Paul Festa

Paul Festa is an American writer, filmmaker, and violinist. Born and raised in San Francisco, he currently resides there with his husband James Harker.

Festa's essays have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Daily Beast, Nerve, Salon.com, and various anthologies. His essays, fiction, and journalism have won numerous awards.

His widely acclaimed first film Apparition of the Eternal Church (2006, 51 minutes) captures the responses of 31 artists and writers—including literary critic Harold Bloom, filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell, Scissor Sisters singer Ana Matronic, novelist Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket), and drag performers Justin Bond (of Kiki and Herb) and Jackie Beat—to the music of Olivier Messiaen. It won awards at several film festivals.

Festa stars in his second film, The Glitter Emergency (2010, 20 minutes) with members of the San Francisco Ballet and the Cockettes, opposite the Trannyshack performer Peggy L'Eggs (Matthew Simmons). Recipient of several film festival prizes and critical acclaim, the silent-film comedy is set to the second half of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, which Festa plays in the film.

Festa wrote, produced, and edited, with director Austin Forbord, Stage Left: A Story of Theater in San Francisco (2011), an award-winning documentary about the growth of theater in the San Francisco Bay Area from the Actor's Workshop in the 1950s through the present day. The film features director Oskar Eustis and actors Robin Williams, Bill Irwin, and Peter Coyote, and is narrated by comedian Marga Gomez.

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