Rita House Film Festival, Los Angeles

Welcome! The Rita House Film Festival, Los Angeles (RHFFLA) is a monthly short film screening series hosted at Rita House, a historic hybrid space for coworking, events, and filming located in West Hollywood/ Park La Brea. Our festival namesake Rita Riggs, an award winning costume designer, worked out of this very building with film legends such as Norman Lear and Alfred Hitchcock. Founding partners, architects Tash Rahbar and Scott Strumwasser, created and named Rita House in 2017 to honor Rita’s legacy. Now, we’re bringing the cinema back home, to Rita House, a vibrant community of artists and creators.

Our mission is to present thought-provoking and compelling shorts from filmmakers of all backgrounds and experience levels, in any genre, from across the planet. We seek to expose great work to great audiences and get conversations started. Film submissions are accepted year-round and programming is built as the work comes in.

Each screening runs roughly 90 minutes, showcasing 9-12 films (with each short running between 10 and 25 minutes) plus an intermission and Q&A. Filmmakers as well as cast and crew are encouraged to attend and participate in the Q&A.

All submissions will be notified of the selection status via Film Freeway /direct email.

Accepted submissions will receive a festival laurel and are eligible for the "Audience Choice" award, which goes to the top two vote-getters in each session. Audience Choice Award recipients will receive a separate unique laurel.

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Rita House is a multi-use coworking, event and filming space for multi-hyphenate people to work and make passions come into being. Originally built in 1926 as a Prop Design Studio for film and television, the Spanish Colonial style building then became a violin factory producing thousands of violins and violas for schools throughout the country. In 1967, Award Winning Costume Designer Rita Riggs purchased the building using the top floor as her studio and created a creative coworking space on the other two floors. Rita passed the building to Tash Rahbar and Scott Strumwasser, who had been operating their film there for over thirty years. After restoring and transforming the nearly 100 year old building they created the sanctuary for creative exploration and pursuit it is today in Rita's honor. Learn more: www.ritahouse.com

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Festival Director Matthew Dunehoo previously ran The First Friday Film Festival, Kansas City, a monthly screening series occurring on the first Friday of the month at a theater in downtown KCMO during the open gallery walks for five years. Dunehoo is also Writer, Director, Producer and Podcast Host. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4087192/

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A note about the neighborhood: Park Labrea/West Hollywood is at the cultural and geographical heart of the Los Angeles region, surrounded by must-see hotspots in every direction.

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SUBMITTING

RHFFLA is a monthly film festival. Though FilmFreeway does not have a specific system in place for recurring festivals yet, the submission procedure is pretty straightforward. Submit your film to us anytime for consideration, regardless of premiere status, year of completion, budget. All submissions will be notified of the judging status via email. Accepted submissions will receive a festival laurel and are eligible for the "Audience Choice" award, which goes to the top two vote-getters in each session.

Fee Waiver: Our submission fee covers production expenses but we don't want it to inhibit your submitting. If you are a filmmaker facing financial hardship but you feel it's important to submit your work, please get in touch. We will consider granting a fee waiver.

Thanks, and we look forward to reviewing your submissions!