By Jamie Rogers
Fernando Mico, director, Northern Virginia Film Festival. Photo by Evan Cantwell.
Fernando Mico knows what it’s like to bounce around from job to job after college.
The 1994 George Mason University graduate worked as a graphic designer, a Taekwondo instructor, a software entrepreneur and a film postproduction teacher before becoming the director of the inaugural Northern Virginia Film Festival.
The festival, which opened Monday and runs through Saturday, will take place at the Angelika Film Center in the Mosaic District of Fairfax, Va.
A martial arts connection got Mico, a sixth-degree black belt, a job in the production department of a large company. But the company was sold and he found himself in a back room stuffing DVDs into mailers.
It was time for another change, Mico says.
He pursued digital filmmaking at the Washington, D.C., campus of Boston University and later taught postproduction film there. He realized film and entertainment were underrepresented in the area, and thought hosting a film festival might be the way to go.
He visited the Angelika Film Center in the Mosaic District and thought it would be a fantastic venue for displaying and supporting film artists’ work.
“It was pretty much a cold call [to Angelika]. My goal was to always come big—year one—right away. The end goal is to become the premiere film festival in the Atlantic region, if not the Sundance [Film Festival] of this area. This is a big deal,” Mico says.
Angelika staff welcomed the idea—the film center hosts several film festivals each year. Hosting a film festival taps into the part of filmmaking that Mico says he enjoys: preproduction.
“There’s a magic to it; I’m handling the dreams and fashions of artists and I have a great sense of responsibility to that,” says Mico, who describes himself as having the imagination and creativity of a little kid.
About 115 films from 20 countries will be shown this week on two screens at Angelika before the festival wraps up on Saturday. Wednesday’s theme is “Horror Hump Day.”
“It’s the classic slasher films, to the real cerebral films,” Mico says.
In addition to films, there will be helpful seminars for independent filmmakers.
In a talk called “From Script to Screen” Mico says he’ll discuss topics ranging from cameras to actors to dealing with the Screen Actors Guild. Seminars on the business and legal aspect of filmmaking will also be held.
Get the full schedule of the Film Festival here.
The Northern Virginia Film Festival has received the support of Del Weston, the director of the Action on Film (AOF) International Film Festival in Los Angeles.
“He graciously, right on cue, offered any support he could give,” Mico says. “He offered the title, ‘Sister Film Festival,’ to us.
“That was a huge bump. The AOF is a very successful, prominent festival. It’s one of the top festivals in Los Angeles.”
Weston’s endorsement came just after Mico won an AOF Award and a subsequent distribution deal for his own independent effort, an assassin film called, “Ever After Reloaded.”
Mico hopes the Northern Virginia Film Festival will be a way to support up-and-coming independent filmmakers and provide them a venue for networking and displaying their work.
“There is a certain satisfaction and fulfillment with seeing your film on the big screen instead of just on your computer monitor at home,” he says. “On the commercial end, it gives them a chance to meet a distributor or someone who can take their project further.
“The goal—and it is not far-fetched—is for a screenwriter to meet up with a producer, or a producer to see an actor on another film, and say, ‘He’ll be perfect for a film I have.’”