Film festival poster for 2023 revealed in Fort Smith

The 2023 Fort Smith International Film Festival poster has been unveiled to promote the August festival.

Sara Putnam of the Fort Smith bookstore Bookish, Kody Ford of the Arkansas Cinema Society, Brandon Chase Goldsmith and Nance Pop, director and filmmaker of "Poets are the Destroyers," showed off the poster at the weekly film screening May 18 in the Bakery District.

Before the show, the Fort Smith International Film Festival revealed their 2023 Poster designed by Alex Williamson. As one of the world’s top graphic artists, Williamson has created work for The Wall Street Journal, Adidas, the World Health Organization, Guinness, Time magazine, The Economist, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Fortune, according to a news release from festival promoters. 

“I played with and developed ideas from the language of cameras and film making — screens, apertures, viewfinders, projection, film, both celluloid and digital, persistence of vision and repetition — exploring the ideas and visuals of projected light as well as the technical idea of focus, both in camera and in projection and vision — in particular using this as a device to manipulate and abstract the imagery,” Williamson said.

Goldsmith, the film festival founder in Fort Smith, said, "I met Alex while he was doing his residency at UAFS last fall. I was blown away by his work and his process. We had some conversations about the festival, and I was absolutely thrilled when he agreed to design our 2023 poster." 

University of Arkansas-Fort Smith professor Bryan Alexis collaborated with Williamson on the design.  

Williamson is a commercial illustrator, graphic artist and academic based in the United Kingdom. 

The Thursday movie night features Coke Rioboo, winner of a Goya Award. Rioboo won best animation for "Made in Spain" at the 2021 Fort Smith film festival. The film will be shown in The Bakery District at 7 p.m.

The 2023 film festival in Fort Smith will be held Aug. 25-26 at Temple Live.