Covellite International Film Fest to carry free enjoyable to Butte

BUTTE, Mont. — Four days of nonstop free enjoyable is coming to Uptown Butte starting subsequent Thursday with the newest iteration of the Covellite International Film Festival, and organizers can’t wait to welcome the throngs of cinephiles.

“This is Butte’s hometown film festival. It was started by some guys on a road trip who ended up breaking down in butte back in 2015. They started a festival here and Butte just really came on board and made it really special,” mentioned Ainsley Sevier, pageant director and the advertising and marketing director for Covellite Presents.

The pageant took a a number of yr hiatus that started with the COVID-19 pandemic, returning after new possession took over the Covellite Theatre.

The 2026 iteration will characteristic movies from a spectrum of genres, shot in Montana and throughout the nation and world, with uncooked and resonant unbiased storytelling on tight budgets.

“The films that we accept at the Covellite International Film Festival are going to be gritty, they are going to be heartfelt, they are going to make you feel something. They are going to be an everyman story or a rise above story or an underdog story,” mentioned Sevier. “We have some horror films, we have a lot of comedy this year, we have some family made movies. A couple of movies that took people decades to finish, and then they finally finished the film. We have three different movies about cryptids this year. That’s things like bigfoot, Slenderman, moth man. We also have a few different films highlighting the experiences of people with deafness. And we’re looking into trying to have some closed captioning this year. If we don’t get it this year, we’ll definitely have closed captioning next year. We’re always expanding what we can offer filmmakers and attendees.”

“Really, it’s about the people. It’s really a handmade bespoke feeling, relational festival, and I want to keep coming back every year,” mentioned Ken White, a poet, screenwriter, and director who’s a long-time supporter and participant of the pageant.

White, a professor on the University of Nebraska Omaha, will likely be bringing the quick movie “Release,” written by pupil Anthony Ochoa, to the pageant.

“It’s about a young man who is having a hard time getting over the loss of his best friend what he chooses to do about that. It’s pretty dark and we did our best to handle the sensitive content with as much grace as possible,” mentioned White, who directed the movie due to the nonprofit Nebraska Film Initiative.

White obtained his MFA from the University of Montana and made his first look on the pageant in 2019 with the movie “The Conservationist.”

“I love the festival, I love the people, and I want to keep coming back. So as we make more of these student-written short films, I want to start sending them there and let the students in Nebraska know there’s a great place in the mountains where you can go and screen your films,” mentioned White.

International places the place pageant movies have been shot embrace Ireland, India, and the Middle East.

Other occasions through the pageant embrace reside music and comedy, and a reside screenplay studying that includes native actors, with loads of alternatives for networking.

“This is a great opportunity to meet some really genuine filmmakers. Butte is not an easy city to get to. There are a lot of people from all over the world who are flying into Montana this weekend to be present when audiences get to see their film,” mentioned Sevier. They are going to have lanyards on and anyone in Butte or the encompassing space that’s excited about filmmaking, you’re going to satisfy some actually approachable filmmakers who can provide you ideas and tips, speak about how they began out, what they wished that they had completed in a different way, and enable you make connections.”

“You never know where you’re going to find your next dear collaborator and that’s what it takes. It’s really a people business of expression rather than all the mechanisms of what we think film and filmmaking is,” mentioned White. “You have to have that in order to get the film make, but it’s really about the people behind it.”

And for people who wish to take a hands-on method, the Orphan Girl Theatre and Butte Halloween are serving to to placed on a particular results workshop on Friday at 5 p.m.

“And they are going to teach us some kind of gory things about how to make realistic making movie blood and talk about tips and tricks for working on special effects on a budget,” mentioned Sevier.

The pageant is grant and donation funded, primarily by Butte’s Tourism Business Improvement District.

For an entire schedule, go to the festival website.

“When I lived in Montana, I would drive four hours in the snow to see an eighth-grade basketball game. So, if you are within 200 miles and the roads are clear, get to the Covellite International Film Festival. It’s really fun, the people are great, the films are fantastic,” mentioned White.