The Problem with Film Festivals

11 min read2 days ago

Harsh title. But alternatives are worse

Film festivals have been running since 1933, with Venice festival being the first to be recognized as such.
Film festivals’ structure hasn’t changed much since then.
And there you go: Problem #1: film festivals didn’t adapt to changes in culture and technology.

What’s wrong with remaining the same?

Philosophically and for the sake of the argument, that’s a necessary question to pose, before we delve deeper: why does anything have to change is order to be considered “good”? Aren’t we attributing magical, obviously-positive values to words like “change” “update” and “adapt”? Who says it’s always good to change? After all, most religions don’t change are are considered perfect by millions of followers.
The burden of proof is on me.

Structure

I will explain why film festivals had to be organized the way they were, back in the 1930's.
I’ll describe the technological and cultural environment that justified the above.
I’ll present briefly (as we all know it) the changes made in technology and cultural habits, which required changes in the way film festivals are conducted.
As those changes didn’t happen, it’s right to say that there is a problem with film festivals.
I will show how, throughout the years, negative phenomena such as junk festivals and spam festivals have taken over and became the majority.
But that’s not enough! — If film festivals are run in a bad way, why does it happen? Or, in other words: who benefits from the current situation? Who blocks the necessary change?
I will try to propose a solution, which will help make film festivals great.

How it all began

Venice film festival was conceived as a cultural event and actually joined a cultural event which was created back in 1893, the Biennale di Venezia.
The “Biennale”, as it’s known, includes events and expositions dedicated to art, dance, theater and music. By the way, although the word biennale (“every other year”), the film festival, specifically, is held every year.
Therefore, the first film festival was practically, a continuation of a tradition of cultural events. That’s of course fine. I’m mentioning it because it’s important to understand the evolution of the field and the context in which it was created.

At that time and for many years to come, the only way to watch a film was in a theater. Home projections and of course video, started much later.
In that sense, the film festival was critical, to simply watch a movie.

A PR event and a professional gathering

Film festivals, from the early stages, were a combination of an industry event and a carnival. If a conventional conference includes repeated boring booths and stands, then a film festival is its cool sister, with film screenings and schick celebrities.
The parties, galas and premieres are just another path to closing a deal or generate public relations for a film launch, just like any other product launch. You will probably agree that the launch of a new vacuum cleaner has less glamour than launching a new film with beautiful actors and actresses. But the bottom line is the same: sell, sell, sell.

So far, so good

The traditional film festival, therefore, served two goals: (1) provide an opportunity to watch a film, which was not possible otherwise. (2) serve as a springboard for promoting and selling the film.

Things changed

As we all know, it is possible to watch a film in excellent quality also outside the theater. What was considered a compromise at the age of VHS tapes, has become less and less critical (ok, ok, Dolby still provides a better result in a theater. But home cinema is not that bad).
We are left with the opportunity, in a film festival, to network (between buyers, sellers and colleagues) and create a buzz around a film.
Which is also fine, but possible today in many other different ways, e.g by allowing online meetings, in-person meetings and online campaigns.
Therefore, film festivals face a strong competition on the above goals: the opportunity to watch a film and promote it.

Facing competition

This competition is not from another creature, it is from life itself. Or in other words — The Lord Internet, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

Aldo Moro and Pier Paolo Pasolini together in Venice film festival, 1964

Why a change is critical

I started by stating that change in any structure of institution (like a film festival) is not inherently necessary, as long as it works.
I then proved that due to changes in technology and culture, film festivals are facing fierce competition in achieving their goals, which I defined as enabling viewership of films and promoting films and filmmakers.
Loyal to the principle I laid out in the beginning of this post, which is to question and doubt my own hypothesis, I will now ask: maybe film festivals changed and adapted as required by the changing landscape?
The answer is simply - “no”.
Film festivals are run the same exact way for almost a hundred years: screening program, divided by categories (usually organized by genre, theme, combined with competition and out of competition), meeting with filmmakers for questions and answers sessions (Q&A), industry panels and sometimes film markets.
The thing is, that all of these are available today outside film festivals, either as standalone events in-person or as virtual and hybrid events.
The natural question them would be: what can be done to differentiate (and justify) a film festival?

What film festival do to standout from other screening options?

One thing that film festivals do very well is to provide a sense of glamour. The same panel or Q&A session has much more energy and vibe when held in a crowded beautiful venue than being held online. I’m the first to admit it, although I’m an online rat.
The other thing a film festival will provide is an arena to facilitate deal making.
But in reality, most deals are already sealed before the festival. The film festival will usually just be the platform to announce the deal.
Which is nice (be a place to make a deal public), but not critical for the success of a movie.
The legend about a filmmaker attending a film festival anonymously, being discovered spontaneously by a distribution giant closing a deal on the spot, is a fairy tale. No, don’t look for what I wrote on Google. No one talks about this sad reality openly. There is a tacit understanding that we should all pretend that good films find their way by themselves.
It reminds me of a typical interview with a bodybuilder: “I work hard and maintain a strict diet. The results, as you can see, are great.” — Sir, I think you forgot to mention the drugs you take! (that would never be said, that’s why it’s in italics). Everyone knows, but all of them pretend the opposite: drugs are critical for success (a bodybuilding contest is actually a competition between pharmacists and surgeons), but no one talks about it.

It only gets worse

Since film festivals are not really helping filmmakers, as I have just shown, they have adopted another strategy: SURVIVAL.

In order to survive, festival started to fight back. But they chose the wrong enemy: the filmmakers. Today, most festivals regulations are actually impeding the success of films. I’ll elaborate on it shortly.
The second thing which is worth mentioning is that throughout the years, the number of film festivals grew significantly. Today, there are more than 12,000 film festivals worldwide. Is it good for the film industry and for filmmakers? — I think not and I will prove it.

How things got worse

Requirement for a premiere screening: if buyers are attending a film festival, I can totally understand the requirement for a premiere. Buyers want to tryout fresh products, like in any type of marketplace. However, film buyers only attend around 10–20 film festivals around the world. Yes, you read it right: decision-makers attend less 0.1% of film festivals in the world. So why do small regional film festivals require a premiere? — because they think it will increase their reputation, or because they had to satisfy their financier (see more on it below).
Creating an inner circle, which has become a vicious circle: most filmmakers wish that screening a film in a festival will help promote it, get distribution deals and reach out to a wider audience. But the truth is that most festivals only generate invitations to other film festivals… — It looked ridiculous to me when I first learned about it. Then I understood that a whole ecosystem was created around it: being invited to a film festival means many times getting paid for it (somewhere between $150–$700). That means that having your film circling in a few tens of festivals, which might also invite you for a Q&A and pay for it, can yield some nice temporary revenue. But is this the exposure you wished for, as a filmmaker? In every festival, it means 80–150 people watching your film, not more. Still, some films are initially made with only film festivals in mind. An anomaly which became a norm. I don’t get it.
Most film festivals are copying from the major 10–20 film festivals: that’s right: at least 9980 or more film festivals are copying from the other 20. When I asked some friends, film festival programmers, who love films so much, why they don’t choose the films they love and why they replicate and echo the selection made by other film festival programmers, they usually answer: (1) I don’t have the necessary budget to do a proper selection process. (2) I can’t allow myself miss it with my selection (3) my financier has that in their requirement (to have a film which was shown in Toronto or Berlinale or Cannes for example). Those programmers are knowingly giving-up on the artistic part. They are giving-up on their own independence, free choice, originality and so much more. They are settling for a copy-paste. Shame.
Film festivals only act to satisfy their financiers: many film festivals have to satisfy the local film commission in order to receive “ credit points”, which will award them budget to continue next year. Those points include requirements to have film premieres or films which have won prizes in other film festivals. That by the way explains the previous bullets (“film festivals requiring a premiere” & “FF copying from the major ones”).
Most film festivals are junk — part 1: Some of them are real “spam”, but let’s start with the junk: a junk film festivals is usually initiated with the ambition to bring more tourists and foster commercial activity in a region or town. It is usually the tourism department which initiates the festival. Then they find some filmmaker who will be happy to receive some budget (as most filmmaker are poor) and arrange a copy-paste film festival, with no real artistic value.
Many film festivals are junk — part 2: some film festivals are made only to glorify the local mayor. In the city I used to live, the mayor decided to support a women’s film festivals. He probably thought to himself that this will bring some entertainment to the city. God, he was wrong… the festival featured films about discrimination, inequality and LGBT. The mayor, who was a pure conservative, backed up and the festival shut down. This story is both sad and funny. I understood the cynicism of the mayor, but the film festival organizers, dear friends, were devastated.
Some film festivals are pure scam: not directly related to this article, but worth mentioning and warn from it. Those are festivals which are held in very remote places, where there’s no chance the filmmaker will attend. In most case, I doubt there is any screening at all. The festival does not ask for fee to register! This is where the trap begins. At the end of the “festival”, the filmmaker received a message that the film won an award . How exciting! — But the letter also mentions that in order to send you the trophy (probably $5 worth of material), you will have to pay $150 for delivery…
Others are semi-spam: if a filmmaker receives an email from a film festival saying “we heard about your incredible film” without mentioning the film name or the filmmaker’s name, it’s surely spam. Unlike the previous bullet, which related to scam festivals, in this case there is probably a real festival, but the message is spam, as they only want your entry fee. Read more about it in this excellent discussion on Reddit.
Too many film festivals prioritize a political agenda over artistic merit: just like journalists today, who prioritize their personal opinion over the ethical duty to report, film festivals see themselves as agents of change. Not only this is pathetic (nothing changes, unless you enter politics directly), the fact that seemingly “important” films are pushed forward even if they are artistically mediocre, contributes to the deterioration of the festival. Not surprisingly, this is very common among documentary film festivals.

The solution

A film festival that really wishes to help films succeed and does not only want to concentrate on survival, must in my opinion do the following:

Enhance its activity to other fields and domains. In that sense, I’m a big fan of South by South West (SXSW), which is not less an event for technology and music than it is for films. Every time I came up to friends and colleagues with the proposal to turn their film festival to a multi-domain event, I was refused. The usual excuse I heard was budget. I was prepared and immediately came up with a plan to make it feasible with the current budget. Then I found out that the real reason was that the film festival had to stand in certain public regulations, which define what a film festival is. As I wrote before, bureaucracy is poison to art. Public money keeps it alive, but at the price of killing creativity.
Maintain its activity all year round. Most film festivals I know are dormant throughout the year. They only wake up before the festival. Some film festivals are connected with (or created) institutions, which have an all year round activity. That is good. All of them must aspire for it. A yearly, isolated event in today’s world is irrelevant. And again — budget is not an obstacle. Make the festival itself more modest and maintain it all year round, with the same amount.
Develop a strong online identity. I don’t mean just promoting the festival’s own website rank, but to have a meaningful activity, which will really help the films participating in the festival. Either as a follow up for distribution discussions or a place to conduct screenings to specific audiences. Some festivals do it by the way. They usually call it “festival on wheels” or something similar, and organize community screenings. To really have a strong online presence, film festivals must create alliances — for example with online marketplaces or educational and research institutions. Alone it’s too hard.
Create multiple cooperations. Everything which I wrote above is very hard to achieve independently. Some festivals succeeded in doing it on their own, for example Tribeca and Sundance. But that’s almost impossible, if you don’t have a huge, stable budget. I’m speaking about feasible ideas for low budget film festivals: permanent cooperations with universities, municipalities, NGO’s, internet entities such as the online marketplaces I mentioned before or news portals, to carry out the message. And again — all that has be carried out all year round.