This post would have happened a day sooner, but on Monday, I found myself stuck in St. Louis, MO unexpectedly, having only made it halfway home (the drive from Columbia to the airport is as long as the flight from St. Louis to New York). So as winter snowstorms continued to wallop the eastern seaboard, I sat with other stranded friends enjoying the Manager's Happy Hour at the Embassy Suites near the airport, drinking margaritas, munching on little goldfish crackers and flirting with military men who were there for a conference on whatever it is military men do these days. One guy told me that his job was to tell the generals what to do; all righty then.
(Awesome photo of freshly-landed alien from the March March parade, courtesy of Ingrid Kopp.)
A fittingly weird end to four days of finding myself in one unexpected place after another, albeit while sitting in jam-packed cinemas watching stellar nonfiction films. I also think I can better articulate something I noticed about this festival last year and it is this: something incredible happens in this small college town between the visiting filmmakers and the denizens of Columbia, both populations walking away the richer for the experience in ways that help propel this particular art form (telling cinematic true stories) into the local collective consciousness, then resonating out into the larger world.
That may sound a bit precious or crunchy (or both), but hear me out: one of the top-of-mind issues that we festival junkies talk about a lot is the relevancy of said festivals, especially our domestic ones. (Addictions to karaoke, taking self-portraits while partying like a rock star and other inexplicable symptoms may also occur.) What one notices quite quickly is that there is a very tight circle of influential, highly passionate and active industry members who stay abreast of business developments and shifting landscapes in marketing and distribution, precisely in order to advise filmmakers (especially novices) about strategies that make sense for that particular filmmaker and his or her particular film. The dedication that these distributors, festival directors, producers, filmmakers and programmers bring to this exchange cannot be overestimated. They are our modern-day talent scouts. This is, to my mind, what is so key right now since marketing and distribution plans absolutely need to be tailor-made in order for a project to successfully run the gauntlet and get seen and appreciated by the audience for which it was made. Sometimes that will extend beyond the festival circuit for certain films; sometimes it will not.
The current trends of audience sourcing and doing precise and tactical market research and outreach is vital to a film's success, and it appears as if festivals, especially the intimate ones or the ones that exhibit nonfiction and more experimental work exclusively, like True/False, provide a fertile atmosphere for this kind of collaboration in a casual atmosphere--real conversations that push aside the "business speak" and get down to brass tacks about how a film can be crafted to be the best product it can be before being showcased to the world. We really must turn to the festivals to find this kind of tender loving care for challenging work. And this is what True/False provides like nothing else I've seen (except for Britdoc, and they were there, too, this year) and what festivals like Sundance have lost and festivals like Tribeca still haven't figured out.
Time and valuable talent isn't wasted staging panels where talking heads spout the same script over and over and over again, some blatantly using the platform for shameless self-promotion, followed by stale (and, frankly, lame) Q&As. And you only have stale and lame Q&As when whatever's preceded it is deadly boring, and no one's really listening in the first place. Here instead, you have brilliant, highly crafted sessions called workshops (free and open to the public) with composers (Instant Soundtrack), reporters and journalists making nonfiction cinema (Frontline Club), a conversation between a filmmaker and her editor, in this case, True Vision Honoree, Kim Longinotto and Ollie Huddleston (The Kim and Ollie Show). This year, there was a roundtable of filmmakers and industry folk parsing out the trajectory of a made-up project (Hypothetical Hit: Building a Better Doc), where a film project by a first-time director is explored from idea to distribution. Click here to read more descriptions of debates and workshops. (Film still, above, from festival fave, Havana Marking's Afghan Star, courtesy of the filmmaker.)
Another way in which this festival shines is in its commitment to its community, the one in which both festival directors, Paul Sturtz and David Wilson, reside. They are well-loved native sons and have taken this tremendous opportunity to create a specific sort of civic pride and a real concrete investment, both financially and socially, in their community, hosting a festival in which the whole town has a stake--individuals, businesses, churches, etc. When the audience is invested in wanting to see great nonfiction cinema and learns to be critical in a meaningful and generous way (which these folks have, obviously, learned how to do), then the exchange between audience and filmmaker can really help generate excitement to which even the most glamorous premieres cannot begin to compare. It is not surprising then that this is becoming an absolute-must destination for both filmmakers and industry, a place ripe for the kind of substantive relationship building both of these populations seek. I may have to eat these words, but it appears as if T/F may be a Sundance-of-the-doc-world in the making, perhaps even expanding beyond documentary, at some point. As Redford does now, Sturtz and Wilson might be scratching their heads in several years' time wondering what happened to their tiny, little indie festival in the middle of nowhere where they showed sneak previews and secret screenings and small-scale, but riveting, work to a captivated audience.
In my next couple of posts, I'll share thoughts and impressions on some of the films I saw, posting here on SIM and at Hammer to Nail. More soon.
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