Take two for Newport Beach Film Festival

Alex Coolman

NEWPORT BEACH -- Call it The Newport Beach International Film Festival,

take two.

Six weeks after festival founder Jeffrey S. Conner filed for bankruptcy,

a new group of local business people and educators has announced that it

intends to make sure the show goes on -- though not in exactly the same

form.

Gregg Schwenk, leader of the newly formed Newport Beach Film Festival

Board of Directors and a member of the Newport Beach Economic Development

Committee, said the event will differ from the one run by Conner.

“This is a completely different organization,” he said. “We’re looking to

put on a smaller, yet still high-quality festival.”

Schwenk said the exact nature of the festival’s programming and operation

had not yet been determined, but thought it would probably run for about

a week at a time and would feature films selected by the board of

directors.

The nine-member board includes local business people, members of the

Newport Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau, UCI faculty and Bob

Bassett, dean of Chapman University’s film school.

“My feeling is that we’ve brought together really the brightest and best

of the community,” Schwenk said of the group. “Our initial board of

directors is a reflection of that.”

Board member Rosalind Williams, the president of the Conference and

Visitors Bureau, emphasized the professionalism of the preparations that

have gone into the new project.

“It’s almost like a group of people have come together to form a new

business,” she said. “They’re laying the proper groundwork from the

beginning so that the pitfalls that have occurred previously will not

occur this time around.”

Schwenk said the idea for the new group’s involvement is inspired in part

by the community’s support for the previous festival.

“If you look at the demographics of Orange County and particularly

Newport Beach, these are ones that lend themselves to [a festival],”

Schwenk said. “We plan to capitalize on that.”

He pointed out that despite the apparent financial difficulties

encountered by the former festival, it was an event beloved by area

residents.

“We’re trying to step up and create a new organization and building on

the success of the idea of that festival and grow from there,” Schwenk

said.

The former incarnation of the event had been steadily growing for four

years -- drawing large crowds and an international cast of film scene

characters -- before Conner unexpectedly declared bankruptcy on Sept. 1.

In sharp contrast to the glamour that was associated with the festival,

Conner listed his assets at that time as nothing but an inoperable 1984

Porsche and a few hundred dollars’ worth of household items.

Conner appeared in federal bankruptcy court last week to face creditors,

who claim he owes more than $200,000.