The Future Of Film Festivals? (FF#5)

Dispatch From Locarno 2047

This article was requested by the Locarno Film Festival to include in their daily dispatch. I first understood that I had a 3000 word limit, but it was 3000 characters! So if you want to see the longer version, let me know and I can publish it here too.

Locarno has a public competition for its poster design and I think it may have produced my favorite festival poster ever this year!

Film Festivals #5: Dispatch From Locarno 2047

Not so long ago, say 2023 or so, not only was not every film good, but the reason we screened them, was not about whether it maximized our delight and insight. When did the mediocrity-overload become too much? We look back on when the mass pop culture was a heaping pile of crap, and we laugh at our prior selves. The great thing about our new gen clone method is the memory retention. Now everyone recalls the entire history of film. Doesn’t it astound you that once people could not see how each film is in dialogue with all that came before and all that follows?

We should be thankful we had to spend so much time in isolation; how else could we reprioritize everything based on events, experience, and IRL engagement? To think anyone would want to watch at home, makes us laugh. How would you enjoy anything without the shared emotional response from watching something amongst strangers in the dark on a large screen?

We came close to forgetting the attributes of cinema form and theatrical exhibition; now everyone recognizes that access to culture (and the opportunity to create it) is a human right. We were ready to trade context and elevation in exchange for convenience -- hoodwinked to think we were getting “access”. It wasn’t even access almost everything. It was access to what they wanted to give, and not what we wanted to engage with.