Are Our Film Festivals Dying, Getting Ill, Or Just Aging Out?
The Latest Clue That Everything Has Changed -- And when will our behavior catch up?
If we really want to escape from hell and build something better, we have to recognize the root causes of our current misery. This post may be crazy math for some, but when you squinch your eyes right, secrets are revealed. Let’s drill down from some recent issues to see the deeper reason why they might have occured. The cracks look like destruction and decay to some, but they also reveal the light where the hope for film gets in.
We all exhibit behavior that is contradictory to our stated or presumed goals. At least those of you who are or aim to be participants our cinema ecosystem do. Why do I say that? Well, if you have a cold and you don’t try to take care of it, perhaps you want to be sick. Or if you don’t save for your future, is it because you don’t believe you have one? We have to get our house in order. Time to do the seasonal cleaning that gets those contradictory actions out from under the crevices of your mind and springs you into action.
Events are now happening that further demonstrate the real truth about our current situation. We have further proof that our industry has completely changed from what it once was – even if we still prefer to look away rather than address it. We have been doing this so long, we accept bad behavior as business as usual. It’s not surprising we are so confused. We can’t call what we are in the “film business” any more than we can call my particular area of practice “indie film’. It’s not film and it’s not indie; it’s not even a business for most participants. We really need to fix our language so we say what we mean (and I am not referring to all those who deliberately don’t), but I will save that for another post.
On the surface I am writing about film festivals, but only because their current crisis can be used to explain what ails the remains of our business and art form. Did you catch how film festivals took a few significant bodyblows these past few weeks? The Human Rights Film Festival shut down. Ten Hot Docs programmers left their job, and then their Artistic Director stepped down, and I don’t think it was because the Executive Director of Sundance left her job, but yeah that happened too. These changes show something far greater going on under the surface.
Meanwhile, Vanessa and I are on tour with our film Invisible Nation right now; we’ve played a ton of festivals. It’s really a wonderful privilege and nothing beats a festival audience. We love it and are greatly appreciative of all festivals do. But it is also really hard to keep up the travel and attendance; some weeks have a different city each day; and we have no distributor to help with this. Some fests fly the director out and give them a hotel room. Some offer a screening fee. That’s really awesome, but most say they have budget challenges and can’t do anything. They are reducing the number of movies. And dates. And losing screens. And sponsors. They are evaporating before our eyes. What’s going on in the festival front??? Why is everything so fragile?
As wonderful as they often are, we have never gotten film festivals fully right. They still held great promise before they caught this current virus. As the recent post on The Popcorn List demonstrated, film festivals are primed to use their expertise and processes to elevate both the art and business of cinema. Like everything else, we won’t know what we’ve got until it’s gone. America’s wonderful web of film festivals has been such a gift. And now we will see it start to unravel.
We never unleashed festivals’ full potential to better our world – and I don’t mean by what they program; festivals could have used their application process to strengthen the industry along the way, be it in data capture or using it to incentivize best practices. We allowed a false festival hierarchy to take hold. The heartbreak of festival network’s devolution will be that we snuff the flames of such progress while they were in their infancy. Like most things, we did not build beyond the minimum viable product. The audience moved on before we got to the one that would truly sing. And I say that as someone who has had transcendent experiences at festivals all over the globe and know that some of the best is still yet to come. We are denying what could have been.
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