It’s hard to believe that 20 years have gone by since the very first screening at the first-ever Los Angeles Film Festival. Time flies by when you’re having fun and watching great movies! In celebration of our 20^th anniversary, we asked some of the key players at the Festival to share one of their most memorable LA Film Fest moments.

“They seemed to raise the whole night sky.”
One of my most joyous memories is the night we screened the documentary Thunder Soul at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre during the 2010 festival. The movie was about this great music teacher, Conrad Johnson, who revolutionized high school bands by forming the kick-ass Kashmere Stage Band at his Houston High school in the 1970s, a band that became a worldwide sensation. When the movie was over, the band—who hadn’t played together in over three decades—took to the stage and the crowd went wild, everyone dancing in the aisles. It was a crazily happy occasion— a friend told me it was one of the greatest nights of her life. You could say the band raised the roof, but we were outside under the stars: they seemed to raise the whole night sky.
—David Ansen, Festival Artistic Director

“I always imagined it wafted over the city and made everyone in Los Angeles dance.”
In 2006 we showed the re-mastered version of Perry Henzell’s 1972 classic The Harder They Come, starring a young, gorgeous, insanely talented Jimmy Cliff. It was an incredible night of music and classic film under the stars, surrounded by pine trees in the heart of LA at the beautiful Ford Amphitheatre. Before the screening the beloved Jamaican reggae band The Melodians, otherwise known as the fathers of reggae, played a set of classic songs from the film. There was a cloud of music, joy and love floating over the Ford that night and I always imagined it wafted over the city and made everyone in Los Angeles dance. That was one of the best times I’ve ever had at the Los Angeles Film Festival and one of the highlights of my career.
—Maggie Mackay, Senior Programmer

One of my favorite memories is from an event/screening I did called Thunderdome: DANIELS Vs Walter Robot. They’re both directing teams who do really great, imaginative music video and short film work, and we did a weirdo mixture of showing their films, pausing for quizzes, having a running score of whose comments were better, and the best touch–a splash zone for the first row, where all the seats came with ponchos and goggles to wear.  (Water, sadly, was not included but we did throw candy.)  It was all awesome madness.
—Drea Clark, Associate Programmer

“Someone in the audience stood up and announced that he was also a ‘Peter Pan.’”
In 2011, Los Angeles Film Festival screened a powerful documentary Operation Peter Pan: Flying Back to Cuba, which was about Cuban children sent to the United States by their parents in the early 60’s, because they believed their children would be taken from them by Castro and sent the USSR. 50 years later, those children or “Peter Pans” as they were known, share their shocking stories and heartfelt experiences. Several subjects (or “Peter Pans”) were on stage for a Q&A, one of which happened to be a beautiful singer. A magical Festival moment occurred when someone in the audience stood up and announced that he was also a “Peter Pan.” As this woman began to sing, the man made his way to the stage, through a crowd of highly emotional festival attendees.
—Hebe Tebachnik, Shorts and Latin American Programmer

“Somehow the video store in my little town had a copy of Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down.”
One of my best Festival memories is from last year when Pedro Almodovar came to the Festival to introduce his opening night film I’m so Excited. I grew up in a very tiny farming town of only 650 people in Southern Illinois and yet somehow the video store in my little town had a copy of a Pedro Almodovar film called Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, which I saw in about 1995 and that film is the film that really launched my love for cinema. So it was amazing to me that so many years later, I was actually seeing Almodovar introduce a film in person at a Festival that I was working for. It was an incredibly proud moment for me.
—Jenn Wilson, Associate Programmer

Chris Lombardi / Festival Blogger