Written by Michael O’Hearn

Photos submitted by Kirk Gollwitzer and Nischal Poudyal

According to Frank Calo, veteran filmmaker and producer, the film industry is not an easy thing to get into and, in order to be successful, those who aspire to dive into the shark tank have to “love what they do or they will be eaten alive.”

This process is even more grueling if you’re a filmmaker wanting to establish yourself in the film industry. Shopping the project to various distributors and festivals before striking the golden deal can take years of preparation and perseverance.

For the second year in a row, the Polk County Film Initiative (PCFI) is holding their Tryon International Film Festival (TRIFF) Oct. 7-9, which offers aspiring filmmakers a stage for their projects and a gateway into the film industry from the ground up.

Director of Operations Beau Menetre with the Tryon-based PCFI, said the 2015 inaugural film festival was highly successful with a good turnout. Menetre added this year’s festival will build on last year’s successes.

“This year will definitely be better in terms of content and organization, and we’ve been working on making things more streamlined this year,” Menetre said, referring to Director of Marketing Kirk Gollwitzer at PCFI, who co-founded TRIFF with Menetre. “Last year was a little bit chaotic because, I think with a first year event you have no real expectations about what the delivery is. This year, we kind of know what to expect — from venues, to the filmmakers, all the way down to who we buy our merchandise from.”

According to Menetre, an opening gala session will be held at the Tryon Fine Arts Center for the PBS documentary “American Epic,” a four-part documentary detailing the rise of early-recorded music, on Friday, Oct. 7. Gollwitzer said this film is executive produced by Robert Redford and presented by T-Bone Burnett and Jack White.

“This film is done by two filmmakers in the U.K., and so these two filmmakers produced this fabulous documentary that is narrated by Robert Redford and it’s about the beginnings of modern music recording on records,” Gollwitzer said. “The project has secured the enthusiastic participation of a superb roster of high profile artists. The music of the 1920s had a huge influence on bands like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones.”

Starting with “Dark Horse,” a documentary film directed by Louise Osmond and distributed by Sony Pictures Classics, the film festival will offer the community a chance to see approximately 35 films vying for the best prize in six categories from more than 10 countries including the United States, according to Menetre. Filmmakers from around the globe including Iran, France, Kazakhstan and Italy have all submitted films to the small international festival.

One of the 35 films submitted this year is “Lama La” from director Nischal Poudyal, who lives in Kathmandu, Nepal. The film will hold its world premiere in Tryon during the film festival and is presented in part by the PCFI along with Avenue Pictures and Ananaya Cinemakers.

“Lama La means ‘the teacher’ or ‘the monk’ and it’s a language from Tibet, and it’s about a monk who is seeking higher education,” Poudyal said. “I think I can say for me and everyone here with ‘Lama La’ that we are really excited to be coming back to Tryon. Since I was a kid, the real essence of Buddhism always attracted me. I enrolled in a Buddhist course in Kathmandu University in 2014 and this was a key inspiration for ‘Lama La.’ I started writing the script while I was learning the basics of Buddhism in a monastery.”

Poudyal’s first film, “Riingata,” was selected in numerous film festivals around the world and won the Best International Film at the Tryon Film Festival in 2015. Poudyal started his career with short films, and his first short film was selected to be screened at the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival in 2009.

“Since my childhood, I always loved the idea and images. Film is the perfect combination of these two entities,” Poudyal explained. “I really, really love to be a part of film.”

Frank Calo is an independent film producer and director who has worked with the likes of Marlon Brando, Robert DeNiro, Queen Latifah and Ryan Gosling in his more than 20 years as a filmmaker, getting his start with the 1980s film “Ghostbusters II.”

Calo will be holding a two-hour Q&A breakout session during the festival to talk to attendees about how to get involved with the film industry, and to discuss topics ranging from financing a film to securing a distributor for the finished product. According to Menetre, the PCFI will potentially have eight breakout sessions during the course of the two-day festival.

“After graduating from the film school at NYU, I didn’t know what I was going to do, and that’s normal because a lot of times, these schools don’t teach you what to do in real life,” Calo said. “I was then asked to speak at Columbia University and I was nervous, but I asked one simple question about film production and I realized that these people didn’t have real life experience with film production because film schools don’t offer that and I think they should.”

Calo said he then became instrumental in having his students work with real theatre actors to get the outside experience separate from the classroom. His breakout session will provide an overall view on the production of films for people of all skill levels with a gear towards the reality of the business today.

The festival, according to Gollwitzer, is a melting pot of filmmakers from across the world wanting to get their foot in the door of the film industry. He said the Polk County Film Initiative is interested in film from a business perspective and wants to bring filmmakers to western North Carolina or the state to shoot their movies.

“One thing to highlight is that we’ve had people wonder what a film festival is, even myself earlier on. This is a good opportunity to talk about what the Polk County Film Initiative is and it’s our objective overall to bring film production to western North Carolina or North Carolina,” Gollwitzer explained. “We’re interested in it as a company and as an art, but the film festival is a vehicle for independent filmmakers and these are people who are, basically, outside a major motion picture studio. It’s almost like writing a novel or a book.

“You’ve got to get it to a publisher and to do that you’ve got to go through agents, if you find an agent maybe, and film festivals are a way for filmmakers to take their art and get them into the film festival circuit. Some do 70 film festivals in a year or two, and if they win a category, that can get the attention of what they call distributors. Those are the guys that, through their booking people, get these films sold to theaters around the world. This is the course of action filmmakers do to get their stuff out there.”