We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Helen Stephenson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Helen, appreciate you joining us today. Can you walk us through some of the key steps that allowed you move beyond an idea and actually launch?

I moved to Prescott, AZ in 1995. I was born and raised in Southern Arizona, so moving to AZ was going “back home” for me. I went to college in CA and started my career there. But when the Northridge Earthquake hit I decided that was it and left Burbank. The end. No more earthquakes for me.

In Prescott I found myself missing independent film. I started going to the Sedona Film Festival the first or second year it started. That got me thinking, “If a small town like Sedona could pull this off, maybe we could do it too!” I knew the director of the Sedona fest, Patrick Schweiss, and reached out to him to see if he would answer some questions about how to actually run a festival. He agreed so I felt we had a bit of a knowledge base to pull from. With that encouragement, in 2008 I formed our non-profit.

The festival had zero funding. I had never written a grant in my life. Never run a non-profit. Never run a film festival. Never recruited volunteers. Never curated films. Hadn’t spoken on stage since high school. How the heck do I do this?

Now, when I told my husband Don, a software architect and audio engineer that I wanted to start a film festival, he famously said, “Sure honey” and left the room. He had no idea the festival would consume all our time and some of our personal money, over the next 14 years.

After forming the non-profit I started combing IMDb and looking for independent films I thought would interest our audience. I wasn’t getting much response. Remember, this was pre-streaming for screeners. We would be receiving actual DVD’s. And those filmmakers would have to trust us not to steal their films. Next stop: Build a website that made us look like we knew what we were doing. Lucky or me, my husband knew how to do that, amongst other things. We purchased the website domain www.prescottfilmfestival.com and discovered we were the third people to have that website. Third time’s a charm?

OK. We, (that’s the “royal we”) got the domain and built the website, A the website presence became more polished and professional, the filmmakers started to respond. We decided that we needed to have some practice in putting on a screening so the first year we had a Monthly Series. We started at the “Frontier Village Cinema 10” on Tribal land. The Yavapai Prescott Indian Tribe gave us our first grant and were very supportive over the years. We chose a film we could target market: American Harmony, about the annual Barber Shop Quartet competition. We reached out to every musical group in the community and it was very successful. Small groups were singing all over the lobby, in front of the audience after the screening and even in the restrooms!

We had our first festival in 2010. We learned so much! People actually came and bought tickets! We had volunteers, (many of whom are still with us!) We didn’t have a ticketing system so we were printing tickets on cardstock and cutting them with a paper cutter in the basement of the balding we were in.

But we figured it all out. And we just had our 13th festival!

Helen, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was born and raised in Southern Arizona. I got my bachelor’s degree from Cal State Long Beach in Radio/TV/Film and my Masters in American Media and Popular Culture from ASU. My first job after college was at KTTV in Los Angeles as the News Director’s Assistant. I found news to be too violent so moved to working at Daniel Fox & Associates, working on prizes for game shows. That was too boring. “So – I started to write my own Production Company with my first husband and did that for the next 20 years. We did a lot of Client Based videos with me writing the scripts and my then husband directing and editing. We did the fundraising video for Voyager, the airplane from the Rutan Brothers and Jeanna Yeager, that was the first airplane to go round the world non=stop non-refueled. From that we started working on aviation related videos for different aviation related companies.

Writing client based scripts gave me the opportunity to hone my craft. I love working with clients We produced several narrative films over the years and kept the foreign rights, going to MIFED and AFM to sell to different countries.

We moved to Prescott in 1995 –0—. I was busy raising my two daughters so I took a job in education so I would have the same vacation days as the girls, and my career flatlined until I came up with the idea for the film festival.

The film festival was a volunteer gig for the first 10 years. Early in the festival a local college invited us to come on their campus and present the festival in their 1,000 seat performing arts center. They presented lovely events there but everything was too expensive for students in general. They wanted less expensive events that students could afford and films were the perfect fit!  That space became our home.

When it became obvious that technology was moving quickly forward and we needed a DCP projector the festival raised the funds to help purchase that projector.

The festival became, and still is, the focus of all things film in the community, at the very center of that hub. I eventually started working at the college where the festival was screening, as the director of the Film Media Arts Program, teaching screenwriting classes and running the program. I like to say I “volunteered my way” into the position.

After several years, the state of Arizona now has a film tax credit again. The film festival, and now the college, is where all the local training takes place. We also and finding students to become production assistants and writers. That has all inspired me to start writing on a few scripts I had been putting off for a long time, and I’m excited and invigorated to go back to screenwriting.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Technology was a huge issue. We were getting independent films on DVD’s – not on film. No one in Prescott had ever screened a film digitally. There was only “film film” projection and sound. Luckily my husband Don is also an audio engineer and he dragged in my nephew Jared to create a space where we could screen films. We needed a projector and a way to link audio from the DVD to the theater from the projection booth.

The theater was very supportive. We chose Wednesday nights, which we saw were the slowest nights at the theater, for our screenings. So they loved having the snack bar income and didn’t charge us for the space. They cleaned out a closet in the projection area and let us keep all our gear in. All was well with the world.

Then… the theater abruptly closed. We had a few hours notice to disassemble everything, pack it up and then… find a new location.

We ended up going from location to location for the Monthly Series for several months. We were building our audience with a long email list and learning how to run a festival – ticketing, website, programming, working with filmmakers, flying them in, sponsorships, donations…. it was a lot, but one day at a time, we learned and grew. We got our act together enough for the college to approach us about coming to the campus and using their theater for screenings. It’s a location we use to this day.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Our original mission statement was to support AZ films and filmmakers. Over the years that has expanded to our festival audiences and students – no matter what their age. I work to bring unique, thought provoking, fun, interesting and compelling films to our audiences – “Movies that Move You.” And bringing great films to the festival also supports the filmmakers and the students who attend or submit films. But even beyond that is the “safe space” that watching a film together with other human beings brings. We have all experienced the same two hours on the big screen. No matter what politics or biases each individual brings with them, these have a tendency to melt away after the experience of watching a great film together. Conversations fill the theater and the lobby. That is the most rewarding aspect of the festival to our community.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.prescottfilmfestival.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prescottfilmfestival/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/prescottfilmfestival
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/1759671/admin/feed/posts/

Image Credits
PFF poster design by Beth Hammer Emmy photo Don Stephenson other photos PFF Volunteers