Cape Girardeau's first film festival to be held

This letter is being sent to announce to the public that plans are in the works for the First Annual SHOW ME DIGITAL FILM FESTIVAL to be held in Cape Girardeau, Missouri in the Fall! We are still in the organizational phase of the Festival, but a lot has already been accomplished and a number of different Filmmaking Groups are hard at work to complete short digital film submissions for this exciting endeavor in local/independent film!

This Festival has been initially organized by the Cape Filmmaker's Cooperative (CFC), which is a collective and interactive body of over 200 members consisting of local independent production companies, Filmmakers, and devoted community members interested in all aspects of film.

This Festival has been organized to serve as a venue for the works of local Artists in this medium and as a means to encourage culture and community involvement in the area. We anticipate our community as benefifting greatly from this Fest, culturally and stature-wise. A successful Festival will be a source of PRIDE for our City and Region. Other benefits that may ensue from this event and future ones may be to positively impact our local economy, encourage an active Artistic Community, provide a positive image of Cape Girardeau, denote the region as being a cultural epicenter, and put our local Film Community on the national map.

Local Filmmaking was recently jump-started through a number of successful projects that were completed recently and locally premiered. The premiere, last spring, of the locally-made BACKWARDS LOGIC PRODUCTIONS film entitled "Dark Garden opened to a sold-out crowd and gained regional notoriety from the resulting positive press from KFVS-12 TV and the front page of the Southeast Missourian. The amazing response has demonstrated the fact that this city and region is starving for this sort of thing - some sort of culture. It also has served to inspire other Artists to get involved and get to work on their own projects! We believe our upcoming Fest will be even more successful than such previous endeavors - people have been wanting this sort of thing!

What we need now to help make this Festival a complete success is even more community involvementl We need local civic, artistic, and business community leaders and organizations to sign on to help us in some capacity. We seek groups like the Cape Arts Council, the Visual Arts Co-op, our local University and it's learned faculty, and others in the Arts Community to help add credibility to our Fest through sponsorship and involvement! We would also like local media to help promote this exciting event that will benefit the area and local filmmaking! And we would love for local business to help out by providing economic support and/or donated materials to make this an awesome Festival! WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Please contact us if you have any input or suggestions, or if you or your organization/business would like to help out with Festival sponsorship. The CAPE FILMMAKER'S COOPERATIVE can be contacted by calling Pat Bond at 270-4769 or Michael Huntington at 332-0442!

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING LOCAL FILM!