We want to thank you all for making the seventh year of the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival so special. Thank you to the volunteers who made this happen. Thank you to Actor / filmmaker Melissa O’Donnell for chairing this years program team and holding the Underground Film Forum court. Thank you to the winners and all of the Official Selections.

This year saw remarkable movement to a more solid and grounded festival. At the top of the list is our first attempt to work with a fiscal sponsor, pifva.org. We are proud to continue our tradition of fitting films to venues by adding  new venues (Clay Studio, Benjamin’s Desk and ImpactHubPhilly.com) and hosting sold out speaking events (Sean McKnights SAG/Aftra discussions) among many other talk back’s (who will forget the National Constitution Center’s lobby discussions?). We are especially proud to continue to host filmmakers from all over the world including Hong Kong, England, Germany, Spain, Japan, France, Canada, LA, NYC, Wisconsin, Atlanta, New Jersey, Delaware, and more.

The festival grew past its roots this year. PIFF Moscow launched to great success. Thank you to Mike Lass and Ksenia. We took Credit Cards for the first time! We used advanced ticket sales for the first time and even worked with a festival consultant (Thom Cardwell). We signed on a Volunteer Coordinator (Dana Michael) and this year our Volunteer team had two training sessions prior to the festival. Do you miss training on the fly? 🙂

We can’t wait to be back for festival #8 already being planned! The festival will be held on June 24 – 28th. Although that might change as we are discussing working with a few events in the city. Stay tuned for that.

Submissions fire back up October 1st, 2013. That’s right around the corner!

Thank you again and we look forward to the next installment of the festival.

Benjamin F. Barnett
Festival Founder / Director

Thank you to long time sponsors: Adobe, PhilaActing.com, DahDay.com, Producers Association, mediabureau.com, Plays & Players, and gearstuff.com.

We are happy to announce that we received a Cultural Fund Grant of $2,400.  We would like to graciously thank the Philadelphia Art Community and District 1 Councilmen Mark Squilla. Thank you for encouragement and support. We have been traveling the globe and the web to discover and connect different artists and filmmakers who work to see beyond “what is” and instead look to explore, create, and then screen. This form of Independent film making often takes the viewer beyond the boundaries normally experienced in the theater. Either way, it is sure to make you think 😉

We’ll see you June 25-29, 2014 for the 7th annual festival. The Box office is at Plays & Players Theater at 1714 Delancey St, Philadelphia, PA 19103.

Thank you again Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Cultural Fund!

~ Benjamin F. Barnett  Festival Director #piff #uff #Pi7

Hello and welcome back. It’s official. As of October 1st we have opened submissions for the 7th annual festival. We will be holding the festival June 25 – 29, 2014. Use this link <a href=”http://bit.ly/PIFF7″>PIFF 7 </a>to submit now and get the discussion going.  We are really looking forward to festival #7 and in many ways, this is what we have been working towards for a long time. Thank you to everybbody who believed in the model.

If you have any questions about our screening process, please contact us direct or post to our Twitter and or Facebook feeds with any questions you might have. We have what I am sure is an unorthodox process by any standard but we feel confident that our process best serves the filmmaker. Essentially, our screening process is a peer to peer approach to programming a film festival that has no genre agenda when it is initiated.

As we have for the past 6 years, we use withoutabox.com to communicate with filmmakers and collect submissions. If you have any questions about the withoutabox.com service and how we utilize it, please feel free to ask.

If you haven’t already signed up to the festival mailing list, you can do so here: