When Randi Kleiner and Kaily Smith Westbrook first pitched , they envisioned it as the Sundance Film Festival of television — an answer to the lack of industry-friendly, consumer-ready events that lauded new TV content while exploring the future of the business.
The responses were not universally encouraging.
If you go
SeriesFest Season 5. TV pilot festival and juried competition with screenings, performances, panels and more. June 21-26 at the Sie FilmCenter, 2510 E. Colfax Ave. $12 per screening; $60 for a six-pack; $90 for a full-fest screening pass. Visit for the lineup and schedule.
“There was a lot of doubt in us being able to do it so quickly,” said Westbrook, now chief content officer for SeriesFest, which . “We announced it on February 1 and were doing the festival in June. We had a lot of phone calls where people were initially freaked out because we were doing it too fast, and also because we were women. ‘You girls should wait a year. There’s no way you’re going to be able to pull this off.’ “
Challenging, too, was the fact that SeriesFest was not a film festival — which most of us are familiar with — but rather one of a handful of burgeoning TV festivals around North America.
That meant Kleiner and Westbrook had to educate people on what a TV festival was (hint: itap a lot like a film festival), or the fact that it could work at all. And besides, weren’t there already several film-adjacent mini-festivals around the state, from Aspen’s prestigious Shortsfest to the Denver Film Society’s annual Women + Film event?
“The Denver Film Society was actually our first partner, which was amazing,” Westbrook said. “Britta (Erickson, and, currently, interim leader) really made that possible for us, and a lot of other things fell into place.”
That included the use of DFS’s home theaters at the Sie FilmCenter, where the festival is still centered. It didn’t hurt that Kleiner and Westbrook were experienced producers, with TV credits to boot.
Fast forward to Season 5, as Kleiner and Westbrook are calling this year’s event, and SeriesFest has become one of the , along with this month’s ATX Television Festival in Austin, Texas; Banff World Media Festival in Banff, Canada; and the Monte-Carlo TV Festival in Monaco.
SeriesFest 2019 will feature , building on the previous four years of luring celebrities, producers and up-and-coming talent away from the coasts for a week of discovery, deal-making and music in Colorado.
Kleiner and Westbrook are particularly proud of that last one.
“This year’s Red Rocks show sold out in six hours,” Kleiner, SeriesFestap CEO, said in reference to the June 24 Stevie Wonder concert at the Morrison amphitheater — Wonder’s first-ever appearance there — as part of a TV and Music tribute. Past years have featured artists such as Lauryn Hill, Common and Destiny’s Child, as well as large-format screenings and premieres like the Kevin Costner vehicle “Yellowstone.”
Itap a tall order for a small company. But donations and corporate sponsors have helped SeriesFest transform itself into a nonprofit while at the same time setting up a permanent office in Denver that produces year-round, national programming. Meanwhile, talent from NBC, the Paramount Network, Starz and other established brands has provided both content and support for SeriesFest programming and, crucially, the workshops aimed at helping upstart and marginalized creators.
“We’ve seen exponential growth every year,” Kleiner said of the festival, which is open to the public via ticketed events. Last year saw a 46 percent increase in sales over the preceding year, with 12,500 tickets distributed. “And that means more industry executives coming in and seeing everything thatap here. But we’ve also made a concerted effort to reach out to local audiences” (full disclosure: As a member of the local media, I have been a panel moderator at SeriesFest in the past).
Since its debut, SeriesFest has seen a major shift in the way TV is consumed, with digital streaming replacing destination-viewing on home screens. But SeriesFest was always designed to be nimble, Kleiner said. Over the years it has directly addressed the technological changes and the way they’ve affected the creative side of the industry.
In fact, this year’s theme is “The Year of Innovation,” which will be underlined with public conversations among insiders. They include Ted Sarandos and Mike Fries (of Netflix) on June 21, Elvis Mitchell (former New York Times film critic) and Rachel Brill (Epix) on June 23, and Jane Turton (All3Media) and Bob Leighton (Liberty Global) on June 24.
Unscripted or “reality” TV, digital shorts, branded content and even instructional videos with narrative overtures, such as the kind made my (formerly Craftsy), will also be represented alongside edgy, late-night programming, independent pilots, and a festival-wrapping awards ceremony.
Then there’s SeriesFestap women’s directing mentorship, which allows women to shadow a director on a Shondaland series (writer-producer Shonda Rhimes created “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal” and many more). The winner of the will be announced at SeriesFestap “Shondaland 2.0” panel on June 23.
And the celebrities are back in the form of Starz’ “The Rook,” featuring Emma Greenwell, Joely Richardson, Olivia Munn in-person (June 21); the world premiere of NBC’s “Bluff City Law,” with stars Jimmy Smits, Caitlin McGee and Barry Sloane (June 22); “Bachelor” survivor JoJo Fletcher and her new CNBC series “Crash Pad” (June 22); hip-hop mogul Jermaine Dupri and his So So Def Recordings documentary (June 23), and dozens more.
“We’ve seen shows renewed as a result of their publicity from SeriesFest, and now that the Emmys have been moved back, on how networks are using SeriesFest and similar events to shop their contenders,” Kleiner said. ”Itap important to us that the community understands this is more than just a festival now. We’re really a year-round organization aimed at helping content creators.”
The kind, perhaps, that would happily share its resources and knowledge with the next generation of festival creators.
