Since 2014, the Chattanooga Film Festival has brought movie buffs together to see unique pictures and — although the COVID-19 pandemic forced some changes — the event is happening this weekend.

The four-day event will be virtual and interactive, thanks to a partnership with Microsoft and its partners MediaKind, Evergent, VisualOn, and Slalom.

🎥 The basic deets

What: Chattanooga Film Festival

When: Fri., May 22-Mon., May 25

Cost: $10+

More information: here

🎥 Fast facts

○ Submissions came from all over the world.

○ Organizers worked directly with distributors for some major premiers.

○ Four films — “The Wanting Mare,” The Ringing Bell,” Skull,” and “The Pandemic Anthology,” — are having world premieres at the Chattanooga Film Fest.

○ Director Joe Dante, who is responsible for classics, such as “Gremlins” and “The Burbs,” will get the festival’s lifetime achievement award.

○ The partnerships were paramount in making this festival happen. Founder Chris Dorch II said “we’d be dead in the water” without them.

🎥 Q&A with founder Chris Dorch II

NOOGAtoday: Tell us what's unique this year and what people can expect from the event.

Chris: Even though we are translating what we do on the ground to a virtual setting, folks will see a lot of the same types of special events and amazing films that they’d get to see if they were with us in-person. We’re proud of just how well we’ve been able to translate the festival-going experience to the virtual world, and this line-up stands tall with the best we’ve ever put together.

Going digital also allowed us to make entry affordable not only during a tough time but also during a time when folks are hungry for new films and diversions. All-access badges are just $30, and part of the process will be shared directly with participating filmmakers, a sort of filmmaker stimulus program of sorts.

NOOGAtoday: What are you most excited about for the event?

Chris: That’s a very tough call because I think we’re incredibly lucky to have all the films and special guests that we have this year but for me personally I’m extremely excited to present legendary director Joe Dante, the man who’s given us classics from “Gremlins” to “The Burbs” to “Innerspace” with our lifetime achievement award. Mr. Dante’s films have very directly shaped me as a person and as a lifelong cinephile and I’m so honored to have a chance to speak with him directly about every single film in his, frankly staggering, filmography.

NOOGAtoday: Anything you want to share about audience participation? How does that work?

Chris: To us, CFF is not a festival without the community and culture that springs up around it. In going virtual, we were determined to find ways to build in interactive elements and involve our audience directly. Filmmaker Q&As, film education workshops, and even some of our wackier signature events like Scripts Gone Wild and Dungeons & Dragons Live still get to happen and attendees can interact via Microsoft’s Teams and CFF social media.

NOOGAtoday: Tell us briefly about the work that went into making this happen during these challenging times.

Chris: For our physical festival, we’re lucky in that we’ve had a team every year of sometimes well over 100 volunteers but for the digital version we only had a small handful of dedicated folks. I think people would be shocked at how small the crew that put all this together is or how many hats every one of us has had to wear. For the physical festival we have almost an entire year to put it together, but to have to rebuild a brand new event from scratch in just over six weeks and share it with 30,000 potential viewers across the United States has been a truly insane undertaking. To the credit of every member of our team, we’ve all somehow managed to have a blast doing it. Despite the stressful times, we still have time to laugh and talk about our love for movies during this whole process. It’s made the chaos more manageable and we think the joy that’s gone into the creation of this virtual edition will be apparent to everyone who decides to spend the 30 dollars to be a part of it with us this Memorial Day weekend.

NOOGAtoday: What else do you want to share or have people know about?

Chris: One big thing is that there are a number of films world premiering during this event that folks will be the very first audience on Earth (yes, really) to see. Additionally, we hope folks will remember that now more than ever our independent filmmakers and artists are truly important; in a time when this pandemic has us all starved for more entertainment, they’ve got our back with some truly incredible work.