Virtual Dam Short Film Festival looks to maintain same feel

Lee Lanier typically starts planning the next installment of the Dam Short Film Festival soon after the current one concludes each February.

In 2020, though, the festival co-founder and his team began laying the groundwork for multiple incarnations as early as March, fruitlessly trying to predict the state of moviegoing in the COVID-19 era.

“I don’t think any of us expected it to be this problematic this long,” Lanier admits. “Initially, we thought surely by February it would have cleared up, at least enough to have some kind of physical presence.”

It, of course, did not.

That’s why the 17th Annual Dam Short Film Festival, running Feb. 11-15, is an all-virtual affair. Each of the films will be available online at 12 a.m. Thursday, and ticket holders have up to five days from the time of purchase to watch them at their leisure. Access to each programming block is $12, with passes to the entire festival, all 26 blocks, priced at $100. (For more information, see damshortfilm.org.)

Once it was decided in November that a virtual festival was the only way to proceed, the Dam Short team made sure to maintain as much of the in-person feel as possible. That extended to those thematic film blocks — including comedy, drama, documentary, animation, sci-fi, horror and underground — that are the hallmark of the experience.

“Some festivals will have almost a random gathering of films, and it’s hard to predict what you’re going to get,” Lanier says. “I personally find that turns me off. I’ve walked out of screenings at other festivals for that reason. It’s, like, ‘Why do I want to watch these films back-to-back?’ They don’t match. … There’s no flow at all.”

Each ticket includes access to live-streamed Q&As with the filmmakers. The virtual format opens the festival’s traditional filmmaking panels to artists from around the world, many of whom may have found traveling to Boulder City to be impractical.

The other change afforded by the lack of an in-person event was the ability to add a few more films. Without time constraints, some of the programming blocks were given the opportunity to breathe a bit. The 162 films accepted into this year’s festival is the second-highest total in the event’s history.

That doesn’t mean the festival lowered its standards, Lanier says.

“We always want to find the strongest films we can. In the past, we might have cut a few films here and there to tighten it up. … We added a few extra programs (this year), but it wasn’t like we went crazy. We still have pretty high standards.”

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567. Follow @life_onthecouch on Twitter.