Movie fans, producers, and directors have descended on Birmingham this week. The annual Sidewalk Film Festival is underway, with prize money as high as one thousand dollars up for grabs. Audience members will get to weigh in on the over two hundred movies being screened during the event. Ticket holders will get to choose their own favorite movies in categories like best documentary and best black lens film. As APR student reporter Vivian Lang explains, the Alabama film industry is watching what happens as well..
“My favorite movie? Gosh!" said Lee Shook.
Everybody, it seems, has a favorite movie. That includes Shook. He's with the Alabama Entertainment Office. They help to bring movie and music projects to the state.
“'Apocalypse Now' in terms of just film making, the artistry of film making, yeah,” he said.
Film crews bring dollars to local restaurants, hotels, and businesses. Movie production can also mean jobs for local technicians. Shook says Alabama is doing okay, but we're still in a rebuilding phase.
“You know, we everyone in the film industry is still sort of coming out of the pandemic and and and we're not quite up to where we were pre-pandemic level in terms of, you know, productions and whatnot,” he said.
That's why the outreach connected to this year's Sidewalk Film Festival may be coming at a crucial time for the industry in our state. Jessica Criesman is director of education and outreach at Sidewalk.
“We did like that Edgar Wright's sort of retrospective last year…” said Jessica Criesman.
We asked Lee Shook for his favorite movie, so we kept the trend going for Criesman.
“And I watched ‘Hot Fuzz’ again, and I think that's just like the perfect movie. It's a mystery movie, and everything is a clue, and everything comes back and like has a reason. So I think and it's funny. So I think that is my favorite movie at the moment,” she said.
Criesman says the Sidewalk Film Festival is in its 28th year. 2026 will include 200 movies. The list includes full-length features, short subjects, and special spotlight screenings. Then there's the outreach aspect, which Chriesman says is ongoing.
“At our cinema, we have educational events happening all the time, including our Youth Board, which is specifically for high schoolers,” Criesman said. “It happens throughout the course of the year, and in the fall, they learn all about techniques of film making, and then in the spring, they get together and make a film, which then premieres for family and friends.”
And Criesman says the effort to encourage the next generation of Alabama movie makers doesn't stop when the Sidewalk Film Festival ends.
“So one of the events that we have in the fall after the festival is our college fair, where we invite schools with media departments, communications departments, theater, we have some graphic design departments, art departments to come to our facility and do a college fair for anyone who is interested in learning about how they can make, you know, a creative field their career,” Crtisman said.
“I really am completely stumped by this question,” said Chloe Cook.
Cook is the executive director of the Sidewalk Film Festival. And of course, we asked her about her favorite movie too.
“I've seen a lot of movies that I like a lot. I like The Departed,” she said. “Yeah. We'll go with that for right now.”
Cook is in charge of the festival, which will be showing movies at the Sidewalk Cinema in Birmingham's Pizitz Building, as well as the Alabama Theatre, the Lyric Theatre, Alabama School of Fine Arts, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the Carver Theatre. Like Jessica Chriesman, Cook also emphasizes the importance of outreach, which helps to grow locally-made films. One way Sidewalk does this is through the Sidewalk Scramble. Cook says filmmakers have 48 hours to write, shoot, edit, and film a production.
“We might assign a particular prop that has to be featured in the film,” Cook said. “We might give a line of dialogue that has to be included, and some of those elements are things that are, you know, they're surprises to the filmmakers who sign up to participate, because we want to make sure that people are really doing all the work of the film making in the 48-hour time frame.”
The Sidewalk Scramble took place back in April. The winners will be featured at this year's Sidewalk Film Festival. Some major motion pictures that have been shot in Alabama include the movie adaptation of the Stephen King novel The Life of Chuck, and Tim Burton's 2004 hit, Big Fish. Lee Shook at the Alabama Entertainment Office can't talk about everything in the works around the state, but he did a little news slip.
“There's a really exciting film that's being shot right now in Birmingham, which people know about, called ‘The Girlfriend.’ And they've been shooting all over the Birmingham metro area,” said Shook,.
He talked earlier about how the Alabama film industry is still recovering from the COVID pandemic, but he remains optimistic, and the film “The Girlfriend” is just one reason.
“And so it's really cool when you see something like that happen, and the community, you know, being curious about what's going on when they see film sets going up in neighborhoods or in downtown. And, you know, we love seeing films being shot here,” Shook said.
