Lights grow brighter for Vegas Cine Fest
Now in its fourth year, Vegas Cine Fest is growing by leaps and bounds.
An online-only experience its first two years, the festival gained a physical home at the Tropicana last year. Now, it’s doubled in size for its latest incarnation, Wednesday through Saturday at the Palms, 4321 W. Flamingo Road.
But it’s still very much a work in progress.
"We didn’t have a full-on vision or a plan. It kind of just happened," says Maria Marcus, who co-founded the festival with her husband, Philip. "And that’s how we’ve been doing things here in Vegas, kind of, like, going with the flow."
The couple, who moved here six years ago, wanted to help fill some of the void left by the demise of CineVegas.
This year’s Vegas Cine Fest will showcase more than 140 films from around the world while offering celebrity red carpets, Q&As with some of the filmmakers and stars, and the Digital CineMart, a chance to connect filmmakers and distributors. (For a complete schedule, visit www.vegascinefest.com.)
Perhaps the marquee event is a screening of "The Stunt Man." The 1980 film, about a fugitive (Steve Railsback) who hides out on a movie set, earned Oscar nominations for Richard Rush for directing and co-writing the script, as well as a best actor nomination for Peter O’Toole.
Rush and Railsback will attend the screening, set for 4:45 p.m. Saturday, and participate in a question-and-answer session afterward.
The festival’s most prominent local tie comes in the form of "Play Dead" (5:50 p.m. Friday), the filmed version of the macabre, off-Broadway show co-written and directed for the stage by Teller. The usually silent magician also will participate in a Q&A.
But the most eyebrow-raising selection may be "FDR: American Badass!" (10:30 p.m. Friday), the comedy that imagines the wheelchair-bound president battling polio-spreading werewolf versions of Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito.
Barry Bostwick, who portrays Roosevelt, is a member of the festival’s board and suggested it would make for a good late-night screening, Marcus says. Bostwick also will be there to answer questions from the audience.
"It’s Vegas, it’s crazy, you never know," Marcus says of selecting the "FDR." "We’re not a conventional film festival, let me tell you."
Tickets range from $12 for individual passes to either "The Stunt Man" or "FDR" to $40 for a pass to all festival screenings to a $150 VIP pass.
"We don’t have all the answers. We’re not perfect," Marcus says of her festival. "We’re still very small. We don’t want to be, like, the biggest. We’re still trying to find ourselves and define the festival."
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567.