Thank you for visiting the Billtown Film Festival web page.

The Billtown Film Festival arose from an interest to recreate the extravaganza that was held for the 2008 Governor's Awards for the Arts in November 2008. It was such a smashing success that many agreed that it should be duplicated as a ongoing event. Secondly, several private citizens expressed a need to see thoughtful, creative films in downtown Williamsport. This initiative is an attempt to merge the ideas together.

To get things moving, Richard C. James elected to survey "John and Jill Q. Public" to see if a film festival is actually wanted in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

So far, we are enlisting members of the Billtown Film Festival on a Facebook group account with hopes of drafting volunteers, encouraging an increase in film goers, leveraging movie venues to offer special discounts to Billtown Film members and to broaden movie selections in downtown Williamsport. Facebook, the international social networking website, says that there are over 35,000 members in the Williamsport network! (Just one-tenth of that would yeild 3,500 members for the Billtown Film Festival!)

You can join the Billtown Film Festival group on Facebook by clicking here.

We hope to see the establishment of an organization to facilitate an annual Billtown Film Festival event. Long term plans include the formation of awards ceremonies, screenings of entries, offering seminars on films and film making, invitations to actors, directors, cinematographers to speak, etc.

As an organization we want to support our homegrown talent of Central Pennsylvania. We want to partner with the Central PA Film Commission, area schools, the JV Brown library and others to provide public exposure to our creative individuals that make movies.

We also want to promote energy conservation and environmental protection through the use of short films. We propose a contest, the ScreenGreen short film competition. For more information click here.

A survey of about 200 people was completed June 2009. Download the results here.

So, feel free to contact Billtown Film Festival Group at billtown_film@rcjamesdesign.net And let us know how we can improve the service.

Billtown Film Festival Group