THB #592: Losing My Film Festival Religion

From 1997 until 2015, I attended at least 50 days of film festivals every year.

2016 - 2019, I still did about 25 days a year. The last trip I made before COVID exploded was to True/False in Columbia, Mo… my 2nd year in a row after falling in love with that experience the year before. Great festival, great people.

Sundance and Toronto were the absolute must-goes each year, often with a writing crew of various sizes along for the fun. Cannes, when it worked. Seattle for more than a decade, rain or shine, single and then married (I never did do the whole 3 weeks). Ebertfest (nee’ The Overloooked) in Urbana-Champagne for its first 15 years. I joined the advisory board in Bermuda. Berlin, thanks to Wes Anderson. Marrakesh. San Sebastian. South By Southwest. Closer fests like Santa Barbara and Mill Valley and AFI. One year to the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis, the next to Palm Beach. I rebuilt the Miami International Film Festival in 2002… and got run out of town for growing it for non-Cubans in my hometown. Many others. I was always looking to mix it up and have a new experience.

I love movies. I love filmmakers. I love discovery.

But much to my own surprise, I find myself a bit over the festival circuit as it ramps up this week.

It’s been a process for me… and it isn’t primarily an off-shoot of COVID.

At some point, it seems that the attitude of some at some of the major festivals shifted from a partnership with the media to promote these festivals and the movies they show into an attitude that they were doing media a favor by giving us access. Most of the festivals cost more than $2000 to attend. It was not unusual in the Movie City News years to drop $20,000 - $30,000 a year on Sundance.

Part of this was, of course, the increasingly obsessive interest in the last 10 years or so in festivals as a marketable event platforms for ad sales in larger media platforms, with the bigger outlets becoming increasingly focused on dominating as much publicity as possible.

Telluride became an award season platform and all of a sudden, the number of media covering in earnest went from a couple dozen writers - mostly from the then-independent trades - to 4 or 5 times that. This “evolution” has been embraced by Julie Huntsinger, the operations manager who has become the absolute leader of the festival since the retirement and passing of the original creators/managers of the festival.

Traditions, like the festival program breaking in print at the festival just before opening night, have been dumped for press releases and interviews the day before the festival begins. More and more focus has been placed on award season. Tributes have become bait for talent to show up (at the great expense of the distributors). And with all that, the publicity machines that manage all the awards madness everywhere else must rise to manage it at Telluride… because that is the job of publicists. But what is the job of a festival… especially a super-exclusive, very expensive 4-day festival that was originally focused on the long-gone silent film world and now often feels like a multiplex, with the hot movies getting by far the most attention and the “bottom half” of the schedule barely written about at all?

When I started going to Sundance, it was the kind of event where Robert Altman could do a chat on Main Street and there might be 40 people in the room with no need for mics and no recording equipment. That was a long time ago. But that is when Sundance was its most magical. That is when the festival was so key to creating the indie market. Similarly to Telluride, as the festival became a market with bigger sales, launching hit after hit, the machinery from “Hollywood” started showing up more, unavoidably. The hipster marketing of Main Street often stood out the most clearly, with Paris Hilton as a symbol. And like so much, it was schizophrenic…. because isn’t it nice for indie filmmakers to enjoy some of the perks of mainstream filmmakers? Wasn’t Chefdance fun? Wasn’t it cool to have major bands performing on Main Street in overflowing spaces?

Well… again… what is the festival about?