If this planet had some official, UN-style organization like the UK Film Council or the German Federal Film Board, they might collect some car-crash style, globe-spanning statistics about film festivals.  For instance:  Every 38 seconds, a film begins at a film festival.  Every 114 seconds, a filmmaker starts a Q&A following his film. 

2007 is my first year attending film festivals.  The pace of a festival is commensurate with those statistics.  As soon as one film ends, two more begin.  I am traveling with the film Blood Car, in which I play the lead role and which Fake Wood Wallpaper Films produced.  You might also say I’m riding the coattails of this film.  I’ve traveled to two festivals thus far, Cinequest and Sarasota, but it seems like thrice that. Both were epic, 12 and 10-day festivals, respectively.  Twenty-two days, all told, of watching movies, going to parties, meeting independent filmmakers.

Most recently, I attended, in an abbreviated way, my hometown Atlanta Film Festival, where our film premiered for Atlanta’s audiences.  In the beginning, it wasn’t as thrilling for me, through no fault of its own.  Perhaps it was because I had been quite wiped out by the Sarasota Film Festival, which overlaps the beginning of Atlanta.  However, I have learned that part of the glory of attending a film festival is neglecting all worldly adult responsibilities in favor of watching movies all day.  And the best path to neglect is distance, and that neglect will never be pure if you live five minutes from a festival. 

Nevertheless, our premiere screening at AFF had a storybook quality.  But as hour by hour ticked off until our premiere began, the excitement remained muted.  I wondered why.  Was it because we’d had our world premiere already?  Had all the nervousness been hitherto consumed, leaving none left for AFF? 

The answer turned out to be “No.”  Once the line formed outside the theater, the thrill of anticipation returned and the sheer size of our standing, chatting audience became a living, breathing trophy.  I thought lines like that were reserved for Grauman’s Chinese Theater and Star Wars films, but there’s even a Hollywood side to Blood Car.  It was a monumental hometown premiere. 

Yet the life of Blood Car is only in adolescence.  The film is an emissary for us.  It travels to places we cannot, and it takes us to places we never thought we’d go.

Film festivals are the equivalent of a UN Council on Cinematic Affairs.  They’re an awareness program, a humanitarian organization of armed men and women in bright blue helmets traveling the globe reaching out to all filmmakers and preaching the gospel of festival.  When I was a film student, there was never much education about film festivals and their culture and how important they are.  Loony dogmatists preach the evils of an event, pitting films against films, creativity against creativity, in a competitive environment.  You might buy into this if you’ve never attended a great festival. Having seen the marquee lights recently, I’ve concluded that a film festival is the epicenter of cinema, vigorously and violently sending films out into the world.

My test group was small, but I never experienced a competitive atmosphere.  In fact, quite the opposite was true.  Filmmakers sought one another out or inevitably met while promoting their screenings.  Festivals cannot only breath life into your film, but the atmosphere is so heavenly that they can alter your artistic motivations from “I need to tell this story on film” to “Let’s make another movie so we can go to another festival.”  Whether you’re a filmmaker or a cinephile, there’s no place you’d rather be. 

Festivals are enablers.  They enable you to see independent films on the big screen, the place where films are meant to be seen.  Slumming, The Third Monday in October, Military Intelligence and You, Lights in the Dusk, Hannah Takes the Stairs, Zoo, and the short films Der Ostwind and Death to the Tinman may never see theatrical distribution in Atlanta. But I owe the film festivals of Cinequest, Sarasota, and Atlanta a great deal of gratitude for making those introductions to me.

Until that omnipresent distribution question is answered, this uncertainty will similarly plague Blood Car, but we will continue to visit festivals far and wide and preach their wonder and necessity.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form