Festival History

“]The Poppy Jasper Film Festival celebrates its tenth year of movie magic in 2013! Our event got its start when local businessman Bill Leaman suggested hosting a cinema-themed fundraising event for assisting the Morgan Hill Access TV station. None of the original organizers had ever put on a film festival before, but somehow, their passion for the project drove them to create a fun and friendly movie-focused celebration in Morgan Hill, California. They devoted the festival to cinematic art efforts no longer than 30 minutes made by independent filmmakers.

The festival founders formed a separate group that began meeting regularly to figure out the overall look and feel of the festival. The group decided to name their festival after poppy jasper, a semi-precious gemstone found only in Morgan Hill. An early idea – now a film festival tradition – was to embed a piece of poppy jasper into each of the award plaques and reflect the gemstone’s motif within the festival logo and posters so filmmakers and attendees could “walk away with a piece of Morgan Hill.”

As with every enterprise, it took months of hard work and dedicated volunteer effort to organize the first Poppy Jasper Film Festival back in 2004. That first year, Oscar-winning special effects artist John Bruno (“Terminator,” “True Lies,” “Titanic” and “The Abyss”) was the keynote speaker.

The following year, keynote speaker Victor Miller, writer of the highly successful “Friday the 13^th” franchise, was so impressed by the supportive atmosphere of a small-town film festival that he continued on as a member of the board of directors. The third year, the event became an “international” festival with many films produced outside the United States.

The Poppy Jasper Film Festival has grown to create a unique event that celebrates the cinematic arts. Every year it screens about 60 films, each carefully selected from the many submissions, a high number coming from outside the United States which makes it truly international.