The Santa Fe Film Festival is a pretty big deal. It receives film submissions from all over the country and the world, not to mention presents Santa Feans with the unique opportunity to see award-winning independent and off-the-beaten-path films. This year’s SFFF, the 10th for our little mountain town, has upped it standards, reducing the total number of films screened by over 100 (from last year’s 250 to fewer than 150).

Perhaps as a result of those upped standards, or perhaps just because one can never have too many film festivals, two new festivals have cropped up and will run simultaneously with the Santa Fe Film Festival.

The first-ever Santa Fe Independent Film Festival runs from Thursday to Sunday at various locations in the Railyard district, and features independent films from international sources. The indie fest also features lectures and a party from DJ Dynamite Sol. The festival’s organizers, David Moore and Jacques Paisner, hope to make the SFIFF a year-round event with screenings at the Santa Fe Complex. The fest features gems from locals Gary Farmer, Joe Ray Sandoval, Wes Studi and more.

Santa Fe Independent Film Festival

Various times
Thursday-Sunday, Dec. 3-6

$6 for one day; $10 for all-access pass
Students, seniors and veterans free

Station Coffeehouse, Warehouse 21 and Santa Fe Complex;
for a full schedule, check out the rest of this post, or visit the website.

Another brand-new film fest making its debut this weekend is Attention Span, an event put together by IAIA students Keith Grosbeck and Dylan McLaughlin. The film festival caters to those with sub-par attention spans, and only features films less than 30 seconds in length. The students first conceived of the notion to provide a venue for their friends from IAIA to showcase their short-short-short movies, but the festival has attracted submissions from all over the place. The festival is one night only (because it sure would take a trillion 30-seconds-or-less movies to fill more than one evening) at the CCA.

Attention Span: A 30-Second Film Festival

8 pm
Thursday, Dec. 3, 2009

$5

Center for Contemporary Arts
1050 Old Pecos Trail
982-1338

Below the jump, get the full schedule for the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival. The folks at the SFIFF say that they’ll  be adding new films all the time, so there’s even more where this came from.

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