Festival

Festival presentation: 

"The Maui Film Festival exceeded my expectations. The Celestial Cinema (pictured below) is mind-blowing! It's also one of the best places anywhere in the world to launch a movie."

                            — Trevor Groth, Director of Programming, Sundance Film Festival

 

“The Maui Film Festival at Wailea is a 'jewel-box' festival - able to handle anything without becoming unwieldy or impersonal. Flawlessly planned.  The national press is taking notice, with the Hollywood Reporter,Variety, LA Times, Entertainment Tonight, CNN, E! and Vanity Fair all reporting on its goings-on, Watch for even greater things to come!”  

                    — Christian Gaines, IndieWire

Edition: 

17

Festival Logo: 

Theme: 

International

Category/Format: 

Mixed

Each year, since 2000, the Maui Film Festival has presented five days and nights of under-the-stars Film Premieres, Special Screenings, Festival Tributes, Filmmakers Panels, and world-class Special Culinary Arts Celebrations that  include an Opening Night Twilight Reception, Taste of Wailea, Taste of Chocolate, Filmmaker/Patron Brunch, Starry Night MoonDance and/or VIP Party at Spago.

More importantly, from the perspective of filmmakers considering submitting their work for consideration, the Festival has also been hailed as "Hawaii's Answer to Sundance" in the Los Angeles Times by respected entertainment writer John Horn.

Among others, this list includes: Associated Press, Hollywood Reporter, International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Vanity Fair, LA Weekly, People, Premiere, Rolling Stone, Screen International, USA Today, Vanity Fair, Variety, VH1 Music,Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, AOL, E! Online, Entertainment Weekly, FilmFestivals.com, The Hollywood Reporter, Huffungton Post, iMDb, indieWIRE, Bravo, CNN, Entertainment Tonight, Starz Cinema, CNN Headline New, Jimmy Kimmel Live, E! (US + Intl), Moving Pictures, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Late Night with David Letterman, Movie Television, Reelz Channel USWeekly.com, CNN International, Modern Luxury Hawaii, Angeleno, San Francisco Magazine and Los Angeles Magazine.

Each year's event also features an eclectic program of approximately 50+ narrative, documentary and international features and short films that are enjoyed by a diverse audience of 20,000. The festival has had the honor of screening films with budgets between $50,000 and $75,000,000 that have been provided by major studios and their mini-major divisions, independent distributors and first-time filmmakers.

Film premiere and special screenings take place primarily within the Wailea Resort at three state-of-the-art outdoor "theaters", the 3,000+ seat 35mm, HDCam, BluRay and Dolby Digital equipped Celestial Cinema, and the 500+ seat capacity Seaside Cinema Music Cafe & Sunset Lounge and 500+ 'seat' Toes-in-the-Sand Cinema. Festival screenings are also held at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center's 500 seat Castle Theater (35mm and multiple digital formats).

Since its inception, many critically acclaimed films have graced the silver screens at the Festival's open-air and majestic indoor venues. 2013's program included: Short Term 12, The Way, Way Back, 20 Feet From Stardom, The East, Much Ado About Nothing and Hawaiian: The Legend of Eddie Aikau.  Noteworthy films screening in in earlier years included: Beasts of the Southern WIld, Samsara, Liberal Arts, The Intouchables, People Like Us, Kumare, Lola Versus, The Art of Rap, Big Easy Express and Decoding Deepak among many others. Noteworthy past Festival premieres have included: Waste Land, Nowhere Boy, The TIllman Story, Beginners, Life in a Day, happythankyoumoreplease,  Submarine, The Future, Another Earth, The Freebie, Queen of the Sun, The Concert, Boy, Cyrus, The Cove, The Visitor, Young @ Heart, 500 Days of Summer, Mad Hot Ballroom, Hustle and Flow, Whale Rider, Napoleon Dynamite, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Waitress, Food Inc;, Son of Rambow, Once, Bottle Shock, Surf's Up, The Illusionist, Garden State, The Notebook, and Chicken Run, among many others.

As noted in much of the press coverage that the Festival has received over the years, the Maui Film Festival is also widely known for the quality of its highly placed industry attendees and honorees.

The Hollywood Reporter has written that "The Maui Film Festival is the embodiment of relaxed elegance providing ample opportunity to enjoy stargazing of both the Hollywood and heavenly varieties shoulder-to-shoulder with its A-List honorees." And the mavens at independent film's touchstone 'publication' indieWIRE noted that "The Maui Film Festival Serves Up Feasts, Stars and Enlightenment. It's where the seaside rules and studio execs retreat and where there's enough A-list presence on and off screen to make it an island celebration deserving of its industry recognition."

Last but nor least, Variety-the often cited 'Bible of the Entertainment Industry' recently reported that "Growing as an international destination for cineastes and industry insiders.the Maui Film Festival, the film festival circuit's favorite sun-baked sibling, continues to celebrate cinema from the intersection of smart and heart. With open-air screenings, the festival once again ditches traditional Hollywood devices like black ties and red carpets for flip-flops, all for the sake of a more intimate experience. The fest's lineup, which includes Hollywood fare (alongside) a selection of smaller cinematic endeavors from around-the-world that focus on human triumph."

We hope you'll choose to honor us with your submission. We look forward to viewing it and thoughtfully considering it for inclusion in this year's exemplary film program.