cfosterfilmfestivals2019-blog

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Film festivals: challenging the norm

With film festivals often showing art film that subverts the dominant ideologies of mainstream media, film festivals can be seen as a refreshing way to challenge what audiences view as ‘normal’. This subversion can consist of LGBTQ+ representation and more racial and gender diversity than we often see Cinecity (2019) screening of A Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019). Not only is this film directed by a female director, Celine Sciamma, but it also provides female lead roles and provides representation of the LGBTQ+ through the budding relationship between two female leads.

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Spotlighting female directors

With the box office being consistently dominated by male directors, the film festival as a spotlight for female directors can be a pivotal and positive shift for gender diversity in the film industry. With festivals such as Birds Eye View (BEV) (2002-2010) celebrating new and classical films created by women and supporting current female filmmakers, film festivals have the opportunity to break this gender gap.

Furthermore, Brighton’s Cinecity (2003-) has also accomplished this, excelling this year through almost having a 50/50 split of female directed films such as A Portrait of A Lady on Fire (2019), Perfect 10 (2019) and Alice (2019). 

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“The audience, not the films, makes the festival”

Jeffrey Ruoff in his Coming Soon to a Festival Near You addressed an interesting element to the film festival, the ceremonial aspect. Yet the name eludes to the idea that the festivals are what create the festival, it can be argued that the connections and experience along the way can be seen as more valuable. Mar Del Plata Festival even goes so far as to pay celebrities to attend the screenings, adding to its star factor. With this in question the shift between passion for film and another film industry event are a blurred line. 

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Core Four of Film Festivals

In week 2 of Film Festivals we were introduced to four core elements to pay focus to when discussing or making film festivals: digital technologies, filtering, challenging the norm and rarity. 

 Digital Technologies

Something to keep in mind is how globalisation has helped film festivals to evolve. Because of this evolution more film festivals are being made and films are given easier access for people across the world. However, with this benefit has come the “crisis in curating” as expressed by Roya Rastegar, in which there is a need for filtering, the second core element. 

  2. Filter

Film festivals must act as a filter for the plentitude of film productions, using well grounded personal taste to do so. 

3. Step Into The Void / Challenging the Norm 

Film Festivals must not be just A-list, Blockbuster films, they must challenge the dominant ideologies presented in western cinema and political structures. It must also provide an alternative distribution network.

4. Rarity / one-off & personal 

Living in a plugged-in, media saturated world, Film Festivals must act as an outlet and bring back the personal element to cinema. This applies to experience culture, in which audiences are turning and spending their money more now on travel and special spending rather than take home material things. 

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“The Audience, not the films, makes the festival”: Coming Soon To a Festival Near You

These words ushered by Jeffrey Ruoff in our first assigned reading delved into an interesting concept, that though film is in the title, maybe the networking between screenings held more power than the films themselves. Since 1932 film festivals have existed and shifted to even paying established stars to attend them, as shown with Tom Cruise being payed $50,000 for two days in Mar Del Plata international Film Festival. 

With this focus on the business side of film festivals said and done, Jeffrey Ruoff argues that there is still heart in film festivals. Ruoff uses the Telluride Film Festival as an example, stating it presents a four day party and communal conversation thriving on “the belief that the love of movies can bring people together”. This love of movies is what Chuck Jones argues is one of the two key components of film festivals, the other one being hard work, but “only the love must show” (Calloway 2006)

Being tasked with thinking up ideas for our own film festival, I’d like to keep these thoughts, alongside Ruoff’s view of film festivals as providing showmanship, to create a festival that maintains the exploration into a new way of viewing media that film festivals across the world have provided for so long. Mark Cousins expresses in the reading that people who run film festivals must think of themselves as “storytellers and stylists”, to maintain this storytelling aspect I would like to incorporate an ode to early cinema through live music accompaniment to film.

Although older cinema can be classed as ‘silent film’ it can be argued that film in the time that Tom Gunning would argue is the Cinema of Attractions was never truly silent as it was always accompanied by some type of live sound. My choice to hopefully incorporate this into my ideas is inspired by Cinecity’s live score accompaniment to Berlin: City of A Great Symphony. However, instead of synchronous sound I would like to add contrapuntal or potentially more modern music over older films. This itself I am still debating with though as this could be seen as an outdated use of sound, with examples already existing such as James Whetzels 2014 music accompaniment over Man with a Movie Camera (1929) etc. However, maybe a more important element I should place emphasis on for my film festival is to provide “circulation and recognition” for “smaller, specialised films” as argued by Jeffrey Ruoff, potentially by placing emphasis on independent world cinema.