Our Story~

In 2016 Carl Meadows and his husband Les Dick, moved from downtown
Vancouver to Penticton and believed that their new town needed a vibrant
Film Festival. In 2017, he aligned the film festival dream with an ‘Arts Rising’
Festival in Penticton, led by the Penticton Arts Council (PAC), called the 48
Hour Film relay. This was the launch of the future Snakebite Film Festival with
the tag line “If you don’t recoil, you are probably dead”.
In 2018, Snakebite Film Festival opened with the Feature Film by local
filmmaker Maddy Tebbutt called “The Darlings”. The festival was a huge
success, and the momentum kept growing. Following this, a group of film
lovers, producers, artists and creators came together to create the Vision of
the Film Festival. ‘Awakening Culture, Uniting Communities’. The mission is to
feature films that would ‘bridge the gap of knowledge, understanding and
acceptance through film’.
In 2024, Snakebite joined forces with the Okanagan Society for
Independent Filmmaking (OSIF) and co-created the wildly successful 5-day
film challenge that is part of the annual festival.
In October 2025, Snakebite Film Festival Society became a registered
charity with a purpose to advance the public's appreciation of the arts by
providing and exhibiting high quality films focusing on diversity, inclusion and
storytelling.

The rest is history~