Because you can’t obviously have a group of strangers sitting together in a dark room film festivals have been hard hit this year. And it’s tough. It’s tough for everybody. It’s tough for the festival organizers, often times voulutiers who work hard to get these shows going. It’s tough for the audiences because they can’t go and be audiences. And obviously It’s tough for the filmmakers. Years of planning and work have to be put on hold, or even cancelled.
One of the beauties of film festivals is obviously seeing your work shown on a large venue where you can go and gauge audience reactions, figure out how to improve things for next time and the next project. What works, what doesn’t work. And to stand there on stage taking questions from people, understanding what they think. It’s also fascinating to discover the regional differences of audiences of various films, what they see, what they perceive as funny or not funny, or what they take out of it.
The other beauty of the film festivals is you get out there into the different parts of the country. You get to meet different people. You get to meet filmmakers from all over. You can talk shop. You talk of successes. You talk of disasters. You talk of all sorts of things.
Unfortunately, that’s all changed. A lot of festivals have gone digital, which, well, certainly it’s understandable. It does defeat the purpose. You can play something online as it is now, but you miss that live human interaction which is just the problem with everything these days is what you’ve missed. Certainly one hopes that this is not an ongoing thing, that film festivals will continue to be online when restrictions have eased.
I would imagine that in the future festivals will take a more combined approach. I don’t think anything can really replace the impersonate screenings. But I imagine there will be more online showcases. Digital experiences for people to see and connect with others. Still I hope sooner rather than later, obviously film festivals along with everything else, will get back to some semblance of normal and appreciation for the good old days.
I for one certainly want to get out there.