PulpTV Co-directors Sam Al-Maqtari (left) and Jameson Paull (right). Photos courtesy of PulpTV
A few students at Cal State Monterey Bay (CSUMB) have been hard at work organizing Monterey’s first animation-only film festival Pulpfest – which will debut at the Pacific Grove Art Center Sunday starting at 6 p.m.
As transfer students, festival co-directors Sam Al-Maqtari and Jameson Paull knew they needed to make the most of their limited time at CSUMB. Having founded the film club at Monterey Peninsula College (MPC), they had experience and connections, but lacked the resources to achieve their goals.
“Jameson dipped his toes into CSUMB first, and was telling me, like, ‘you have to transfer…they actually have cameras here, man,’” said Al-Maqtari. “And we were over at MPC, where they didn’t even have a film department.”
The two eventually met Dakota Draper, a third-year cinematic arts major, and Hailey Geiler, a recent alum. Together, they formed PulpTV, the creative collective organizing the festival.
Just as pulp in fruit juice often gets filtered out by retailers, PulpTV argues that major studios like Disney and Nickelodeon tend to leave quality projects – and the artists behind them – on the cutting room floor. That raw, unfiltered content is exactly what they seek to highlight at Pulpfest.
The festival will mostly feature submissions from beyond the Central Coast. Only a handful of animators – including Geiler, who is also involved as Pulpfest’s creative director – were chosen to represent the local scene. Yet the co-directors believe the festival presents an opportunity to put Monterey on the map for a diverse community of artists.
“We have submissions from people who currently work for Adult Swim Europe, so that’s pretty cool. And hopefully, you know, as this festival gets bigger, those people will see it as more worth it to come out here, even all the way from Europe,” said Paull.
They had built their team and amassed the portfolio of content they planned to showcase. But to make the festival a reality, PulpTV still needed the support of an important group: sponsors. Knowing that local businesses aren’t exactly eager to fund student-led projects, the co-directors leveraged their community connections to paint themselves in a different light.
“Something that helped Sam and I was that we’re board members of the Pacific Grove Art Center, and we were able to use our board member titles as a more reputable approach,” said Paull. “It’s hard to get taken seriously as a student. We present ourselves as professionals to these businesses.”
Their passion and professionalism eventually won over a handful of sponsors, including the Asilomar Conference Grounds, Captain + Stoker and the Monterey County Arts Center.
Tickets to Pulpfest are available online for $17.85 each. This may be a steep price for some, but the students involved emphasize that their priority is ensuring the CSUMB community can participate.
“I understand $20 is a meal, so that’s not the most affordable to every college student. To myself, you know, I have things that I need to pay for…so if there’s any type of barrier stopping you from going to the festival, we’re happy to accommodate students, for our community. So please don’t feel, like, shy in reaching out,” said Paull. PulpTV can be reached at their email, [email protected], or by calling 831-915-7349.
For film and animation buffs who can’t make it to the festival, PulpTV says to stay tuned. While they do aim to bring Pulpfest back next year, their ambitions go beyond event planning.
“In the future, we’re aspiring to build a streaming service platform,” said Al-Maqtari. “So right now, Pulpfest is our way of kind of breaking through milestones and crossing through thresholds that allow us to have more reputability, more of a budget to work with, more personnel and the power to make in-house content that people like.”