I love film festivals; I think festivals are a wonderful venue for films, filmmakers & film lovers. However, my horizons are being broadened as I try to get my own film into festivals. Something has changed and I’m not quite sure why it did.
Festivals used to be the breeding ground for new films and by new I mean films that broke new ideas, new sub genres, new stars and new talent. The schedules were filled with diamonds in the rough that mass audiences had never heard of, even if the films became a hit at the festivals and the talent behind them were picked up the films would be hard for audiences to see until home video.
El Mariachi,
Reservoir Dogs,
Swingers,
Clerks,
In the Company of Men and so many more films were all discovered on the festival circuit and the careers of the people in the films & behind the films were launched by the festivals selecting those films. Though we are now familiar with all the titles I listed, it took months, even years after those films were screened in festivals for them to become commonly discussed films – they were hard to find – rare gems not backed by studios or distributors until after the circuits.
Fast forward to the last few years. People have begun to grumble that big festivals like Sundance have gone “commercial” and we count a film like
Juno as an independent film – a film that has millions of dollars behind it, a studio and recognizable stars. My question is what changed?
Suddenly films like
Public Enemies,
Kill Bill,
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,
Zombieland &
Up In the Air are getting play at film festivals. Major studio films are having premieres at festivals around the globe, and major films are being screened, films that are going to come out in theatres worldwide – sometimes less than a month after the festival concludes.
As someone that made a feature film with no access to the amenities of these films, this trend upsets me. My film is damn good, especially when one looks at the fact that I pushed, pulled and pried to make a high quality micro-budget film and didn’t have the convenience of any of the luxuries most moderately budgeted independent films now have. The problem is that when my film, or any film like mine is held up against a film like
Men Who Stare at Goats there is no way our little films can hold up; we don’t have the polish, the recognition, or the appeal that a film with that kind of pedigree could have.
This creates a fundamental problem: how do small films get recognized? I truly think we live in a day where a Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez would be ignored if they were just starting out. Their films would be pushed aside for one staring an A-List celebrity who got paid scale to make a gritty, “little” film that would bring the festival press.
I still hope to be proven wrong. I still hope that the real independent, rebellious film & filmmakers will come and blow everyone away, even the big guys. Until that happens I’m having a hard time reading film festival coverage, after all, if I’m patient I can just read the reviews a little while later when the films are released nationwide.
