Are dig­i­tal film fes­ti­vals here to stay?

As the 50^th Rot­ter­dam Film Fes­ti­val reached its mid­point, I sat down and record­ed a pod­cast with my august col­league Han­nah Wood­head, who was in the process of mop­ping up the final dregs of the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val pro­gramme. The aim of the dis­cus­sion was to offer a reportage-style update on the strange expe­ri­ence of attend­ing an inter­na­tion­al film fes­ti­val from the com­fort of one’s own home, in com­plete iso­la­tion from fel­low mem­bers of the press corps.

To quick­ly para­phrase our find­ings, we both agreed that there was some­thing unique about the phys­i­cal fes­ti­val expe­ri­ence, and that there’s a pil­grim­age aspect to set­ting down in some for­eign clime and being able to swipe away the major­i­ty of press­ing life admin to actu­al­ly immerse your­self in the busi­ness of the movies. This may, to some, sound like a wak­ing night­mare, but from a pro­fes­sion­al stand­point, it’s the per­fect way to be able to take the tem­per­a­ture of that ail­ing patient we like to refer to as The Pop­u­lar Cinema.

So while we grudg­ing­ly shift into this tran­si­to­ry phase of see­ing new films streamed on home com­put­er screens, it’s hard not to think that, for fes­ti­val organ­is­ers, this is not why they got into this par­tic­u­lar game. There would seem to be some­thing con­tra­dic­to­ry about the con­cept of a fes­ti­val which did not see peo­ple con­verg­ing on a phys­i­cal space. Maybe it’s the word ​“fes­ti­val” that makes things feel so uneasy? As some­one watch­ing streamed films from one of these clois­tered events, it does feel a lit­tle as if I’m cheat­ing on an old, argu­men­ta­tive para­mour. Per­haps the first step could be to update the nomenclature.

And yet, there’s a gen­er­al feel­ing that the films shown at Rot­ter­dam and Sun­dance did get their time in the spot­light, in the same way as they would had they played exclu­sive­ly to a phys­i­cal audi­ence in a packed out cin­e­ma. The social media air­waves car­ried a cer­tain lev­el of that thing that is referred to as ​“hype”, and even allowed for a cou­ple of insid­ery argu­ments that only made sense to those par­tak­ing in the fun. Plat­forms such as Let­ter­boxd allowed atten­dees to indulge in the games­man­ship of daisy-chain view­ing, while there was also no short­age of eru­dite cov­er­age as each title received its Covid-com­pli­ant world première.

Which is all a round­about way of say­ing – to quote the title of a 1973 exper­i­men­tal film by Nicholas Ray – We Can’t Go Home Again. These digi­tised fes­ti­vals cre­at­ed enough heat to be deemed a suc­cess, even if judged on very rel­a­tive terms. The finan­cial aspect is obvi­ous­ly a key fac­tor towards a def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess, and only the account­ing depart­ments of the fes­ti­vals them­selves will know if there’s any sus­tain­able future in this new mod­el. The ques­tion, then, is whether some kind of hybrid mod­el is pos­si­ble. One that embraces the extend­ed and diverse reach a dig­i­tal fes­ti­val affords, to the tra­di­tion­al ver­sion which keeps in place the gate­keep­ers and the crip­pling costs to attend, but also that vaunt­ed sense of exclusivity.

To answer that ques­tion, you would have to drill down into the func­tion of a film fes­ti­val, which is too mul­ti­far­i­ous a task for this moment, but it’s clear that many vet­er­an atten­dees have their own puri­tan­i­cal vision of the per­fect fes­ti­val. Instead of offer­ing some broad def­i­n­i­tion, maybe you could acknowl­edge that film fes­ti­vals, by their nature, are a broad church when it comes to their rea­sons for exis­tence. Mar­ket­ing, and offer­ing a launch­pad for new films, and even gen­er­at­ing a sense of ​“hype”, is a func­tion. So too is dis­cov­ery, and hav­ing a space to eke out the excit­ing new tal­ent and ingest a pro­gramme from a more objec­tive van­tage. The eat-all-you-want buf­fet is through this door. The 30-course taster menu is through this door.

Per­haps instead of hybrid fes­ti­vals, we’ll have some ful­ly-dig­i­tal fes­ti­vals, and some ful­ly-phys­i­cal fes­ti­vals, with no crossover between the two. Either way, it would seem like a sage con­sid­er­a­tion con­sid­er­ing that, by the end of 2021, the glut of new cin­e­ma ready for its fes­ti­val close-up will be curl­ing around the block twice and then trail­ing up the street. How else to make sure that every film gets its fare shake? Even the most enthu­si­as­tic and lone­ly cinephile can watch so much in a sin­gle day.

I had a fun time at Rot­ter­dam this year, catch­ing films ear­ly in the morn­ing, and then sneak­ing anoth­er one in over lunch. Then maybe, a final one tak­ing me past mid­night. In my expe­ri­ence of fes­ti­val-going, Rot­ter­dam is always the most dis­tinc­tive in terms of its offer­ings: more than any oth­er fes­ti­val, there is a quin­tes­sen­tial ​“Rot­ter­dam” film. And, to my delight, I was able to see lots of ​“Rot­ter­dam” films, per­haps more than if I had been attend­ing the festival.

My two favourites were James Vaughn’s bone-dry screw­ball com­e­dy Friends and Strangers, about the roman­tic plight of an anx­i­ety-prone wed­ding video­g­ra­ph­er. I also love the Tiger award-win­ning Tamil film, Peb­bles, by Vinothraj PS, about a very surly man stomp­ing across arid planes to retrieve his poor wife after she flees from his abu­sive ways. Would hap­pi­ly attend anoth­er dig­i­tal Rot­ter­dam, just as I would hap­pi­ly attend anoth­er phys­i­cal Rot­ter­dam. It seems that, as we emerge from this trau­mat­ic episode in our his­to­ry, the oppor­tu­ni­ty for renew­al has been hand­ed to these insti­tu­tions. Whether they will build on or dis­card their dig­i­tal learn­ings, only time will tell.