Sunday news so d’s r o
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Sunday EDITION
oxfordcitizen.com
Volume 2 | Issue 86
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Executive Director of the Oxford Film Festival has been there since the beginning
Inside 3 News
BY CHANING GREEN NEWS WRITER
Executive Director of the Oxford Film Festival, writer and filmmaker Melanie Addington has been with the event from the very beginning. The first year she moved to Oxford was the year the film festival launched. Born in Los Angles, Addington moved around a bit as a child. She spent a considerable amount of time growing up in San Diego and considers that to be her hometown. For her undergraduate studies, she attended California State University at San Marcos where she earned a bachelor’s degree in literature. Addington made her way to Oxford, as many do, by moving here to attend the university. She’d gotten into three graduate schools for journalism: New York University, a small school in Pittsburgh and Ole Miss. She chose Oxford because the cost of living was drastically cheaper than that of New York City and because she knew the state. Addington has family in Vicksburg and spent most of her childhood summers in the river town. Though, when she got to Oxford, graduate school did not seem like the preferable option, so Addington began working for the Oxford Eagle and stayed on staff there for about five years until she left to become the social media director of PMQ Pizza Magazine. During those years, she was heavily involved with the film festival. “I moved from San Diego where there is a very active independent film scene, so I was very excited that the film festival existed,” Addington said. “I went the first year and there were a couple screenings where I was the only person in the theater. I thought, ‘hm. This has potential.’ By year three I was a regular volunteer and by year five I was a co-director.” When Addington was a co-
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PHOTO BY DANIEL LEE PEREA COURTESY OF THE OXFORD FILM FESTIVAL
Melanie Addington has been with the Oxford Film Festival since the beginning, moving up the ranks to her current title of executive director. director, she worked with a dedicated team of volunteers. Absolutely everyone was a volunteer. None of the co-directors or other staff were compensated for the work they put into the festi-
val, it was just something they did out of love for the event. As the years went by, the film festival continued to grow. Soon co-directors were quitting and the group that
held the film festival afloat for so long was falling apart. They had families and lives and day jobs and the film festival simply outgrew them. TURN TO FILM PAGE 5
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