The First Friday Film Festival is a late-night, SHORT film festival recurring on the first Friday of every month in downtown Kansas City, Missouri showcasing some of the best work made locally, regionally and internationally! Our screening cinema is located within the beautiful Musical Theater Heritage facility in Crown Center. It’s a short walk from the bustling Crossroads Arts District, where th
e First Friday extended-hour open gallery tours are nationally renowned. We are a festival dedicated to exhibiting independent cinema that demonstrates what we define as a “unique artistic vision” and which place great importance on crafting well-developed characters and provocative storytelling. Festival programmers will give preference to films that could be classified as dramas, comedies, science fiction/fantasy or animated works, though compelling shorts in the horror/thriller, documentary and action genres will certainly be considered. On the First Friday of every month, thousands of residents and visitors fill the sidewalks of the Crossroads Arts District in Kansas City, Missouri, enjoying what has become the city’s liveliest and most popular event. Arts organizations, galleries, studios, and a wide variety of local businesses feature regional and national artists as well as live entertainment starting at 5 p.m. year-round. Occurring officially since the late 90’s, the tradition continues to grow with up to 10,000 attendees on any given weekend. The First Friday Film Festival serves as a destination for gallery-goers after most venues have closed for the night, and is a free event open to the public. Kansas City, Missouri is a destination on the rise for film production and boasts and active, close-knit filmmaking community. The festival will provide filmmakers with a chance to have their work seen by an enthusiastic and receptive audience, thus opening new connections and recognition in the town that Huffington Post in 2014 declared as being “The Coolest City in America.”
As an ongoing festival of new programming, there are 12 separate screening sessions that make up the fest each year. (This first year's season will run July-December '16) Each screening session runs roughly 1.5 hours. Sessions are not programmed by genre but rather are combined in what we feel constitute compelling clusters, offering the audience films across genres, every session.
