Sidewalk Film Festival makes a home

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The Sidewalk Film Festival will return to downtown Birmingham for its 21st year Aug. 19-25 and screen dozens of new movies, including shorts, documentaries and narrative features, at half a dozen venues in the theatre district, including the historic Alabama and Lyric theaters.

As usual, Sidewalk will feature parties, panel discussions and workshops, including the inaugural Sidewalk Story Lab, a screenwriting class held in partnership with Stowe Story Labs.

But this year is special for the nationally acclaimed festival and for the hundreds of people who’ve worked or volunteered there or served on the board since the event was started in 1999.

Sidewalk, which is marking its 20th anniversary, will also celebrate the opening of its long-desired permanent headquarters — with two 100-seat screening rooms — on the ground floor of The Pizitz.

At press time, construction on the nearly $5 million Sidewalk Film Center and Cinema was expected to be complete in late July, and Sidewalk staff hoped to finish moving into the facility in time for the festival, according to Executive Director Chloe Cook.

Seeing the center take shape was “gratifying beyond description,” Cook said at the time of the 2018 groundbreaking.

And the new facility is especially welcome because it’s been a dream in the local film community for “longer than the organization has been an organization,” Cook said recently, after taking some visitors on a hard-hat tour of the construction site.

The new home base will increase the programming the nonprofit is able to offer, according to Cook and other staffers. The screening rooms will allow Sidewalk to operate a true independent cinema year-round, a long-desired amenity for local film lovers. And it will also augment Sidewalk’s grassroots credibility by giving it, according to Cook, mainstream status as a local cultural institution.

In addition to the screening rooms, the 11,000-square-foot facility, designed by Davis Architects, will include lounges, a bar and concession stand, Sidewalk offices and space for meetings and classes.

Those screening rooms — in a heavily sound-buffered oval in the center of the facility — are generating a lot of excitement.

“We’re one of the only cities our size that doesn’t have an independent cinema already,” said Kiwi Lanier, Sidewalk’s education and outreach coordinator. “I think it will make Birmingham much more competitive in the arts scene nationally.”

“The fact that you can go to the theatre district, where there used to be two dozen cinemas in walking distance, and see a film that is relevant and interesting and has fanfare, that alone is extremely exciting,” said Rachel Morgan, Sidewalk’s creative director and lead programmer.

With the new cinema and a full-time calendar, Morgan will be able to schedule more movies, including the film retrospectives that are a staple of repertory cinemas. “We don’t get to do everything we want at the festival,” she said.

Lanier is also excited about “planning all kinds of good classes and workshops,” she said.

The classes will include “a film boot camp — a weekend crash course for working on sets to help people in town get connected on the films that are coming here,” she said. There will also be some writing groups for shorts and feature films. 

The new home “just opens the door for so much more programming,” Cook said.

Sidewalk has always done programming year-round, such as the monthly Sidewalk Salons at Rojo and the Sidewalk Scramble filmmaking competitions. However, the nonprofit has also been forced to pass on hundreds of other programming ideas because it didn’t always make sense economically to rent outside facilities, according to Cook.  

The new Film Center and Cinema — part of the bustling $70 million mixed-use redevelopment of old Pizitz department store — adds another unique amenity to a growing downtown.

“We were downtown before downtown was cool,” Cook said. “We have been very committed to the city of Birmingham and the theatre district from the beginning.”

There is a positive economic impact from the new facility. Sidewalk has 18 full-time or contract employees and will add another 12 to 16 full-time or part-time employees in the new facility, according to Cook. At press time, an ongoing capital drive, which began officially in 2017, had raised about $4.5 million, according to Cook.

“We’re still raising money with the goal of finishing the fundraising by the time the construction is completed and before we open the doors to the public,” she said.

During her tenure as executive director, Sidewalk pursued two other pieces of property for the new facility but couldn’t make the deals work, according to Cook. “Maybe the timing wasn’t right,” she said.

The fulfillment of the dream of a permanent home says a lot about the guts and tenacity of Sidewalk staff, according to Cook. “We’re a very scrappy organization,” she said, noting that she took over as director at the start of the Great Recession.

The festival, including its staff and board, faced “some dark times” economically but never gave up, Cook said.

The completion of a $40,000 feasibility study for the new cinema in 2016 was a big step, according to Cook.“I think everybody felt, ‘Let’s press forward and make this happen.’” she said.

Sidewalk has also been “very entrepreneurial,” Cook said. “You have to have that spirit of whatever it takes from everybody and you have to believe in what you’re doing,” she said.

“I think those qualities are part of why we’re still here and are having a bigger impact, and I think we have some great supporters,” Cook said, citing the group’s volunteers and dedicated board members.

For a complete schedule of films and other events at the 21st annual Sidewalk Film Festival, including the SHOUT LGBTQ Film Festival, go to sidewalkfest.com.

To donate to the capital drive, go to sidewalkfest.com/cinema/make-movie-magic.