Greetings and welcome to The Rome International Film Festival!
I am pleased to say hello on behalf of the staff, board, adjudicators, and hundreds of volunteers of RIFF. These folks combine their talents every year to produce one of America’s great independent film festivals. MovieMaker magazine has called us “one of the outstanding film festivals in the southeast” and “one of twenty film festivals worth the submission fee.”
The Rome International Film Festival prides itself on screening the finest in independent film from around the world. Over the last six wonderful years, RIFF has screened hundreds of spectacular film offerings originating from Georgia to Katmandu!
We’ve honored numbers of distinguished guests at our great festival. A brief sampling includes Mary Badham (The original “Scout” in
To Kill a Mockingbird), Valentine de Vargas (
Hatari with John Wayne, and
A Touch of Evil with Orson Welles), John Hancock (Director of
Bang the Drum Slowly,
Prancer, and more), Hillard Elkins (Producer of
Alice’s Restaurant, Richard Pryor:
Live on Sunset Strip), Rick Schmidt (leading independent film author and director), and many more.
The Rome International Film Festival as been privileged to be an early home for numbers of independent films which have been selected for wide distribution. Selected films have been picked up by Miramax, the STARZ network, Public Television, and HBO.
Indeed, Rome, Georgia, is no stranger to great film production. Hollywood hits such as
Sweet Home Alabama,
The Mosquito Coast, Remember the Titans, and independent films such as
The Bread Squeezer, Tea in Hell, and Dance of the Dead all elected to have some principal and major photography right in the film-friendly hills of northwest Georgia.
The Rome International Film Festival is anticipating its 7th season in September of 2010. We invite the best filmmakers in the world to submit to our friends at www.withoutabox.com, and to follow our adventures in independent film here on our website or on our Facebook page.
Come see The Rome International Film Festival and enjoy our great hospitality!
Harry Musselwhite
Executive Director
Rome International Film Festival
Rome, Georgia
