915-533-4020 or email local@plazaclassic.com for more information.
Fresh from its Sundance Film Festival debut, El Paso native Iliana Sosa will attend the El Paso premiere screening of her new HBO Original documentary God Save Texas: La Frontera at 7 pm Friday, February 23 in the Philanthropy Theatre in the Plaza Theatre Performing Arts Centre. A Q&A will follow the film.
Admission is FREE. No tickets are required.
The premiere is presented by the El Paso Community Foundation Plaza Classic Film Festival and the El Paso Film & Creative Industries Commission.
The 54-minute La Frontera is a personal exploration of how neplanta, a Nahuatl word for the concept of being in between two worlds, characterizes Sosa’s relationship with her Mexican heritage and border hometown of El Paso, and how the city came together and healed after the devastating, racially motivated August 3, 2019 mass shooting there.
“My goal is to introduce the world to the hidden wealth of this borderland — a term that encapsulates diversity and vitality: neplanta,” said Sosa, a filmmaker, assistant professor of film at the University of Texas at Austin and Franklin High School graduate.
La Frontera is the third installment of the God Save Texas trilogy, based on the best-selling book by author Lawrence Wright. The HBO documentary trilogy, executive produced by Texas filmmaker Richard Linklater, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and debuts February 27 on Max. Linklater directed the first episode, God Save Texas: Hometown Prison. Fellow Texan Alex Stapleton directed part two, God Save Texas: The Price of Oil.
Sosa appeared at PCFF 2022 with her documentary What We Leave Behind, which debuted at the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival that year.
Pictured: Iliana Sosa (right) with her mother Maria Elia Sosa in a scene from ‘God Save Texas: La Frontera’
Photo courtesy of HBO
Happy new year!
2023 ended on a high note for the El Paso Community Foundation Plaza Classic Film Festival. Attendance for our 2023 Holiday Movies at WinterFest totaled 3,516, our third highest turnout since we brought the holiday movies back in 2016 (we also showed them from 2008-2012).
We showed a total of nine movies, seven in the Plaza Theatre, the Holiday Movies’ traditional home, and two at the El Paso Museum Art, a first for the series.
Nearly 24,000 people have attended the free movies since we brought them back in 2016 (we did not show any in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown).
This year’s top draws were Home Alone, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Elf, and It’s a Wonderful Life, all of which were screened in the 2,040-seat Plaza Theatre.
We also showed The Polar Express and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation in the Plaza, with Miracle on 34th Street and Frozen in the 220-seat El Paso Energy Auditorium at the El Paso Museum of Art.
We thank everyone who helped out, including our partners at El Paso Live, the City of El Paso, SouthCoast Audio, the El Paso Museum of Art, and organists Rick Garven and Ken Fedorick.
And we thank you taking part in the 2023 Holiday Movies experience!
