Arts & Entertainment

Selecting the Gold Coast International Film Festival Movies

A programmer explains how he chose these films for the first GCIFF.

When Somi Roy, the ’s South Asian film programmer, was thinking about which movies to include in the inaugural festival, he took into account the neighborhoods in the . Roy discussed the demographics of the area and he looked at what the goal of the film festival.

“We were told that Nassau County has a big influx in the Asian community, especially from South Asia, Korea and Iran,” Roy explained. “A festival like this, which is an American film festival, needs to reach to various constituents.”

Roy’s goal for the  portion of the film festival in New Hyde Park, which had several films that had a South Asian focus, was to create a sidebar festival that would be attractive to both Asian and non-Asian residents. This is why Roy focused on finding films that had a universal and/or Western culture connection so that many people could relate to the movies.

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“When Sean [McPhillips] and I first met and we talked about films he wanted, we wanted films with a high entertainment value,” Roy said of meeting with the festival's senior programmer. “We want something of a bit more commercial value without sacrificing artistic value.”

It took about two months for Roy to complete his programming work for the Gold Coast film festival. He had seen films throughout the year, which he was looking at both with this festival and other projects in mind. One of Roy’s last projects was an Indian film project at Lincoln Center.

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Describing how he felt about the film festival, Roy said he was “pleased” with the way the festival went and noted that the organizers and some of the sponsors wanted to have another film festival similar to this one.

“We did very well, but there's so much more that we can do,” Roy said.

The film festival attracted more than 15,000 people from North Hempstead, the North Shore and other areas, according to a Town spokesman. This number includes the movie watchers, filmmakers, volunteers, festival organizers and people who attended panels, evening parties, street fairs, outdoor screenings and community programs.


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