FirstGlance Films - About Us
FirstGlance Film festivals began in 1996 in the basement of a small theater in Center City Philadelphia. It started as a small theatre company in Philadelphia that wanted to help fellow filmmakers get their projects shown in a public venue for others to enjoy. Its mission was a one time weekend to show projects that might otherwise not be seen by moviegoers in the Philadelphia area. With a rented video projector and a bunch of large screen TVs, they had a successful weekend showing about 20 projects to about 150 people. After the event they received multiple calls and emails from filmmakers and attendees. The FirstGlance Film Festival was born. FirstGlance decided to move forward and make its festival an annual event. With filmmaker interest, their sister festival opened in Burbank California in 2000 to a similar audience in a 35 seat screening room and has also become a growing annual event.
To date, FirstGlance has produced twenty five festivals, shown over 1400 award winning films to over 30,000 attendees and has grown to 250 seat venues with state of the art projection capabilities, including 3D film and digital.
In addition to producing their award winning bi-coastal film festivals, FirstGlance has year round activities that include Short Script/Screen Contest, On-line ShortFilm Competitions, Show Us Ur Shorts Screenings, Short Film Productions, and Online Distribution.
In 2012, FirstGlance will be expanding to a third city, The Biggest Little Town in America, Las Vegas. FirstGlance is also expanding into theatrical and digital distribution for our filmmakers and audience and prepare for groundbreaking and visionary hybrid distribution opportunities not offered by any other festival or distribution company in North America.
Message from FirstGlance
FirstGlance Film Festivals would not be possible without indie filmmakers making great films! Independent film festivals would not exist without your perseverance, hard work, and your loyal and undying vision to create art the way YOU want without the assistance of big studios and outside investors. We salute you for that and thank you for your consideration and support of our events and website.
FirstGlance looks forward to bringing many more indie films to new audiences through the festivals, website, and partnerships with online distributors and to bringing new opportunities to filmmakers that no other festivals in the world can.
Principals
William Ostroff - CEO and Founder, FirstGlance Film Festivals
Andrea DiFabio - VP Communications and Public Relations
Andrea DiFabio is a marketing consultant and freelance writer specializing in the fashion, arts and entertainment industries with 20 years experience in marketing communications. As owner of the communications company, AD Communications, she offers clients sharper marketing strategies and improvement of their communications methods. She has a degree in Radio-Television-Film from Temple University and has worked on location and in the studio with video crews, musicians, editors and animators.
For the past 10 years, she has worked with FirstGlance to oversee branding, public relations, advertising, marketing, market research, marketing communications, and collaboration on website design strategy and activities. She has been published in Movie Maker Magazine and has secured media placements for FirstGlance in Time Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Metro, City Paper, Philadelphia Weekly, and Philadelphia Style Magazine.
Let me know if you need anything else.
Tai Fauci - VP of Programming, Screenplay Competitions Manager
Alumni Board of Directors
Nicholas Baisley