Len Gibson founded the Peachtree Village International Film Festival in 2005. Since then, the film festival has become the largest in Georgia and one of the biggest film festivals in the country. This year, the Peachtree Village International Film Festival went through a rebrand due to new partnerships and will debut as the East Point Peachtree International Film Festival (EPIFF). Rolling out was live at the press conference and caught up with Gibson to hear more about his evolving film festival.
Why did you choose to start this festival in Atlanta?
We started the Peachtree International Film Festival 19 years ago; we just saw that there was a great opportunity to bring a film festival to the city. Tyler Perry was doing his first movie, Diary of a Mad Black Woman. Although we have other festivals in the city, I felt that we needed a spin on the way that we create and workshop the types of films that we were showcasing. The city was booming at that time for film and television. And now here we are, 19 years later, with the partnership with East Point, hence the change of the name.
Was the name change a location thing or it’s because our people are here?
It’s a combination of both. When you look at culture, the different types of people represent the community. In East Point, it’s very diverse, plus the fact that we are footsteps away from the airport. So for us it was about doing a film festival in an area like that would just help us catapult to being more international. The whole idea is to create opportunities not only here in East Point, but around the world.
Why do you feel like Atlanta, East Point, and just Georgia overall have become the Black Hollywood?
Atlanta is where dreams come true, right? People come from all over the world and they’re able to make it here. America is the land of hopes and dreams. But Atlanta, to me, is the place that you can land in America and take things to the next level. Where you make your dreams come true.
What are some success stories from your film festival?
There have been so many. Chadwick Boseman was actually more of a director than an actor when he first came to the festival. This was [in] 2007 right before he got the reoccurring role on Lincoln Heights. He premiered two films and I never forget one of his films, which was Blood Over a Broken Pond. We premiered it at the festival …. [H]e was such a cool guy. … Also, Naturi Naughton and Omari Hardwick actually met at the festival. … [T]hey were … on the red carpet. They ended up in a centerpiece for … Jet magazine. And a couple of months later, they got cast for Power.
