Four years after skeptics questioned Louisiana International Film Festival Executive Director Chesley Heymsfield about why she was interested in starting a film festival in Baton Rouge, the annual event is still going strong.
As 225 reports in its latest issue, the film festival is returning to Cinemark at Perkins Rowe this month for the fourth year and organizers expect it to continue picking up steam.
“It’s like many community-based organizations,” says LIFF Executive Director Chesley Heymsfield. “Each year we pick up momentum from different groups—students, philanthropists, filmmakers.”
In 2012, when Heymsfield raised the possibility of film festival, some wondered whether Baton Rouge could sustain such an event. To help answer the question, Heymsfield organized small pop-up focus groups, discovering that interest existed for a film festival in the city. Heymsfield and the then-newly launched Louisiana Film Society staged events such as a screening of the Coen brothers’ classic The Big Lebowski, with Jeff Dowd, the inspiration for the film’s title character, in attendance.
A second pre-festival event—simultaneous screenings of the Jackie Robinson biopic 42 and the Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper drama The Place Beyond the Pines—was well-attended and segued into a full-scale Louisiana International Film Festival in 2013.
Centered around Cinemark Perkins Rowe, the festival’s attendance has grown each year since and reached 6,000 in 2015. LIFF also maintains a year-round presence through its free pre-release screenings.
Four years into the festival’s existence, Heymsfield is grateful for Baton Rouge’s reception and optimistic about its future.
“I’m nostalgic for the people who we have been privileged to be around and the things we helped create,” she says.
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