Just as the growth of music festivals is changing the culture and business model of popular music, so the ongoing expansion of the festival circuit is reconfiguring film culture. Film festivals began in the 1940s as trade fairs, before diversifying into shop windows for the industry, training events and film think tanks.
This shapeshifting was necessary but, as I’ve said before (Widescreen, January 2009) it hasn’t gone far enough. Too many film festivals are the same: a main competition of new films, a sidebar retrospective, a shorts programme and so on. Their directors need to realise they can innovate with the form.
This is something I’ve been trying to do myself. Last August, the actress Tilda Swinton and I staged a quirky community film festival, the Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams, in Nairn, the Scottish town in which she lives (see Widescreen, November 2008). We did it again in March in Beijing with the Scottish Cinema of Dreams. Then in June, I organised The Paradise Movie Hall of Kolkata at the Edinburgh Film Festival. These events involved elaborately decorated venues, baking, music, and as much audience participation and fun as possible.
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