Oil Valley Film Festival
The Oil Valley Film Festival is an annual American film festival in Oil City, Pennsylvania.
The festival takes place in at the historic National Transit Building and the Oil City Library. The festival comprises competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature-length films and short films, and a curated block of out-of-competition selections. Audience favorites in feature and short categories, as voted on by the attending audiences, receive prizes separate from jury prizes. The festival also includes a screenwriting competition.
Festival Programming
The Oil Valley Film Festival consists of film programming over a three-day period. Day one provides the juried short film program. Day two provides the juried feature film program, with a social event for filmmakers and audience members to interact. Day three provides the audience members to watch a curated program consisting of films chosen by the festival's director. Beginning in 2017, the festival began various panels of discussion featuring filmmakers, actors, and producers from the selected films. Topics for each panel vary.History
The Oil Valley Film Festival was founded by Matt Croyle in 2015, in an effort to bring new and established cinema to the underrepresented region of Venango County, Pennsylvania, with the first festival taking place September 1–3, 2016. It is the first international film festival of its kind in Pennsylvania's Oil Region. Croyle stated that his ambition was to bring art house works to an audience who would not normally be able to see non-mainstream films.The founding of the festival garnered attention from established industry publications and organizations, ultimately resulting in partnerships with Videomaker Magazine and The Writers Store.
In the festival's inaugural year, the feature film Audience Prize was awarded to Vincent Pereira for his 1997 film A Better Place, one of the lesser known View Askew Productions films, produced by Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier. A Better Place screened out of jury competition, in the curated block, but was chosen by the audience as their favorite feature of the festival. Filmmaker Zach Daulton, of Ohio, was awarded the short film Audience Prize for his film 'Mayfield.'
In its first year, the Oil Valley Film Festival received submissions from twelve different countries on five continents.
Award Winners
| Award | Film | Individual |
| Best Picture - Narrative Feature | Blue | Dir. Gabriela Ledesma |
| Best Picture - Documentary Feature | You Racist, Sexist, Bigot | Dir. Pita Juarez Matty Steinkamp |
| Best Picture - Narrative Short | Domesticated | Dir. Juan Francisco Viruega |
| Best Picture - Documentary Short | One Year on a Bike | Dir. Martijn Doolaard |
| Best Director - Narrative Feature | Blue | Dir. Gabriela Ledesma |
| Best Director - Documentary Feature | You Racist, Sexist, Bigot | Dir. Pita Juarez Matty Steinkamp |
| Best Director - Narrative Short | Snow | Dir. Alex Murawski |
| Best Director - Documentary Short | Nobody Dies Here | Dir. Simon Panay |
| Best Actor - Feature | Blue | Callie Schuttera |
| Best Actor - Short | Ainhoa | Aurelia Schikarski |
| Best Supporting Actor - Feature | After Hours Trading | Ariana Livingston |
| Best Supporting Actor - Short | Spoken Word | Lance Reddick |
| Outstanding Cinematography - Narrative Feature | Regionrat | Carlos Jimenez |
| Outstanding Cinematography - Documentary Feature | Flin Flon: A Hockey Town | Soren Neilsen Christine Ng |
| Outstanding Cinematography - Narrative Short | 88 Cents | Matthew Petrunak |
| Outstanding Cinematography - Documentary Short | One Year on a Bike | Martijn Doolaard |
| Best Editing - Narrative Feature | The Song of Sway Lake | Todd Holmes Gabriel Wrye |
| Best Editing - Documentary Feature | Poured in Pennsylvania | Doug Metz |
| Best Editing - Narrative Short | Guard | Brian Philip Davis |
| Best Editing - Documentary Short | Nobody Dies Here | Simon Panay |
| Audience Choice Award for Best Picture - Feature | Blue | Dir. Gabriela Ledesma |
| Audience Choice Award for Best Picture - Short | Domesticated | Dir. Juan Francisco Viruega |
| Outstanding Screenwriting - Screenwriting Competition - Feature | Blind-Sighted | David Keough |
| Outstanding Screenwriting - Screenwriting Competition - Short | Cherry Glazed | Christine Sherwood |
| Outstanding Screenwriting - Screenwriting Competition - Pilot | Peace, Love & Law Enforcement | Lorraine Portman |
| Award | Film | Individual |
| Best Picture - Feature | Figurine | Dir. Hans Olson |
| Best Picture - Short | Mayfield | Dir. Zach Daulton |
| Best Director - Feature | Figurine | Dir. Hans Olson |
| Best Director - Short | Lighthouse Keeper | Dir. Nadia Shmeleva |
| Best Actor - Feature | Figureine | Kelly Goetz |
| Best Actor - Short | Mayfield | John Adrian Riley |
| Best Supporting Actor - Feature | Exit Thread | Hilary Connell |
| Best Supporting Actor - Short | A Box Came To Brooklyn | Jack Haley |
| Outstanding Cinematography - Feature | Figurine | Mike McLaughlin |
| Outstanding Cinematography - Short | Thornbird | Anthony Watkins |
| Best Editing - Feature | Escapes | Manuel Aranda Jose Arriaga Juan Fernandez Nerea Muguerza |
| Best Editing - Short | Vessel | B.A. Lewandowski |
| Audience Choice Award for Best Picture - Feature | A Better Place | Dir. Vincent Pereira |
| Audience Choice Award for Best Picture - Short | Mayfield | Dir. Zach Daulton |
| Outstanding Screenwriting - Screenwriting Competition - Feature | Arvin Lindemeyer Takes Canarsie | D. Ferrara |
| Outstanding Screenwriting - Screenwriting Competition - Short | Deadhorse Lick | Charles Hall |