Access Sacramento‘s 21st annual “A Place Called Sacramento” (PCS) Film Festival postpones the release of 10 original local films for at least nine months to promote the health and safety of the film crews and expected theater audience.
In consultation over the summer with the writers of this year’s 10 original film scripts, it was decided to delay the film festival production deadlines as a direct response to the coronavirus pandemic. The 21st “A Place Called Sacramento” Film Festival is now planned for release in June, 2021.
“The health of the filmmakers is our top priority and earlier this summer, there was so much uncertainty about safety protocols for the production crews, ” said Gary Martin, Film Festival Director. “It only made sense to push back the filmmaking deadlines and the festival’s world premiere.”
On the set in July for Film Director Mo Alagi’s “For Quentin” film with cinematographer Joshua Walters. (Photo credit: Musa Kazimi)

During the last 20 years, 10 original short films always made their world premiere at the Crest Theatre on the first weekend of October. This year’s extraordinary health situation forced the PCS Festival to reschedule for the first time. The last three years had sold out audiences of 940 attendees.

Film crew safety protocols now have been negotiated with Hollywood unions and endorsed by California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office. The guideline document is available from the City of Sacramento Film Commissioner’s website.
“By delaying the deadlines, it allows for a much longer pre-production schedule and hopefully allows the filmmakers an opportunity to create processes for having safe film sets,” said Martin.

“A Place Called Sacramento” begins each year as a script writing competition where the 10 winning writers get to make their films and earn the red carpet world premiere plus a public access cable television showing and professional credit in Hollywood’s Internet Movie Database IMDB.com.

The original 2020 deadlines would have had the finished films being delivered to Access Sacramento this month for the world premiere in October. Now films will be due for completion in May, 2021.
This year’s 10 original winning films were announced last May in a live cable TV broadcast during a virtual cast and crew call using the PCS.Greenlit.app website from Filmfesto, a product of Casting Calls America and SacCasting.com.
Martin said four of the 10 winners began production in June and one completed filming before the decision to postpone was determined. Shooting and editing for the films should begin again in late Spring.
The full festival schedule, entry rules and this year’s 10 winning film projects are all listed on Access Sacramento’s “A Place Called Sacramento” website.
Access Sacramento is a local non-profit foundation operating two cable television channels and cablecast/internet/over-the-air radio station KUBU-LP 96.5 FM. Watch on Comcast and Consolidated Communications Cable Channels 17 & 18, and AT&TU-Verse channel 14. Access Sacramento can be seek on ROKU and Apple-TV by choosing “CableCast Screenweave” and then scrolling to Access Sacramento. Channel 17 & 18 also live streamed from AccessSacramento.org.