“The conversation with civic leaders started about five years ago,” says Marc Lhormer, who was initially invited by Napa Chamber of Commerce president Kate King to give a talk on how such a festival could benefit the local economy. “There’s a reason there are more than 4,000 film festivals in the world,” Lhormer explains. “It’s good for local business.” But while local officials and business leaders liked the idea of a festival, he continues, the consensus in 2004 was, “Let’s wait a few years until all the Napa development is built out,” including the mixed-use Riverfront complex and multiple hotels. “And when things were starting to look good in Napa, the economy went in the toilet.”
The Lhormers revived the film festival concept just this year, first doing some informal market research during the Tuesday “Locals Night” event at the Oxbow Public Market, where shoppers supported the idea. “Then we just started meeting with people,” Lhormer says, naming King, Arts Council Napa Valley Executive Director Michelle Williams and the Napa Valley Vintners, among others. “We also checked in with folks at some major resorts and hotels, the various chambers and the new, rebranded Destination Council” (www.legendarynapavalley.com).
After determining that locals and businesses would welcome a film festival, the next task was to figure out when to hold it. The Napa Valley Film Festival is scheduled for early November, Lhormer says, because that’s just when the hospitality industry begins to see a drop-off in occupancy and sales as the grape harvest draws to a close. “We’re extending the harvest season,” he explains. “It’s after the crush craziness, but before people get too busy with Thanksgiving and the holidays.” Bonus: “It also happens to be a great time for film industry considerations: We can score some prestigious films each year that are out for holiday release, including potential Oscar contenders.”
Lhormer envisions a Wednesday-through-Sunday festival with more than 100 films screening in venues from Carneros to Calistoga, including the Napa Valley Opera House, Jarvis Conservatory and Cameo Cinema. Also in the plan are hundreds of filmmakers and industry guests, panel discussions, juried and audience awards and, of course, all the indulgent food and wine tastings and lavish sit-down meals one might expect at any first-class Napa festival. “We’ll have big parties every night, VIP dinners—all the great stuff,” Lhormer says enthusiastically. “We’re talking a big, big, big event.”
And that’s going to take some big, big, big money, he admits: “We’re going to try to create an amazing new cultural event for the Napa Valley that will be here for many years after we’re gone; we don’t want to cut any corners.” The organizers’ main focus this fall has been to recruit “founding champions” who will contribute the seed capital needed to get the festival underway. What’s the appeal to these benefactors? “Being a builder and helping make something happen. Anybody who’s in a position to loves to do that,” Lhormer says. “It has to be people who love the community and love film, people who are excited by our passion and our vision…and who want to help.” The nascent festival’s website is www.napavalleyfilmfest.org.
I found out about the film festival from one of my favorite Napa galpals, Holly Krassner, who’s recently hung out her shingle as a marketing and communications consultant following a high-powered career that included working with KQED-FM as director of corporate communications and community relations during the 1990s. After masterminding the powerhouse NPR station’s launch of its now-famous “California Report” newsmagazine, Krassner moved to Napa in 2000 to open COPIA: The American Center for Wine, Food & the Arts, where she was director of marketing and communications during the now-bankrupt center’s headiest early days.
One absurd episode gave Krassner plenty to laugh about with her father, the irreverent author and counterculture icon Paul Krassner, when she became the public voice of COPIA during its biggest (pre-bankruptcy) controversy: the Great Pooping Pope Flap of 2002. That’s when the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights mounted a strident protest against the center’s exhibit of tiny sculptures representing people seated on the pot—including angels, nuns and a mitered figure thought to be the Pope. (The brouhaha made national headlines, network news broadcasts and even the BBC, giving Krassner an international audience as she explained, again and again, that the figurines’ Spanish sculptor was working in a centuries-old Catalonian tradition and that few COPIA visitors had objected to the display.)
A stint at the Napa Valley Museum in Yountville followed Krassner’s COPIA gig; then she headed to the East Bay to manage marketing for Diablo Publications, the regional lifestyle publisher whose titles include Napa Sonoma magazine. Along the way, she met and married wine guru Daniel Dawson, the onetime French Laundry sommelier who runs the respected Back Room Wines retail shop and tasting room on First Street in downtown Napa. The two have settled in Napa’s Coombsville district, and this summer, Krassner started her own business.
“The focus seems to be wine/food, retail and festivals so far,” she says. You can reach her at hkprwiz@gmail.com or follow her tweets at http://twitter.com/TheNapaGal.
