The Red Rose Film Festival is back for its 7th year with 75 films from 15 countries selected from approximately 200 submissions. The festival begins today, November 12, and films will be shown over four days at Penn Cinema in Lititz, Zoetropolis, and West Art. The awards will be presented on Saturday night in the IMAX theatre at Penn Cinema.
Ryan Shank started the Red Rose Film Festival in 2019; it drew over 1,000 people on its first weekend. The next year brought a pandemic and recession, and the festival almost folded. But Ryan navigated those challenges and has grown the festival into a nationally recognized event.
Shank grew up in Lancaster wanting to perform. “I wanted to be in the movies. I wanted to be on camera,” he says. He started performing at about age 15. Theater roles at Lancaster Catholic High School led to extra work, commercials, and small indie films.
He studied at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. An externship through Temple University then sent him to Los Angeles for a year, where he started as a marketing assistant at Warner Bros. “Essentially all I was doing was helping to write documents that the director didn’t want to write,” he says.
That was 2008, the year the economy came apart. When the externship ended, Shank came home and worked in financial services.
A move into making films
Then an opportunity came through his grandmother. “This is what my family and my grandmother were so great at,” Shank says. “Relationships in Lancaster.”
A filmmaker named David Godin was shooting a commercial in an apartment she owned, a spec ad for Chanel. The two became partners, with Shank as producer and Godin as the creative. They made spec ads at first, then real ones for American Express, Reebok and AT&T. “This is before content was content,” Shank says. The AT&T work took them to Cannes Lions, the advertising industry’s yearly festival on the French Riviera.
Godin met his future wife, a producer from New York City, on that trip. A while later, Shank saw a photo of the two of them out in New York. “And now he’s married with two kids,” Shank says.
Shank then joined the team planning the follow-up to the 2015 U.S. Women’s Open. That championship, played at Lancaster Country Club, drew a record 134,016 spectators, according to the U.S. Golf Association. Shank worked on the marketing team as sponsorship coordinator for the 2016 Open in California, his second long stretch on the West Coast.
A festival is born
The idea for the Red Rose came from Iowa. Shank and Godin made a documentary called “Mr. Polite” about Nelson Polite Sr., the Lancaster civil rights leader who served 14 years on City Council, including two years as its president.
The film was accepted into the Julien Dubuque International Film Festival, held each spring in Dubuque, a river city on the Mississippi. The festival is run by Susan Gorrell, whose husband, Ken Gorrell, has worked in movie special effects for three decades, with credits from “Forrest Gump” to “Transformers” and an Emmy for HBO’s “John Adams.” “He can make it rain when it’s sunny, and he can make fire when it’s dry,” Shank says.
Shank noticed the festival in Dubuque was focused on what filmmaking can do beyond the screen. “They didn’t focus on just the films and the art,” he says. “They focused on its impact on local infrastructure, and on tourism, and economy, and small business. And that’s where I was like, why don’t we have this in Lancaster?”
The first festival showed 76 films. The next spring, Shank told the Pennsylvania Film Industry Association that filmmakers kept stopping his team to ask, “This is your first year?”
“We almost died in 2020,” he says. “My wife, God bless her. She put up with me for many years at this point. I didn’t let it die. And she loved me enough to keep it going.”
The through line
Shank calls it the through line. “I am only doing what I’m doing because of relationships,” he says. “I always take care of the relationships that I’ve had.”
At home, he and Abby are foster parents, and they have been working to adopt. “We’re trying to round out the starting five,” he says.
The festival’s board works the same way. Its chair is Penn Ketchum, managing director of Penn Cinema. Its vice chair is Cheila Huettner, managing partner of Zoetropolis. Two filmmakers serve with them: Scott Lentz, founder of Lancaster Film & TV, and Michael Kelly of Portone Pictures.
“The people who are still on my board and have been there from the beginning, they’re there because they want to be,” he says. “It doesn’t matter who a quarterback is if they don’t have anybody to throw to.”
What success looks like
Ask Shank how he will know the festival worked, and he starts with one word. “I think the most important thing is sustainability,” he says.
He wants visiting filmmakers to leave Lancaster saying they liked the community. He also wants to keep the young filmmakers who grew up here, and he admits that is a hard sell.
“It’s hard to tell a 19-year-old, like, you can have a career here. You can have a life here in this industry,” he says. He won’t tell anyone to stay put. “I don’t say don’t go to LA. Don’t go to Atlanta, don’t go to New York. Like, no, go. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”
The measure he cares about most is whether more movies get made here. “My hope and success will come from whether or not more films are being produced here,” he says.
Shank is still a filmmaker himself, and he talks about the festival as an investment in the people who make films here. His family has worked in real estate for nearly six decades, he told The Hollywood Times last month. “I grew up around people building businesses and investing in the community,” he said. The festival’s motto, “Global Perspectives, Local Impact,” feels personal to him for that reason. Lancaster is home.
His part, as he sees it, is making introductions. “If I can be an advocate, if I can put somebody in a room with somebody else that they weren’t able to talk to before because they were too afraid or couldn’t pick up the phone, that’s what I want to do,” he says. “That’s my gift in life. And that’s my purpose. I’m a connector.”
If you go
Shank’s advice for first-timers is to show up for the events, not only the films. “Coming to the events is the best way to meet people,” he says. The screening blocks are grouped by message or style rather than by format. “Whatever your genre is, we have something for it.”
Thursday, Nov. 12. The Welcome Party starts at 5:30 p.m. at Zoetropolis Cinema Stillhouse, 112 N. Water St., Lancaster. It includes a screening of “DEI,” a short by Jill V. Dae, who won Best Short at last year’s festival. Admission is $10 through Zoetropolis.
Friday, Nov. 13, and Saturday, Nov. 14. Most films screen in blocks at Penn Cinema, 541 Airport Road, Lititz, with several at Zoetropolis. Blocks cost $10; Penn Cinema sells its tickets online, and Zoetropolis sells its own. “Dread,” the horror and dystopia block, plays Zoetropolis at 7 p.m. on Friday the 13th. “Spotlight: Lancaster County” gathers four local films, including a short documentary on chef Nathan Flaim and one on the making of the Stevens & Smith Center. At West Art, 816 Buchanan Ave., Lancaster, Alain Ughetto’s “No Dogs or Italians Allowed” screens free at 7 p.m. Friday with an advance ticket.
Saturday, Nov. 14. The awards ceremony fills Penn Cinema’s IMAX theater. Doors open at 5:30 p.m., and the ceremony starts at 6. Tickets cost $15 in advance or $20 at the door.
Sunday, Nov. 15. “Space Cadet,” a feature from the Canadian artist Kid Koala, screens at 11 a.m. at Penn Cinema. At noon, Zoetropolis shows “Cheila’s Choice,” seven short films picked by Huettner.
West Art serves as the festival lounge all four days, with espresso in the morning and cocktails and live music at night. Each film carries a rating: F for family, G for general audiences, and M for mature. The full schedule and ticket links are at redrosefilmfestival.com.