It all started
on an auspicious mountaintop in Utah
1987
CDFF Founder & Co-Director, Curtis Whitear is born
Curtis Whitear was born on an auspicious, desolate mountain overlooking Bountiful, Utah. According to legend, a double rainbow and a glowing new star appeared in the sky the night he was born.
Moments later, the infant Curtis wrestled a VHS camera out of his grandfather’s hands, and he started making movies.
1992
CDFF Co-Director, Joe Soonthornsawad is born
Joe Soonthornsawad was born in the lush suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio. His numerous early artistic accomplishments include mini-golfing victories, videos he made to get out of writing papers in high school, and vanquishing opponents in local piano competitions.
It would all lay the ground work for him to become a filmmaker much much later.
2022
Inaugural Childhood Delusions Film Festival held at the Kent Theater, Brooklyn
Curtis Whitear hosts the first Childhood Delusions Film Festival for his 35th birthday at the Kent Theater, inviting friends to submit their childhood films and videos and walk the red carpet.
Joe Soonthornsawad, in the midst of producing his debut narrative short, screened Joehio, a high school English project on dystopias he had hidden away in the vaults. The experience was strangely transformative.
Whitear presented The Black Sun: the Super Director’s Cut, a childhood film Whitear has been editing for his entire life. He still has not stopped editing it.
The magic of the CDFF experience gave Curtis and Joe an idea.
2024
2nd Annual Childhood Delusions Film Festival reaches new audiences and filmmakers
Riding off of the breakout success of the 1st festival, Curtis and Joe — now celebrity filmmakers — decided to establish CDFF as an annual event. Fueled primarily by a Mailchimp account and unbridled ambition, the CDFF 2024 Festival doubled the original 2022 audience.
The festival featured the childhood work of the broader New York film community, including Marc Weiss (Founder, PBS POV Docs), Steve Macfarlane (Spectacle Theater), independent filmmakers, sibling & cousin director teams, and many other beautiful delusions from film-passionate New Yorkers.
An AI Werner Herzog graced CDFF with an introduction to the festival.
2025
3rd Annual Childhood Delusions Film Festival
The 2025 edition will be bigger, badder, and more deluded than ever. Leading up to the 2025 festival (Feb 8th, 2025, 7pm at the Kent Theater), look out for screenings of the 2022 and 2024 festival programs at Spectacle Theater in Williamsburg, complete with guest appearances from CDFF alumni filmmakers.
On the night of CDFF 2025 at the Kent, audiences are invited to meet beloved celebrities including real astronauts, Cate Blanchett, and Spiderman on the red carpet.