"Awakening Culture, Uniting Communities."

Snakebite Beginnings:

 

In 2017 Carl Meadows believed that Penticton needed a Film Festival. Carl and his husband Les were major sponsors of the Vancouver Queer Film Festival called “Out on Screen” and were part of the original Directors Guild. 

 

In 2017, Carl and Les moved to Penticton and could not imagine life without an annual film festival. In 2017 Carl aligned with the Arts Rising Festival in Penticton, that was led by the Penticton Arts Council. The vision was to host the first film event called the 48 Hour Film relay. This was the launch of Snakebite Film Festival. Carl wanted to show films to bridge the community and create dialogue on important issues. This is where the name came from as the vision was to show films that made people “recoil”, hence the festival name Snakebite. 

 

In 2018, was the first showing of a Feature Film by local filmmaker Maddy Tebbutt called “The Darlings”. It was a hit, and the momentum kept growing. Following this, a group of people were brought together to create the Vision of the Film Festival. “Awakening Culture, Uniting Communities. 

 

The festival took a hiatus during the Pandemic and came back with a Big Bite in 2023 with the opening Sing-a-long of Grease. It was a major success with most of the films sold out with over 650 Tickets/passes sold. 

 

In 2024, Snakebite joined forces with the Okanagan Society for Independent Filmmaking (OSIF) which includes a Filmmaking Bursary for young filmmakers and a collaboration with OSIF to produce short films for the Snakebite Film Festival. The Snakebite Film Festival has become one of the largest winter festivals.