In college, Greg Sorvig was a Disney intern, an experience that included working as a tour guide at The Great Movie Ride at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
The experience didn’t give him a love of movies — he’d already had one, since seeing Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom at age four. But his Disney summers did give him an appreciation for great hospitality.
It shines through in the two Indianapolis festivals for which Sorvig serves as the artistic director: The Heartland Film Festival, and its spinoff, the Indy Shorts Film Festival.
Sorvig notes that Disney teaches hospitality to all its theme park employees “regardless of whether you’re the next CEO or the next janitorial intern.” The idea is that guests will feel welcomed by everyone they meet.
That’s also the philosophy of Heartland and Indy Shorts, both of which are on our list of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee and the 25 Coolest Film Festivals.
“We want the filmmakers to feel like the stars of our show,” says Heartland Film president Michael Ault, who leads both festivals.
He came to Heartland Film, which runs both festivals, nearly a decade ago, after years of success in fundraising for hospitals. The Heartland Film Festival was already well-established — it just marked its 34th year — but Ault and Sorvig made a point of visiting film festivals around the world to look for ways they could innovate.
One thing they noticed was that some festivals left filmmakers to fend for themselves. And they resolved to do better.
“Any filmmaker that attended our festival was treated like royalty — we’re grateful they were coming to Indianapolis to share their story,” Ault explains.
Adds Sorvig: “Hoosier hospitality is our number one export.”
While some festivals can benefit from an exotic locale, Heartland’s power is its people.
“We’re not trying to compete with any other festivals as far as being better than them or offering more things than them,” Ault says. “We’re trying to create our own vibe and our own festival that is unique to Heartland Film and to Indianapolis. We don’t have the mountains or the ocean to come to and see. So what you come to in Indianapolis is the experience and the camaraderie of other filmmakers and just the pure creation of what your film is, and we celebrate that.”
Even without mountains and oceans, there are lovely things about the Midwestern metropolis, from art deco architecture to stirring monuments to a stately network of canals. The many museums include the Kurt Vonnegut Museum, which pays tribute to the city’s most famous author, and Newfields, a 152-acre cultural campus featuring art galleries and gardens, which hosts unforgettable outdoor screenings for the festivals.
Look up and you’ll see cool murals on the sides of buildings, and the downtown streets are packed on game nights with fans of the Indiana Pacers, Fever and Colts.
The city is full of strange surprises, like the underground bank vault that hosted parties at the latest editions of the festivals. One of its coolest spots is the Atheneum, a stately multi-use building co-designed by Vonnegut’s grandfather that’s one of the best places in town to stop for a drink.
Heartland and Indy Shorts: Always Building
As friendly as Heartland and Indy Shorts are, the festivals don’t just run on friendliness. They’re also known as essential awards stops: Indy Shorts, held each July, is Oscar qualifying in all three categories, and Heartland arrives in October, when Oscars campaign season picks up.
They’re also characterized by business acumen. All the heart and film fanaticism in the world don’t count for much if a festival can’t afford to stay in business. Ault’s expertise in corporate relationships and development has boosted Heartland Film and Indianapolis overall. He was promoted to president of the organization in 2021.
Ault, who grew up just outside the city, leverages longstanding community connections to build a reliable network of sponsors. Just as the festivals showcase great films, they also find dynamic ways to celebrate those sponsors.
The latest Indy Shorts, for example, was sponsored by local business F.A. Wilhelm Construction Co. So the festival adopted a “construction” theme that included participants dressing up in safety vests and plastic hard hats.
Seeing Sorvig in costume during Q&As is one of the tip-offs that the festival organizers take films seriously, but not themselves.
Many filmmakers resolve to go out of their way to meet Sorvig, since he’s also a senior associate programmer for the Tribeca Festival shorts team. But they find that they never have to go too far out of their way.
He and Ault are everywhere during the festival, including at frequent afterhours spot Pins Mechanical Co., where filmmakers play game after icebreaking game of duckpin bowling. The bowling alley is located in the city’s thriving Bottleneck District, near the Living Room Theaters, home to most of the screenings.
“I’m like, ‘Hey, we’ll have time to talk. I’ll do some duckpin bowling with you. I’ll probably be introducing your screening,’” Sorvig says.
Breaking Out Shorts
One example of the festival combining hospitality and smart business was the decision to spin off Indy Shorts.
The Heartland festival organizers realized that they could better serve audiences and filmmakers by giving shorts their own festival — a decision that was validated not only by the Oscar qualification status for Indy Shorts, but by the packed screenings and parties it hosts.
“It’s a tribute to the filmmakers, because we wanted to respect them and really give them their platform to talk about shorts and to present their short films. And don’t think you could even plan something like the national and international recognition the festival has received,” Ault observes.
Ault is proof that audiences will turn out for a shorts festival if you give them a chance. Before he joined Heartland Film, he notes, “I’d never seen a short film before — I didn’t even really know why we did short films.
“Then I saw my very first one and fell in love with it,” he adds. “Now one of my favorite things is to watch short films.”
Programming
The festivals draw top films — the latest edition of Heartland included Nuremberg and Rental Family, among others — and are known for pleasing audiences without shirking away from provocative stories.
Sorvig says they tend to avoid “super shock value” and niche films in favor of films that can open dialogue.
“We want you to be entertained, but we want to hopefully spark some kind of conversation, or thinking about something in a different way, or connecting with people again – first in silence, through a film, having that connection — and then in talking about it after,” he says. “It’s a combination of artistic vision and technical execution.”
Main image: Heartland Film artistic director Greg Sorvig, left, and president Michael Ault. Heartland Film
