Impact (Jan 1972)

diences, distributors are loathe to lose the people who will attend the festival showings. The festival authorities will argue that the extra publicity received by the films at the festival will increase their audiences. But what if they get no publicity and receive bad reviews? This argument goes on every year. Only when a film has no commercial distribution is a festival showing in a big city of some use. Hopefully, a distributor will buy it. International festivals hope to become known internationally — yet this self-seeking of publicity for themselves and the places in which they are held should not become their sole reason for existence. Their first responsibility is to the people of their region or country; to bring to them films they have little chance of seeing even though these same films are shown as a matter of course elsewhere. There are many such festivals in the world, unknown and unsung, and in their way these are more meaningful than large and famous events. The reason why some festivals are competitive is simply to publicize themselves. Cannes has become world-famous partly because the prizes films have won for themselves and their artists are mentioned prominently in their advertisements. Had the new Stratford festival given prizes, one might well have gone to Emile de Antonio’s Millhouse, A White Comedy, which received its first festival showing at Stratford. This would have been mentioned in the advertisements when the film opened in New York city. But prizes, which bring some excitement to a festival if only because few people agree with them, so often go to the wrong films and actors, and can so often reflect badly on entries which did not receive any, that film makers hesitate to enter competitive events. And with European juries, honesty is not always the best policy to follow. Prizes usually create problems and festivals are better off without them. The financial difficulties facing film festivals today are enormous. Because the producer or distributor gives his film without a rental charge, some would-be promoters of festivals think there is nothing to running a festival without a proper budget. But the simple logistics of staffing a festival, paying the shipping, brokerage, telephone and printing costs, transportation and hospitality of guests, the cost of running the festival theatre (whether rented for the occasion or a permanent building) are so high that no festival can cover its expenses. A profit is out of the question. They must be subsidized. In ‘socialist’ countries and countries where state support of the arts is strong, the money is always forthcoming out of a general budget for the arts and for the sake of making the country better known abroad. Cannes for example is sponsored by the French Government, the film industry and the Tourist Board of the Ville de Cannes, each paying a third of the costs, which would be $500,000 or more — exact figures are hard to come by. Moscow is paid for entirely by the Ministry of Culture. One important factor which makes most European festivals so well-known is that they pay the hotel and some living costs of hundreds of visiting journalists and critics, and sometimes film makers, from around the world, who dutifully write reams from the festival city. Oddly enough, the most pressing problems facing most of the big festivals are the same which face exhibitors in theatres large and small. They need to attract the largest possible audience to justify their costs and create headlines. To do this the majority of their entries must be more sensational than last year’s shockers. The small, sensitive artistic entry, for which the festival was _ originally created to support and provide a showing, isno longer welcome. Hence, a beautiful film like Claude Jutra’s My Uncle Antoine, is rejected at Cannes — along with many other of similar stature, because the festival director is afraid it will not appeal to a large public and bring in money at the box-office. Thus the festival director is applying the same yardstick as the head of the theatre chain’s booking department. It is becoming less and less necessary to go to some of the biggest international festivals because their main entries are films which we have already seen in our respective cinemas or will be showing in the near future. Were it not for the hundreds of films shown outside the festival at Cannes for example, and in special programs, the official event itself would have little to offer. Venice this year, beset by internal political rivalries and jealousies, and torn apart by fascists, communists and critics, was thrown together at the last minute and consisted mainly of films already assured their commercial showings. Moscow is a different situation. Hardly any of the Western films shown at its festival will ever be seen again in the USSR. To the Russians they are immensely important, one of their few windows into the western world, and this is the only festival which caters to a daily mass public in the thousands. In view of all these expenses and problems, why are festivals held at all? Because they are showplaces for the cinema as an art and as business, and they have given films a new importance in the community of man. They serve to bring artists together from remote places, and give the public the chance to see what film makers in countries still strange to us are doing. In the end, the festivals which survive are those which have a public to support them in the places in which they are held, and do not depend on a vast influx of tourists, journalists, businessmen and artists to sustain them. A Cannes and a Venice which draw international audiences of this kind serve to support all other festivals whose directors visit them to discuss those films which are worth showing at their own festivals. New festivals which think they have a future in large cities should be prepared to find a very wealthy founder or organization to support them. For this most commercial of all the arts cannot pay for itself under the demands made upon it once the city catches festival fever. il