By Taylor Adams Cogan
Today, people can flock to North Texas and experience the Dallas International Film Festival to find community and films they may not otherwise encounter. Before 2006, you may remember it as the AFI Dallas Film Festival. But even before that, this movement was reverberating through Deep Ellum.
James Faust has been there for much of it, now serving as the artistic director for the festival Michael Cain started in 1999. It was around then that Michael’s father had been diagnosed with cancer, the type that didn’t have solutions, just the need to make him comfortable. Michael saw him and others suffering to make ends meet – not just to pay medical bills but to then afford groceries and rent. So, Michael and Melina McKinnon – then a friend, now his wife – decided to make a film festival, asking James if he’d be part of it.
“At the time, Deep Ellum had great space for production equipment, great loft space; they started this festival as a fundraiser to help people pay for cancer: Deep Ellum Music, Film, Arts, and Noise,” he says. “It was set up to give people money for groceries, electric bills, car payments, things like that – the other suffering you don’t hear about when you’re having to spend all your money on copays. So, in 1999, the Deep Ellum Film Festival was born, and it was great.”
James didn’t come on as an employee right away, but he was already in the neighborhood producing commercials out of a loft on Commerce Street since 1997, while Michael worked just across the way. Deep Ellum in those years was a playground for creatives – industrial bones turned into studios and stages, with endless room for art to spill into the streets. By 2000, James officially joined the team. What started as a side gig quickly became his passion.
“We were bringing films and filmmakers in for this little festival in Deep Ellum, Texas,” he says. “We just used everything we could in Deep Ellum to make this film festival happen over five and a half, six years. We used to do things in bars, set up screens in bars or outside in the middle of Commerce.”
Anyone with some skills and a camera knows the neighborhood’s reliable for both a good backdrop and a good time. They had the likes of Robert Duvall, Bill Paxton, Lou Diamond Phillips, and countless others come to the annual event. The last festival in the neighborhood was held in 2005, before they helped open the Angelika Theater.
“We raised a lot of money and helped a lot of people,” James says of the festival.
One year, they honored Griffin Dunne and Sandra Bullock, the latter of whom lost her mother to cancer.
“She came out, and we had this big party at the Gypsy Tea Room, with the band playing and her accepting an award – crying on stage, then partying,” James says. “We knew it was good that we were doing this. We were moving people, and it was really fun.”
This little entertainment district next to downtown has always had a way of creating those moments, ones that are raw, unexpected, and unforgettable.
“Deep Ellum was such a part of my life. We outgrew it, but we never forgot our roots in Deep Ellum,” James says.
In 2005, they worked with the city of Dallas to do a study to see if it could handle a citywide film festival. They went to the American Film Institute to work out the details, which ultimately led to the AFI Dallas Film Festival.
Today, Michael lives in Colorado, while James continues the work in Dallas. When they meet, it’s usually back in Deep Ellum, frequently at St. Pete’s Dancing Marlin, their longtime gathering spot.
The Deep Ellum Film Festival celebrated 25 years in 2024, and the Dallas International Film Festival will mark 20 years in April 2026. Time passes, and events evolve, but James stays focused on his passion, and never forgets where it started.
“Whenever we do film festival stuff now, we take people to Deep Ellum. We may just drop them off at a corner,” James says. “It’s never left our soul. Deep Ellum is a gem of the city.”
