Being named the new executive director of a nonprofit organization as storied as BendFilm Festival, which kicks off its 21st year of celebrating indie cinema on Wednesday, Oct. 10, would surely be daunting — for most people.

Fortunately, Giancarlo Gatto already knew the organization well, having first joined the BendFilm board a decade ago, not too many years after moving to Bend in 2012 with his wife and kids. Originally from Philadelphia, Gatto studied mass media communications in college. He worked in music production and web design before the dotcom bust led him to recalibrate and move into finance work, specifically the mortgage industry.

Getting on board

That background made him uniquely poised for a position on the BendFilm board, something he hadn’t known when he bought himself a BendFilm T-shirt, eager to plug into the creative community but not yet having attended BendFilm.

“I was at a Halloween party for one of my kids and somebody was there, and they said, ‘Oh, have you been to the festival?’” Gatto told this reporter last week over coffee.

“Embarrassingly, no,” was his reply. “I bought the T-shirt because I’m like, ‘I’m going to the festival.’”

“And they were like, ‘Well, I’m on the board. We need somebody on the board with a finance background. Would you like to join?’”

He visited BendFilm’s office and was asked to volunteer at the festival, where he was a venue manager, as well as join the board.

“I was just thrilled to be a part of it,” he said. A few years later, he became the board president, a capacity in which he served for for five years, before stepping down early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gatto focused professionally on music production and DJing as the pandemic stretched on. While mortgage work has an aspect of creative problem solving to it, he said, getting back to working in music “was pretty eye-opening to me, just to be in community and that creative space. It was really like, this is my community, and these are my people.”

In summer 2023, BendFilm began its search for a new executive director to replace former director Todd Looby, who’d been in the role for 10 years previously (Ann Witsil served as interim executive director).

The role seemed as great as the timing to Gatto. Despite his own long history with BendFilm, Gatto was not a shoo-in, describing the longest, most rigorous interview and vetting process he’d ever experienced.

“It was a very, very formal process,” he said. Most job interviews he’d had over the past couple of decades have been pretty informal, “This was like, ‘Give us a 15-minute presentation on your budget forecasting,’ or whatever it was. And you’d get done, and they’d be like, ‘OK, thank you. Next question.’”

He smiled and laughed as he recalled the process. BendFilm announced his hiring in November.

BendFilm appoints Giancarlo Gatto as new executive director

“I have an interesting fit here, because I know this organization well, and I have all this business and finance history, and really what this position is — we’re a big organization now — it’s a business job. It’s management. It’s finance. It’s all those things,” he said.

A different perspective

Gatto had a sense of the day-to-day work at BendFilm from his time on the board and as its president, working as executive director for the past year has still been eye opening seeing the innerworkings up close to meeting with community members and other organizations.

One of those partnering institutions is the long-running Caldera Arts, whose Sisters-area facility will host Basecamp, BendFilm’s new, three-day immersive retreat for 40 filmmakers. It starts Monday, and leads directly into this year’s facility, with mentors including indie-film producer Christine Vachon (“Past Lives”) and Aaron Schimberg (“A Different Man”).

Gatto and Clay Pruitt, director of education, weren’t sure how many, if any applicants they’d have for the all-inclusive retreat, only to receive 200 “high-quality” applications.

The retreat will lead seamlessly into the festival, with a block-party for Basecamp attendees and incoming festival filmmakers Wednesday night between Scalehouse Gallery, this year’s info and ticket hub for BendFilm, and Tin Pan Theater, the small arthouse cinema owned by BendFilm.

Though that party isn’t open to the public, the opening night party 8 p.m. Oct. 10 at The Capitol, as well as the Oct. 11 Filmmaker Social Hour (4 p.m.) After-party (8 p.m.) and Oct. 12’s Awards Ceremony (7 p.m.) and Festival Wrap Party (9 p.m.), are all open to the public.

“An all-access pass gets you into all the parties, which are going to be great this year,” Gatto said. “I say the best way to attend it is to buy a pass. You can go on and reserve tickets to any of the screenings.”

“We likely will have our most well-attended festival ever,” he added. “We’re 20 percent higher in pass sales than we were at this point last year. And last year matched our previous best year, which was 2019, prior to Covid.”

It’s also been an encouraging year for film submissions — almost 3,000 — winnowed down to the 120 creme de la creme films screening this year at BendFilm.

“All metrics are (saying) that the community is engaged, and people are excited about the festival,” Gatto said.

Buying individual tickets to films is also a valid option. Gatto urges anyone who is hesitant to attend because they feel they don’t know enough about indie filmmaking to at least go that route.

“These are just movies. They’re just a film to come and see. There’s not going to be a quiz,” he said. “I want people to feel like it is a festival for everyone, not just cinephiles. These are good films. … Going in kind of blind is kind of the fun of it. A lot of movies you go to, you’ve seen a 2½-minute trailer, and you know the whole plot. This is like, ‘I don’t know what this is going to be. Let’s just go in and have an experience.’”

For more information on BendFilm, visit bendfilm.org.