The 2014 Cucalorus Film Festival, which takes place Nov. 12-16 in downtown Wilmington, will introduce a new program called Kids-a-lorus.
As the name suggests, the Kids-a-lorus films are suitable for children, although Cucalorus executive director Dan Brawley said the films will be entertaining for all ages.
“Some of my favorite films in this year’s festival … are the ones that are identified as being kids’ films,” Brawley said during a Sept. 16 phone interview. “They’re really appropriate for kids, but great for general audiences as well.”
An Aug. 13 press release states PNC Bank is sponsoring Cucalorus for the third year in a row, which allowed the festival to reach a more diverse audience through the Kids-a-lorus program.
“I think a lot of film festivals tend to be very serious or very adult oriented,” Brawley said, “so we’re looking to really offer something up for families.”
The addition of the Kids-a-lorus program is an example of how the festival has evolved during the last 20 years, Brawley added. He said Cucalorus has been showing family-friendly movies since 2004 and 2014 seemed like the right time to give those films their own category.
Because there aren’t as many submissions in the children’s genre, Brawley said he has been traveling to different film festivals to seek out films for the Kids-a-lorus program. Among the movies chosen is “Labyrinthus,” which had its North American debut at the Toronto Film Festival, and “Zip & Zap and the Marble Gang,” which Brawley said was the No. 1 box office hit in Spain this year.
Each Kids-a-lorus movie will have a rating, Brawley added, to indicate the specific age for which each film would be most appropriate.
The Cucalorus Film Festival released a list of 89 early selections Sept. 11. The Cucalorus website states more films will be added to the list until the first week in October. More than 200 films will be screened during the festival.
Also new to this year’s Cucalorus Film Festival is a retrospective about the work of Dino De Laurentiis, an Italian filmmaker who created his own studio in Wilmington and began producing films there in the early 1980s.
Brawley said the retrospective is one of the ways the festival will honor its 20-year anniversary, although he said it is important to keep the focus on the films and filmmakers.
“We’re really excited about how Cucalorus has grown over the past 20 years, and I think this year will indicate how Cucalorus is increasingly important for filmmakers to showcase their work and premier new films,” he said. “We really try to keep the spotlight on the filmmakers and the films.”
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