August 2000's festival--the very first--started as a joint concept of Sacramento natives Evald Johnson and Nathan Schemel. Graduates of the film program at California State University, Northridge, they decided to establish a Sacramento-based art festival while finishing their own senior thesis film shorts. The result was the 17th ACB All-Sacramento Film and Music Festival, so named after 17films and ACB Productions, their respective film production groups.

The event took place at the historic Crest Theatre on August 11th, 2000, and was a relative success. Mr. Johnson and Mr. Schemel premiered their shorts for the film presentation, while five local rock bands comprised the musical portion of the evening. All performances ran smoothly, the audience was responsive to the unconventional combination of film and music, and those who participated in the bringing the festival to fruition were pleased with the outcome. It was the first festival Evald Johnson and Nathan Schemel had organized, and they were optimistic that in subsequent years it would grow into a more prominent outlet that would incorporate a wider variety of artistic tastes.

That year, time and budget constraints prevented Festival programmers from successfully collecting outside submissions. However, for the 2001 Festival, the "All" was dropped from "All-Sacramento" and the Festival began accepting submissions from filmmakers worldwide.