About the rock city film festival
The Rock City Film Festival began as the Made in Arkansas Film Festival. The fest was the brainchild of co-founders Johnnie Brannon and Tony Taylor. The idea started as a screening series of Arkansas-made films at the Joint in North Little Rock’s Argenta neighborhood. Those screenings were immensely popular, standing-room-only events - prompting Johnnie and Tony to start a film festival. They had experience, too, having been instrumental in the creation of the Fantastic Cinema genre festival and Kaleidoscope (now Reel Queer, run by Central Arkansas Pride), an LGBTQ+ focused festival.
The first Made in Arkansas Film Festival took place in the beautiful, state-of-the-art CALS Ron Robinson Theater in May of 2019, with co-directors Johnnie Brannon and Kerri Michael at the helm. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down public events in March of 2020, forcing MIAFF to quickly pivot to a virtual festival that year. After virtual festivals in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, MIAFF warmly welcomed filmmakers back in person for 2022. In 2022, the festival began accepting submissions from filmmakers in neighboring states, to expand networking opportunities for Arkansas filmmakers, and in 2023, the festival added panel discussions and workshops to the program. The 2024 festival was our biggest and most highly attended yet, with 124 films submitted. In 2024, in keeping with our origins as a monthly film series, we again partnered with our friends at the Ron Robinson to create a monthly screening series of Arkansas-made films.
The festival has grown both in submissions and attendance every year since its inception, but the mission has remained the same: to celebrate and support Arkansas film and filmmakers.
SCREEN ROCK CITY
Let’s see what you’ve got, filmmakers.
Rock City Film Festival is dedicated to supporting Arkansas independent film and filmmakers. We're looking for films from all over the state, in any genre. Whether you've made a comedy, a drama, a horror film, an animated film, a music video, or an experimental film, you name it: We want to see it! We accept short films, feature films, and micro-shorts (1-5 mins. in length).
If you're an Arkansas filmmaker, we'd be proud to have you submit your film. We also accept films by "Arkansans abroad": if you're from here, or were educated here, or your mama lives here, you may submit as an Arkansas Connection.
While we'll always be a festival dedicated to supporting Arkansas filmmakers, we're also film lovers. It's a big world out there - so we're creating a category for films made outside of our fair state. We're excited to bring films from independent filmmakers all over the world back home to Arkansas. Let's see what you've got, neighbors.
Awards will include Best Arkansas-Made Film (short or feature), Best Arkansas-Made Student Film, Best Microshort, Best World (Non-Arkansas) Film, Audience Favorite, and Best of Fest.
Submissions open on August 1. We can't wait to see what you've been working on - and we REALLY can't wait to see you in Little Rock in May!
