Manhattan Film Festival

The Manhattan Film Festival (MFF) is an annual film festival that was founded in 2006 by filmmakers: Philip J. Nelson and Jose Ruiz, Jr and is currently operated by Mr. Nelson and a team of filmmakers, journalists and exhibitors. It was founded as the Independent Features Film Festival. MFF is an annual event held at such venues as Symphony Space, Quad Cinema, the Academy Theater at Lighthouse in addition to smaller venues like the Producers Club and the Hunter College Lang Auditorium, where the festival holds its closing awards ceremony.

In 2012, the Manhattan Film Festival was named 25 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee: 2012 by MovieMaker Magazine. In response to increased submissions, the festival expanded its program from just under 150 selections to 163 in 2013.

According to the festival's press materials: The goal of the Manhattan Film Festival has always been to help independent filmmakers find an audience for their work and connect with like minded individuals in the indie film community. Every year, the festival works to program a diverse film lineup ranging from student filmmakers and first time directors/actors to the industry's most accomplished talent.

To further support the independent film community in New York, the festival offers a widely popular revenue sharing program through their affiliate sponsor ScreenBooker, a rarity with most American film festivals and one of the features of MFF that accounted for its inclusion on multiple "Top Fests" lists, including two lists from MovieMaker Magazine.

In July 2010, Manhattan Film Festival founders Philip Nelson and Jose Ruiz filed a lawsuit against the Tribeca Film Festival for theft of their innovative interactive concepts. Nelson said in a statement regarding the suit that he was "absolutely devastated" to discover Tribeca had launched its own virtual festival. "We have put our lives into building a platform that will level the playing field for independent film-makers," he said. "We trusted and looked up to Tribeca as a leader in the industry. Never did I think they would use our time, labour, skill, money, effort, and creativity for their gain."

During the festival's June 2013 season (year 7), the festival became the center of controversy in the indie film world when it kicked filmmaker Solvan Naim out of the lineup, several days before his film FULL CIRCLE was supposed to screen. While the circumstances surrounding the removal of the film are convoluted at best, the event sparked aggressive response from websites like indiewire.com, where the author, a representative of the Tribeca Film Festival, questions the purpose of having boutique festivals. It was later discovered that the more critical articles, like the piece published on Indiewire.com, was authored by a representative of the Tribeca Film Festival, one of MFF's rivals.

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Wikipedia