Edmonds International Film Festival Cancels 2011 Event

The Edmonds International Film Festival, which debuted in October 2010 and had planned to expand its offering this year, will not be returning in what director Trevor Greenfield said was largely due to a lack of sponsor support.

“There were things that were outside of our control,” said Greenfield, a filmmaker, writer and editor who created the festival along with his father, filmmaker Fred Greenfield. “It’s a tough economy, and ultimately it comes down to the sponsorships we need to expand the festival to the level where it needs to be.”

The first film festival, held exclusively at on Main Street, was looking to expand for its second year.

that he was in negotiations with venues and partners to expand the number of showings and venues. Possible screening spots included the Edmonds Center for the Arts and the Wade James Theater, the latter of which is home to the Driftwood Players theater group.

Fred Greenfield said the plan was to expand last year’s five-day festival to nine days, which meant the budget would jump from $15,000 to $60,000.

Trevor Greenfield was also the festival director of the Lakedance International Film Festival in Sandpoint, ID, which he began in 2006. It was this festival that Greenfield moved to Edmonds.

Greenfield, who has lived in Everett for the past few months with his father, said he will now concentrate on his films, which includes a feature-length version of Edmonds-based Don’t Call Me a Doctor, a short version of which debuted in Edmonds last year.

Even though the Edmonds International Film Festival will not be returning this October, Greenfield says he still hopes to bring it back in 2012.

“We gave it a big shot for this year, but in order for it to make sense for thousands of people to come to town and put out great quality event there’s a certain level we had to hit and we just couldn’t do that. We have a lot of forward progress, but at same time we’re being realistic about what it takes to make it into a great event.”

To make the festival happen in 2012, Greenfield says he’ll need a lot of support.

“We’re a small team, and trying to put together a really big thing from scratch requires everybody to be on the same page going forward,” he said. “We need not just vocal support and merchant support, but the bigger sponsorship support. And everybody in the town has to work together to go forward. Sometimes it’s tough to get everything going at once. So it couldn’t happen for this year, but we’ll see what happens next year.”

Greenfield admits that the Edmonds International Film Festival was a big undertaking.

“We were working on this year’s festival before we put on last year’s festival," Greenfield said. "There are a lot of relationships that need to get built over time. There’s way more work going on behind the scenes than when I started doing it in 2006.”