Plaza Classic Film Festival
When:
July 18, 2024 to July 28, 2024
Where:
El Paso, TX
About the Event:
The Plaza Classic Film Festival — which celebrates its 17th year July 18-28, 2024 — was started by the El Paso Community Foundation in 2008 as a special project to bring movies back to the historic Plaza Theatre. The Community Foundation purchased 35mm and then state-of-the-art 2K digital projection equipment (upgraded to 4K in 2018) for the atmospheric theater, which opened in 1930, closed in the early ’80s, and was restored for $42 million in 2006 in a joint partnership between the City of El Paso and the Community Foundation.
The first Festival was called The Movies Return to the Plaza Theatre and was the brainchild of EPCF President/CEO Eric Pearson and movie enthusiast Charles Horak. It was a smash hit. More than 25,000 people turned out to watch more than 60 movies at the Plaza Theatre and adjacent Philanthropy Theatre.
It returned in 2009 with a new name, the Plaza Classic Film Festival, and a growing popularity in the region and throughout the country. Now the world’s largest classic film festival, the Plaza Classic averages attendance of 40,000 people a year, and has brought in a glittering array of celebrity guests, including: Al Pacino, El Paso natives Debbie Reynolds, F. Murray Abraham and Germaine Franco (Encanto), Rita Moreno, Richard Dreyfuss, Edward James Olmos, Eva Marie Saint, Kathleen Turner, Sam Elliott, Katharine Ross, Helen Hunt, Bruce Dern, Ali MacGraw, Tippi Hedren, Shirley Jones, Robert Wagner, Cindy Williams, animators Don Bluth (an El Paso native) and Gary Goldman, Peter Bogdanovich, Kathleen Quinlan, Louise Fletcher, Michael York, Nancy Olson, Candy Clark, Elsa Cardenas, Margaret O’Brien, El Paso-raised documentary filmmaker Cristina Ibarra and partner Alex Rivera, and Iliana Sosa, an El Paso native and documentary filmmaker.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 edition of the film festival was staged on tour and online. Pop-up drive-in movies were screened over 11 nights at six locations around the El Paso metro area. Additionally, locally connected features, documentaries and the popular Local Flavor local film showcase were screened digitally, including a special screening of Amadeus and a Zoom interview with star and El Paso native F. Murray Abraham. The 2021 edition also was adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic, with seating capacity limited to 50%, more than 30 fewer movies due to a 2-hour disinfection window between programs and an altered footprint that included the Abraham Chavez Theatre and the Convention Center Plaza. The 2022 edition marked a return to normal for PCFF.
More than 560,000 people have attended the first 16 Plaza Classics. The festival has an economic impact of $1.5 million annually. About 15 percent of its audience comes from outside of the El Paso/Juarez/Las Cruces radius, with 2023’s festival drawing guests from more than 60 cities around the country and other parts of the world.
The Plaza Classic Film Festival also has become a major showcase for regional filmmakers through its Local Flavor series, sponsored by the Texas Film Commission. It screens features, shorts, documentaries and other projects, and its audience has tripled in recent years. The 2023 Local Flavor showcase was the second to be held in the Plaza Theatre, with $3,500 in awards handed out to three local filmmakers in the sixth annual Local Flavor Awards. More than $1,000 was given to prize winners in the second Plaza Classic Film Festival Screenwriting Competition.
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