Film Festival Follies, Part Two

Judge Adam Arseneau

September 16th, 2004

Despite all of the hassles outlined in my previous article regarding going to a big film festival like the Toronto International Film Festival, I am now going to give you reasons why the struggle, the headache, the financial investment, and the astonishing, astonishing level of snobbery and pretentiousness of fellow festival-goers should not deter you from taking part from a film festival.

And believe me, you encounter all of those things in spades. Show up more than ten minutes late to a screening, and your seat has been double-sold to someone else. Expect more than a few parking tickets as you frantically wedge your car in a back alley after finding no available parking lots at your disposal. And lest we forget the atrocious people! You might think that you represent the pinnacle of cinematic appreciation and snobbery, until some joker in a beret, square glasses, a black turtleneck and a well-thumbed copy of an André Bazin book unceremoniously tosses you back into the realm of rank amateur. Seriously. The pretentious conversations you overhear after a screening is enough to make a tenured film professor shove screwdrivers into his ears. I swear, if I hear one more person utter the phrase "far too derivative of Godard," I will snap.

I assure you, it is all worth it. Even for those people who only casually love movies, a film festival can be a fantastically moving and enlightening experience.

Film festivals represent the cinema at its purest form: exhibition. There is nothing like standing in a line-up for two hours to see a movie that is sold out to capacity, have five hundred people cheer the opening credits, laugh hysterically at every joke, scream at every thrill, and above all else, participate actively in the moviegoing experience. After a movie ends, often the cast and crew (or whomever bothered to show up to promote the film) will offer an open-microphone Q&A session—and not even the most thorough DVD commentary track can compare to that.

And if famous people yank your crank, well, they come out in spades. A film festival, especially one like the Toronto International Film Festival, which has enough clout to bring the stars in, can be like a giant Cracker Jack box of famous people. Walk into any screening and you will have no idea who will show up. In only a few years of festival-going, I have had the opportunity to see, or have had small conversations with the likes of Harvey Keitel, Hillary Swank, Kevin Bacon, Kate Beckinsale, Orlando Bloom, Mickey Rourke, Jason Schwartzman, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Mena Suvari, and the man himself, Bruce Campbell, whose mere presence almost destroyed a movie theatre with nerds jumping over each other to meet him.

But to many, the venerable film festival seems to offer a movie-going experience that is totally at odds with the medium of DVD—and let's face it, you wouldn't be reading this article if you weren't a DVD fan. Considering that for the price of a single admission to a film festival show in Toronto you could probably buy the movie on DVD when it comes out, a film festival is an astonishingly poor investment. Plus, you have to deal with rampant crowds, terrible bureaucracy, idiotic people, and long, long line-ups that would make a Friday night trip to the cinema look downright appealing in comparison. For many, a film festival personifies every single reason not to go to the movies in the first place.

But no matter how much popcorn you pop or how many friends you invite over, you get something out of a film festival that you cannot get in your living room. Certainly, you could watch the Super Bowl at home with your friends and have a great time, the same way you could watch a DVD. but if you get to see it in person, the experience is something altogether different. Same game, same outcome, same level of enthusiasm—the difference is the audience. The participation. The feeling you get when fifty thousand people stand up and cheer at the same time, the feeling of seeing your sports heroes in real life, to feel like you are part of the experience and not a mere bystander.

The people who go to a Super Bowl are the people who will lay down their money and their time in order to be part of the experience. These are the people who are not content to sit back and watch the game from home—they want to be there. They want to see it. They want to be with the thousands of other people who live, breathe, and love the same things they do with the same level of passion. And since we in the general public cannot go to Hollywood and sit in on our favorite films being made, a film festival offers the next best thing to feel like we are part of the process, part of the magic.

When you watch a movie at a film festival, and you look over your shoulder and see the star of the film watching it along with you, a funny thing happens. For a split second, the silver screen that divides and separates the moviegoer from the moviemakers disappears. For that small instant, you feel like you are taking part in the film process rather than merely consuming it. This is moviegoing at its most interactive, and properly articulating it is difficult unless you have had the pleasure; in a way, you could almost say it closes the gap between the cinema and the live theatre. The difference between seeing a movie on television, and seeing a movie in the theatre is akin to the transition of seeing a movie in the theatre and seeing a movie at a film festival on its world premiere.

At a film festival, even if you hate the movie you just saw, you usually walk away feeling exhilarated, exhausted, and elated. You take that level of passion away with you and it augments your own, deepening your appreciation for the cinema. You simply cannot get that level of excitement in your living room, period. This kind of passion for cinema is literally infectious, like the flu; except with less vomiting. and slightly less diarrhea.

Far be it from me to tout my cinematic prowess over anyone else, but nevertheless I humbly suggest the following: for those who consider themselves true fans of cinema, but have never experienced the excitement of a film festival? Consider, just for a moment, that you may be missing out on something important, a level of appreciation for film that you never even knew you were missing. There is nothing like seeing a movie with five hundred other people who with every cell in their body are just as committed to their passion as you are. It is an awesome experience, and truly must be experienced to be believed.

Movies were never meant to be a solitary experience. They should be enjoyed in large audiences, by the masses as a whole, in front of screaming crowds and cheering audiences. Nothing can compare to seeing a film with people who live, breathe and die film; people who have re-arranged their entire work schedule just to be there and who have traveled thousands of miles just to come see this film. You can feel the intensity of their love the air. The sheer energy could rival any championship sport game.

And once you experience it, you will be hooked on the experience. And I will see you there.