BendFilm’s annual independent cinema festival celebrates its 22nd year with screenings, discussions and festivities Oct. 8-12 at venues throughout the Central Oregon mountain town of Bend.
For a select group of filmmakers, the action starts before the festival at BendFilm’s Basecamp. The all-inclusive filmmakers’ developmental retreat is Oct. 5-9 at Caldera, an arts center on 119 acres of land near Sisters, Oregon.
Plans for Basecamp were in the works for years, according to BendFilm Executive Director Giancarlo Gatto. Before taking over as executive director, Giancarlo was a board member when a previous executive director convinced the group to expand BendFilm’s mission and double down on support of emerging filmmakers by creating programming similar to Stowe Story Labs or Sundance Institute—nonprofits designed to support collaboration among independent artists..
A grant from M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust made Basecamp possible. Accepting that seed grant was one of Giancarlo’s first tasks as executive director. Then, about 18 months ago, BendFilm hired Director of Education Clay Pruitt to head up the effort.
“He’s been amazing,” Giancarlo says.
An Enthusiastic Response
Basecamp launched in fall 2024, but until the applications came rolling in, no one was sure what the reception would be.
“You dream up one of these things, and you wonder, each step of the way, is anybody going to actually apply for it?” Giancarlo says. “We were thrilled that we had 200 applicants, and then on top of it, the quality of the applicants was amazing.”
Forty filmmakers were selected, including six from Bend and more than a dozen others from different stretches of the Pacific Northwest. Filmmakers also came in from California and as far away as New York, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, Michigan, Alabama, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Canada and even Brazil.
Clay says part of the draw—and what makes Basecamp special—is the area’s beauty.
“The setting at Caldera is certainly a key part of it,” he says. “It’s just a really great place to surrender yourself and immerse yourself with like-minded folks.”
Giancarlo agrees.
“It’s a really beautiful facility with kind of camp vibes,” he says.
Unlike other labs that separate participants into different tracks for directing, screenwriting and producing, Basecamp keeps everyone together. Clay finds producers, screenwriters and directors want to mingle and meet each other.
“We intentionally wanted to have sort of a melting pot of people,” he says. “Now that we’ve been through one cycle of it, I can say that there’s been a lot of partnerships and collaborations that have come out of the program.”
Basecamp mentors come from a variety of disciplines, too.
“Certainly, we want producers, directors, writers to speak very directly to their counterparts,” Clay says. “But we also bring in folks who emerging filmmakers would never have had the opportunity to hear from—sales agents, acquisitions executives, development executives, those kinds of people that, especially if you don’t live in LA or New York, it’s hard to have access to.”
Getting industry pros to come to Bend hasn’t been difficult.
“It’s a pretty enticing venture in itself,” Clay says. “Come hang out with us in the beautiful Oregon wilderness for a few days and talk about film. If you have the time, it’s sort of a no-brainer.”
In addition to a full slate of industry workshops and breakout sessions, last year’s fellows were led through yoga and interacted with indigenous performers.
“We also do some very Bend things,” Clay says. “Like last year we did a breathwork workshop, which comes in handy when you’re on a stressful set of a movie and you need to breathe your way through it.”
With only a single Basecamp in the books, there are already success stories, with projects optioned and filmmakers signing with agencies.
Spreading the Buzz
Basecamp’s energy carries over to BendFilm.
“Some of those filmmakers had films in the festival, and a lot of them stayed and came to the festival afterwards,” Giancarlo says. “They stuck together and created these bonds during Basecamp and were just so excited and buzzing off that experience. It really carried over into the energy of the festival.”
That buzz is about to get bigger. Last year’s Basecamp culminated in a pitch competition. This year, that competition—in which fellows vie to win a $5,000 prize to help finance their films—is open to the public in Bend.
“Partially to torture the fellows a bit by giving them a larger audience to be nervous in front of,” Clay says. “But also, just so the public can see. I think that’s a thing you don’t often get in a festival environment. You get to see the final product of a lot of these films. But you rarely get a glimpse into the genesis and into the very early stages of these things. And it’s just a very exciting thing to witness that I wanted to share with the festival-going audience.”
Clay says for the past two decades, BendFilm has shared so much with Oregon by showcasing incredible stories audiences wouldn’t see elsewhere, as well as the filmmakers behind them.
“But they’ve also done a great job of establishing the festival and Bend as a meaningful destination in the context of the film festival community ecosystem,” he says. “Basecamp is a continuation of all that effort, and it certainly is highlighting the incredible local talent that we have in Bend and in Oregon.”
For information about the upcoming festival, visit BendFilm.org.