The River Bend Film Festival (2002–2016 here) — the festival the city founded and lost

Founded 2002, Indiana University South Bend · Century Center from 2009 · Goshen from 2016

The founding: The River Bend Film Festival is South Bend's own foundation in the film world, and its history is the festival's own. It was founded in 2002 in South Bend by a group of filmmakers and film enthusiasts, with its roots on the campus of Indiana University South Bend, where it began as the IU-South Bend Independent Video & Filmmakers Festival. The working organization behind it was Mid America Filmmakers: Tim Richardson, the festival's director, partnered with other local filmmakers to form the association, as In Michiana's 2011 account tells it, and the association — a 501(c)(3) in the federal record from October 2005, still meeting in South Bend in the present record — grew the festival with the Raclin School of the Arts among its sponsors. By its second year the festival ran two days; its audience was regional from the start, drawing, as the 2011 account puts it, indie movie lovers from the Michiana area to neighbouring states, all flocking to South Bend.

The downtown years, and the leaving: By 2009 the festival had relocated to the Century Center in downtown South Bend, where its third annual showcase in that room filled the March 2011 weekend — kick-off screening at IU South Bend, a dozen volunteers, Richardson directing and Joe Haase chairing the program. And there the South Bend record ends, because in 2016 the festival moved thirty miles east to Goshen, where its opening season, the festival's own history says, surpassed all previous attendance records — nearly tripling the previous sales, in the Goshen Record's account — and where it sits today, a four-day event screening more than eighty films from fifteen countries at the historic Goshen Theater and seven other downtown venues. The founding is this city's and the flourishing is Goshen's, and the entry prints both halves at their size: South Bend built the region's film festival out of a campus video show, kept it fourteen years, and lost it to a smaller city's walkable downtown — a civic episode of the film record that needs no gloss.

Sources

1. River Bend Film Festival, the festival's published history and press kit (riverbendfilmfest.com) — founded 2002 in South Bend by filmmakers and film enthusiasts; the IU-South Bend Independent Video & Filmmakers Festival origin; Mid America Filmmakers' support; the two-day format by the second year; the Century Center by 2009; the 2016 Goshen move and its record opening; the present four-day form, eighty films, fifteen countries.
2. In Michiana, March 2011 — the festival review: the third annual showcase at Century Center; the original title; Tim Richardson's partnership forming Mid America Filmmakers; the City of South Bend's invitation; Richardson and program chair Joe Haase; the Raclin School, Downtown South Bend and Notre Dame sponsors; the regional draw.
3. Federal nonprofit records for Mid America Filmmakers Inc (IRS-derived directories) — 501(c)(3), exempt status October 2005, South Bend / Notre Dame, Indiana addresses of record.
4. Mid America Filmmakers, the association's own site — its continuing South Bend meetings (The Annex, 501 Lincoln Way W; formerly at WNIT).
5. The Record, Goshen College, March–April 2016 and 2017 — the move to Goshen; the inaugural season's attendance nearly tripling previous sales.
6. Richardson Productions, the founder's professional biography — Tim Richardson, founder of the River Bend Film Festival and former president of Mid America Filmmakers; a South Bend filmmaker since 1998.