To start the 2025 Prize Fest season with a bang, the Prize Foundation held a kickoff party and the Golden Lens competition on January 14.
The party revived the creative community of Shreveport and Bossier by connecting local creatives to compete in Prize Fest. 2025 marks the 14th season for the festival, and Gregory Kallenberg, Prize Foundation founder and executive director, says the party is a great start to the season.
“When creative people in Shreveport and Bossier are able to collect ourselves and celebrate ourselves, that, to me, the goal has been accomplished,” Kallenberg says.
At the celebration, Film Prize announced the opening of submissions for the season. Actors, producers, directors, technicians and more were invited to mingle and begin working for the competition’s $50,000 cash prize.
"While we’ll certainly be ringing a bell and welcoming people from all over the country to come to Shreveport to make their films for Film Prize, we’re also here to celebrate the people who are here in our city who do creative things and are wanting to be a part of that creative class and build something amazing that is unlike any other place in the country,” Kallenberg says.
The Golden Lens final showcase was held at the competition, the newest addition to the Prize Fest circuit. Kallenberg says the competition was created to award photographers, a group not previously included in the festival’s activities.
"One of the things that I really wanted to do was find a place where photographers would also have the same opportunities that filmmakers and musicians and comedians and chefs all have at Prize Fest,” he says.
To achieve that, the Golden Lens competition offers up to a $1000 reward to photographers who capture Shreveport and Bossier. Kallenberg says that competitors can come from anywhere, as long as the submissions are of the cities.
So, you’ve really got this incredible mix of architectural photos, photos of people, and also photos of the Red River. You know, photos of the equestrian life, the bird life that lives in the wilderness that’s right there.
In addition, the time frame for the competition allows submissions for photos of the previous season of Prize Fest. Kallenberg says this is special to him.
"Really, watching these photographers, again not just from Shreveport and Bossier but from all over the country, come to our area and shoot Prize Fest through their eyes...it's just something that gives an incredible and unique perspective,” he says.
“Photographers came from all over the country to be a part of this because, again, if you look at what the Prize Foundation does, is we celebrate creativity. And, we want to build that community. We want to bring people to our city that will help us grow and become something even better than we are,” Kallenberg says. “Prize Foundation and Prize Fest is, really, home-grown through the eyes of people who see our city a different way. The same way that a photographer comes in and really puts an eye to something that every-day people who work downtown, like myself, don’t see it as much.”
For the third annual Golden Lens, Jacob Mitchell’s Blue in Green won Judge’s Choice award for $1000, and the Audience Choice award for $500 went to Jill Stripling’s Stillness.
“You know, everything that we do has, kind of, an “evil plan” to it,” Kallenberg says. “And what we wanted people to do was really show off Shreveport’s downtown and Bossier’s downtown, and the finalists did more than that. They really have created and captured something amazingly special, and it really does capture the character of both Shreveport and Bossier’s downtown.”
With red River Radio News, I am Alaina Atnip.