Tim League.
The Australian International Movie Convention will bring Tim League – Founder/CEO of Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Drafthouse Films and Fantastic Fest – to the Gold Coast as guest speaker.
League, who will present a stand-alone session and participate in the 'Trends in Cinema' panel discussion at the convention, is known for his zero tolerance policy on mobile phones, as well as for his social media savvy and highly curated program.
League opened his first cinema in 1994, in Tejon, California. It closed the next year. League and his wife Karrie loaded a truck with 200 seats, a projector, a screen and speakers, and headed to Texas to start the Alamo Drafthouse, which has grown to 25 locations and 183 screens with eight new locations currently in development.
Earlier this year, League floated the idea of gender neutral bathrooms in one of his chain's new locations in Austin, and he blasted AMC's (swiftly-dumped) plan to allow texting in its theatres. AMC, like Hoyts, is owned by Chinese chain Wanda.
League also co-founded Fantastic Fest, the largest genre film festival in the US, and distribution label Drafthouse Films, whose releases include The Act of Killing and 20,000 Days on Earth. The imprint's first release was Chris Morris' acclaimed Four Lions (2010) – the film that Abe Forsythe recently told IF was a key inspiration for his second feature Down Under.
Drafthouse was also responsible for the re-release of Wake in Fright in North America.
Not content to merely exhibit films, League is also making them. He was the executive producer of 2010 slasher Red White & Blue, starring our own Noah Taylor, as well as horror anthology The ABCs of Death.