The Great Festival Rebound of 2020: Let The Anarchists Speak

What festivals were you able to attend or take part in this year?

Josh - Chattanooga Film Festival, Fantasia, Nightstream, TIFF, Fantastic Fest, and Neuchatel International Festival of Fantastic Film.

Ryland - Palm Springs Shortsfest - moderated a zoom panel Telluride - one drive in screening in LA (Nomadland) really more of a sponsored screening than festival event TIFF - online Nightstream - online AFI Fest - online

Kwenton - Melbourne International Film Festival (Online) - Busan International Film Festival (Market Online Screenings) - Japanese Film Festival (Online and free) - Korean Film Festival in Australia (KOFFIA) - Technical difficulties closed festival early

Izzy - Fantasia was the only festival that I covered as a reviewer, aside from some one-off news pieces. I attended several more film festivals as filmmaker, like Nightstream/Boston Underground, Chattanooga, Charlotte, Anomaly, DC Shorts, and Portland Horror.

James - In person? None, but virtually I attended Udine FEFF, NAFF Project Market at BiFan, Fantastic Fest, Busan, IFFAM (Macau)

Eric - Far East Film Festival, Fantasia, Fantastic Fest, Nightstream, Black Canvas FCC, Los Cabos and Mórbido.

Shelagh - Miami Film Festival, Chattanooga Film Festival, Palm Springs Short Film Festival, L'Etrange, TIFF, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, and Cinemania.

Andrew - Fantasia, MotelX, Sitges, Nightstream, and Morbido. I also covered the Frontieres and Blood Window co-production markets.

Were you able to attend any festivals in person this year?

Josh - No. All of my festival viewing was done from my couch.

Ryland - Not after the pandemic started except the above mentioned Telluride-sponsored drive in screening in LA.

Izzy - I attended Slamdance and Boston Sci-Fi in January and February, before things got bad.

Eric - Yeah, but only a handful of screenings at Black Canvas FCC and Mórbido.

Shelagh - Just the Miami Film Festival. The day after I left, the festival was forced to shut down due to the pandemic.

Andrew - No. I was going to travel to Fantaspoa for the first time in May, tickets bought and everything, and back to my home away from home at Morbido in October. There was hope when Fantaspoa rescheduled for the Fall but as we watched the pandemic in real time we relented to the reality that travelling was off the table last year. Canada has a Quarantine Act and you are supposed to self isolate for two weeks when returning to the country. Who knows what quarantine measures other countries have when you enter them. Bottom line is I don't have three weeks or more to give up for one week of fun.

When you took part in an online festival, approximately how many movies did you watch per day? How many would you have watched if the festival was in person?

Josh - For most of my online festivals I'd take in 2-3 per day of viewing, fewer if I was working during the festival. When I'm attending an in-person event, however, I'm usually watching 4-6 films a day. At home, distractions are plentiful, and responsibilities are also never far; at fests outside of town, though, I'm there with a singular purpose. It's a very different vibe.

Ryland - Approx 1 per day as opposed to 3 or 4 (or maybe 5).

Kwenton - Three, probably more in person, particularly on weekends.

Izzy - For something like Fantasia, I’d watch 3-5 movies per day. It was great to be able to eat anything at any time, and not have to miss meals between screenings. I would watch the same amount and up to six films in one day. It gets hard sitting all that time, though, and I do that less and less. But at home, you can stand and stretch all you want while watching films.

James - Fewer overall probably, as there are too many other distractions at home, it’s harder to block off the time, and my internet sucks. That said, at festivals I often don’t watch a ton of films, as there are numerous different distractions.

Eric - Well, I quit trying to watch five films a day, every day, at festivals a couple of years ago. I tried but I simply can’t function that way. And I truly hate to fall asleep during a movie, especially when I’m not in my country, which I’m sure is something those who follow that routine do at least once a day.

I also learned that it’s always better to do the most writing possible during the actual festival, because afterwards you return to your regular life and it will always be harder. And I also love to do interviews and to hang out with cool people. That takes time and energy too.

With all that in mind, during Fantasic Fest 2019, there were some days that I did watch four films, even one in which I watched five. But then, others in which I only saw two or even just one. I’m OK with that.

So, it was pretty much the same for me at home. Fantasia was the one in which I watched more films. Some days I watched three or four, others only one. It varied. I think I ended up doing a more solid coverage than any of the ones I have done in person: 13 articles (including three interviews) and even a podcast. That’s the positive aspect for me: it was definitely more comfortable to work at home.

Shelagh - It was about two films per day, which was less than if I was there in person. Usually if I'm attending a festival, my schedule is devoted to it, so there is more time to see films.

Andrew - I’d be lucky if I watched two per day. while I was "attending" an online festival I was also working. Where before I would take a week off to go to a festival and go whole hog for seven days straight I found I had less time to participate in any festival I was covering because I was still keeping a daily routine. I never watched a film in real time with an virtual festival.

Also, there is typically a waiting period between requesting a screener and it being delivered, either the festival or by a third party source (which would take however long they seemed fit to respond to a request). Festival link traffic manages a maximum number of links at a time whereas when you’re at a festival you can run the whole day’s program which may be four or five films every day.

Did you cover more or less festivals this year? Was that by choice?

Josh - I covered a larger number of festivals in a greater amount of depth than usual. Most years I'll grab a film or two from big fests like Sundance or Toronto as they become available, but being able to cover TIFF as accredited press this year opened up a lot more opportunity, even as that festival seemed to clamp down pretty hard on the number of press they admitted. I didn't provide coverage for some of my usual stops like Fantastic Fest, SXSW, and Oak Cliff, though, so it was a bit of a trade off.

Ryland - Far fewer - not by choice.

Kwenton - Less, not by choice.

Izzy - Less, far less. Definitely by choice. It’s not the same, and a lot of fests can’t get the tech right yet.

James - Far fewer, and not by choice.

Eric - More. I live in Mexico City so it’s obviously much more accesible if you can cover them from your house.

Shelagh - I covered less. While there were some advantages to online fests (saving, watching the films on my own schedule), being at home meant more pressure to work on my other jobs.

Andrew - More. When it became clear that more and more festivals were moving to virtual editions more doors were open to us and more invitations came our way. By the end of the Summer I think a lot of us kind of overloaded on coverage. Our mouths were bigger than our stomachs

Were you able to participate in social gatherings linked to the festival that were held online? What was good about them?

Josh - A bit. I'm a bit of an introvert, so being forced into close contact with others is really one of the only ways to squeeze conversations out of me, and without that face-to-face interaction, I'm very likely to fade into the shadows after the credits roll. I tried to join the Fantasia Discord, but it outsmarted me. The best of the social experiences was definitely Nightstream, whose set up with GATHER was as close to mingling in person as possible. It allowed you to move around and engage with different groups of people fluidly, just as you would in person. A+ for whoever set that up.

Ryland - Nightstream's online video game-esque chat room was a fun if not sort of clunky way to reconnect with some fest friends.

Izzy - Nightstream had a cool 8-bit bar virtual hangout, and a ton of genre filmmaker and programmer friends attended. They also had live music events, performances, and lots of panels that were great. Fantasia had a birthday celebration for Gary Sherman that I participated in as friend that was streamed. They also had a great John Carpenter masterclass and lifetime achievement award ceremony online, in addition to so many great talks. Fantasia and Nightstream killed it.

James - I joined in on a couple of zoom hangouts connected with BiFan and Fantastic Fest. Great to see everyone, and occasionally even be heard over a dozen other people shouting into their laptops simultaneously, but obviously a pretty bittersweet experience.

Shelagh - I was a few times. The gather app does a good job of recreating a 'bar' set-up and atmosphere. It was nice to, at least in some way, see friends from abroad.

Andrew- No. I kept a regular routine all year (very fortunate to have a job that was deemed an essential service so I wasn’t about to take advantage of that and take time off to sit at home for a film festival). I couldn’t go to the wee hours of the night as I would during a regular festival run. Saved me from my Imposter Syndrome, a lot.

Were you able to participate in festival events other than screenings (Q&As, special guests, etc)

Josh - I did enjoy some of the supplemental events that festivals provided, particularly the panel discussions and retrospectives at festivals like Chattanooga and Nightstream. I had the privilege of hosting an industry panel on the effect of COVID19 on the current and future landscape of independent genre film at Fantasia's Frontieres Market event over the summer that was very exciting and insightful on the part of my panel members. On the success of that panel I was invited to host a Q&A for Natasha Kermani's Lucky at Fantasia that was also quite fun.

Ryland - Yes I watched a few Q&As for the films I had particularly enjoyed.

Izzy - Yep. Chattanooga also had a fun Satanic mascot named Bubz that was a host of sorts in a fun retro mini studio. They also had performances by GWAR, a talk with Joe Dante, a q&a with Alex Winter, workshops, and more. A bunch of us did a drunken Scripts Gone Wild reading of John Carpenter’s The Thing, with Barbara Crampton playing MacReady. The peeps who run CFF are nuts in the best kind of way, very creative.

James - I hosted a zoom interview with Kimo Stamboel for Fantastic Fest, but that’s about it.

Eric - Well, not really, but I did several interviews as part of the Fantasia, Nightstream and Mórbido coverage. Nothing particularly new to me since I’ve been doing remote interviews for a while, however I must say doing some of them via Zoom was better because I ended up using the video footage as well.

I was also accepted to be part of the young jury at Black Canvas FCC, a hybrid edition with both in person screenings and virtual ones. The organizers were great about it and it was my personal choice to cover a section that had some in person only screenings (the Mexican competition). That’s what made me return to a movie theater in October after six months. I ended up watching two films aside of the ones I had to judge (the latest efforts of Sono Sion and the late Obayashi Nobuhiko), due to the fact that I felt completely safe with all of the screenings being attended by very few people.

Shelagh - I did attend and participate in some industry panels.

Andrew - At the end of the year I was asked to be part of the jury for the Latin American section of the Panama Horror Fest, which will take place in February of this year. I think it counts. Fuck it, I created this series of articles. It counts!

Did you attend any drive in screenings linked to festivals or new film releases? How was your experience?

Ryland - Just the one Telluride screening of Nomadland. I think the drive in experience is probably great for certain kinds of crowd pleaser movies but the experience is generally worse than a theater and even worse than watching at home.

Izzy - I would have had any taken place near me, even though the sound and picture quality aren’t great at drive-ins.

Eric - Only one, Black Christmas as part of Mórbido. And that trip was more about supporting the festival.

Pandemic or not, I have never been a huge fan of watching movies there. I prefer to put on a Blu-ray at home. Always.

Did you take part in a festival that you otherwise would not have under a normal year? If so, why? (time, location, etc.)

Josh - I had much broader access to fests like Chattanooga (late spring) and Toronto (early autumn) than usual, and Nightstream counts as five festivals, none of which I'd previously been fortunate enough to visit in person.

Izzy - I attended DC Shorts as a filmmaker virtually, which I probably would not have been able to do otherwise. It was also nice to attend the “Celebration of Fantastic Fest” virtually and save at least a thousand dollars on travel, airfare, and food and drink. I loved their virtual 100 Best Kills program, which was almost as fun as being there. It’s still a bit sad, though, because the real fun of Fantastic Fest is always in person, and by late September, everything was so depressing.

Eric - Yeah, definitely. Again, I live in Mexico City and I wasn’t planning to travel to Italy for the Far East Film Festival, nor to Canada for Fantasia. And Nightstream was born due to the pandemic.

On the other hand, I was considering to go to the Cannes Film Festival in 2020, it would have been my second time there. In February I was talking with a popular Mexican outlet about doing coverage for them, but the pandemic hit before I submitted my press request.

Shelagh - I was able to see a couple of screenings for the Chattanooga Film Festival, and participate in some industry events for Palm Spring Shorts.

Andrew - MotelX, Portugal - I’ve heard good things about both the festival and the city of Lisbon, Portugal. We keep largely to the same latitudes when going to festivals which is why I travel primarily into Latin America these past few years.

Same goes with Sitges. I was close to going once, many years ago, but had to back out. Other Anarchists have been in years past and sing high praises about it.

Nightstream was five festivals rolled into one. I’d never be able to attend any of them (Boston Underground, Brooklyn Horror, North Bend, Overlook, and Popcorn Frights) at any other time in the year. Is that one or five festivals?

Image: I don't know if this would have made up for it or made it worse. Those who know? They know.

When the year ended, do you think have seen more films, fewer films, or the same number of films in the calendar year as opposed to a normal year?

Josh - Far fewer films, strangely, but nothing to do with festivals. With all of the stress surrounding the pandemic, quarantine, lockdowns, etc., I found it easier to slip into binging TV than films in 2020. I probably watched double the amount of TV that I would in a normal year.

Ryland - Fewer by a great deal.

Kwenton - More films.

Izzy - Hard to say, I don’t keep track. Might be less, which is shocking.

James - Still about the same as I’m watching a ton of stuff at home, and thankfully now, during FYC season, distributors seem to be doing a better job than usual of making screening links available.

Eric - More. Most of the time since March, I’ve stayed home working and watching movies.

Shelagh - I will have seen a LOT more. Including shorts, I expect I watched about 1500 films in 2020.

Andrew - I want to say it was about the same but by around October it was all a blur. I also help program a film festival here in Canada and consult for other festivals elsewhere. In regards to films that are on the circuit even though I didn’t attend a festival and do my usual four or five films per day I still watch a lot of these films outside of festival dates for the sake of programming and referrals.

What do you miss most about the normal festival circuit?

Josh - Summer in Montreal at Fantasia, late summer in Austin for Fantastic Fest, seeing old friends, meeting new ones, making real connections in a way that the virtual world can make difficult. The films are obviously great, they are the reason we do any of this, but I can (and do) watch films at home, festivals are about people. Sharing the energy of an auditorium full of rabid film fans is what it's all about for me, and I miss that feeling dearly.

Ryland - Pretty much everything except the hangovers.

Kwenton - Festival time, when schedules and screening locations, eating out, and socializing replace daily routine.

Izzy - Seeing friends and hugging them. Making new friends. Talking about movies. Discovering new talent and seeing the newest, weirdest films before they’re released to the wider public. What a time to be alive.

James - Seeing all my international friends on the circuit.

Eric - I definitely missed to travel to Los Cabos for the film festival, which I covered in 2018 and 2019.

I attended Fantastic Fest from 2017 to 2019, but honestly at the beginning of this year I wasn’t sure if I was going to return.

And here in Mexico City there’s always people I love at the genre festivals Macabro and Mórbido. I guess is so obvious but I missed to hang out with my buddies. I attended three Mórbido screenings, and quickly greeted a few of them, but it was not the same.

Shelagh - Taking a chance on a film by just finding a window in my schedule. Meeting and chatting with filmmakers. My friends.

Andrew - People. More than people, friends. There are some events where you’re guaranteed to run into a lot of your friends from the industry. Like Fantasia. Go to Fantasia on Frontieres weekend and it’s a madhouse and a funhouse. Hundreds of us descend on Montreal and the festival during the same weekend. Madness. Wonderful madness. Oops, there I go, talking about second weekend again.

Will you try to do the same amount of coverage next year? More or less?

Josh - Depends on the state of the world. I'd always love to cover more, but travel is somewhat difficult for me. If fests continue in the mostly virtual direction, I can work from home without having to worry about my responsibilities at home (though I really can't wait to see the world again).

Ryland - Depends on festival calendar.

Kwenton - Hope to cover more next year, even with online-only festivals.

Izzy - I’m not sure. I’m really focusing more on filmmaking myself these days.

James - Hopefully more, but it really all depends on travel logistics.

Eric - It seems even more festivals will go digital in 2021, starting with Sundance, so hopefully more.

Shelagh - It depends on if everything is still online. If it is, I'll likely do the same amount.

Andrew - I’d love to cover as many festivals that will allow me. We hope that more festivals are open to the idea of allowing more international press to do remote coverage.

Other than the obvious (not being there in person) what did not work well in some coverage you did this year?

Josh - I don't like streaming films from my laptop, even though it's pretty simple these days. Festivals who were able to work with apps that utilized a streaming channel available on Apple TV/Roku, or other streaming devices were my favorite experiences in that regard. Apart from that, things went fairly smoothly.

Ryland - I would generally say I felt less motivated to finish a movie I was lukewarm than I would have been if I was sitting in a theater. It's easier to turn something off if you know you can turn something else right back on.

Kwenton - Some technical issues and strict time slots were the only two hindrances.

James - Geo-locked film access was a bummer, preventing me from watching as many films as I’d have wanted to. Also just missing the socialising and networking, which for me is probably the single most important factor of festivals.

Eric - Aside of minor technical streaming issues, everything worked just fine. Fantasia was particularly great, with a lot titles available for foreign press like myself and a PR team that did stunning work.

Shelagh - Something is lost when you don't see a film with an audience. There are so many films that I think I would have viewed differently if I had seen them in a big room with dozens of people.

Andrew - Access to the festival lineup. Make no mistake about it, being press at a festival has its perks. However, online access has always had it's limitations even when attending a physical festival. To be clear this is not the fault of the festivals.

When you're at a festival in person your main adversary is time. If you kept to the schedule during a regular festival you could check out four or five films a day. The question then becomes, what films are available for me to watch and review outside of the regular schedule? And surprise to those outside of the press circles, not even during regularly scheduled programming will a festival have a screener for every single film in their lineup.

There has always been reluctance from some studios and sales companies to have digital screeners go out into the world with the risk of that link going public. Fears were especially heightened once festivals turned to digital. There was a lot of unwillingness from production companies and studios to put their films into virtual festivals at all last year; not until it could be proven that digital platforms were secure.

It is a burden we've learned to live with, just last year you could not counter those limitations by going to a physical festival.

When festivals begin in person screenings again, will you be reluctant to jump back in, the first in line, or somewhere in between.

Josh - The first in line once I'm confident it's safe again, which might take a little longer than I'd hope, but I'm optimistic.

Ryland - Assuming it's safe, I'll be there for sure!

Izzy - I think that ideally, there would be a hybrid model that bridges both virtual events and films, as well as the traditional and much more satisfying physical model. Film festivals are real social events, and a lot of that has had to disappear this year, godforsaken as it has been.

I’ll likely be a little hesitant to jump back in while keeping some of the riskier elements of society in mind, especially here in the States. Anti-science and anti-vaxxers are dangerous. They’re the reason that we’re doing so poorly with this whole debacle. I do really miss my friends and having that wonderfully rich festival experience, though. I can’t wait for things to go back to some sort of normal, whatever that may be.

James - It really depends on the location of the festival, and whether or not that country has proved itself capable of opening cinemas safely. I can’t imagine travelling to the US any time soon, for example, but I’ll be back at HKIFF (which was cancelled completely this year), or to Korea for BiFan and Busan asap, because they’ve shown they know how to handle COVID and the public aren’t a liability.

Eric - Like I said, I’ve already attended some in person screenings with the new requirements. I felt safe because almost no one was there. But the general situation in Mexico just got worse. Movie theaters in Mexico City are once again closed, just a couple of days after the opening of Wonder Woman 1984, which was supposed to help the industry a bit. So today I’m not even sure what will happen with local film festivals in early 2021. I look forward to virtually attend Sundance in January and that’s about it right now.

Shelagh - Probably somewhere in between, depending on where the festival is, and what stage that location is at with vaccines etc.

Kwenton - Somewhere in between.

Andrew - First in line. I have to presume that in person screenings would only be done when it’s absolutely safe to do so. I need to travel again. I need to visit with friends and family on the circuit. At this point that first time back on the circuit may still not be until the end of the year. Surely we will be out of this shithole until then. Right!?! If it hasn’t gotten me by then.