CALGARY BECOMING FASHION FILM HUB
Festival draws global attention in its third year
Pop-culture trends are not always easy to predict.
When Katrina Olson-Mottahed co-founded the Canadian International Fashion Film Festival in 2016, she expected the then emerging cinematic sub-genre of fashion film was about to blow up.
Now, as the third annual festival is about to roll out on Saturday at the Glenbow Museum, she has accepted the fact it remains a fairly specialized pursuit.
“It’s funny, looking back three years, you just never know where things are going to go,” says Olson-Mottahed. “I’m happy with how things went. But it became so much more niche and I thought it was going to become mainstream.”
Still, one of the benefits of this development was that the Calgarybased festival, known as CANIFFF, has earned a global reputation by punching far above its weight. On Saturday, it will screen more than 80 short films from around the globe, 48 of which are nominated for awards in 12 categories. Sixteen filmmakers from around the world will be on hand to present their work. So while it may seem small compared to other film festivals in the city, CANIFFF has become increasingly important in the rarefied world of fashion film. A recent Forbes article compared it to the Berlin Fashion Film Festival, California’s LaJolla International Fashion Film Festival and Paris’s A Shaded View of Fashion in Paris in terms of influence.
Which means a win at CANIFFF can greatly broaden a filmmaker’s reputation around the world. A case in point is this year’s featured guest, Luka Finotti, who will be giving a master class on Saturday. In 2017, the Italian director picked up CANIFFF’s top prize, Best Fashion Film 2017, with his two-minute entry We Believe in the Power of Love.
Since then, Olson-Mottahed figures Finotti has become one of the top five fashion filmmakers working today, creating films for Versace and Vogue that have gone viral on Instagram.
“He has three personal assistants and two agents that we’re talking to now,” Olson-Mottahed says with a laugh.
So what exactly is a fashion film, and how does it differ from advertising?
“It’s the esthetic of it,” OlsonMottahed says. “Like a fashion show, which isn’t so much of an advertisement as it is an art form of the clothing. The fashion show is the expression of the collection. I think it’s the same thing with fashion films. It’s an expression of what the designer is trying to get out with the collection, rather than just an advertisement. (An advertisement) is telling you what you need to know. This is creating a feeling around the collection.”
Awards are given for best hair and makeup, best concept, best cinematography, best directing, best editing and best model/talent, among other categories.
The films take on a number of esthetics. Some are like music videos, some are documentaries, some are straightforward narrative and some are decidedly experimental. And, at least for now, most come from the world’s fashion hot spots. Olson-Mottahed said 90 per cent of the submissions this year were from Europe.
Still, some locals are making inroads. Calgary filmmaker and photographer Elle Yifan Xu’s The Raven made it into the official selection this year, a highly stylized two-and-a-half-minute short that combines fashion and dance.
“She was a student at Alberta College Art and Design,” OlsonMottahed says. “She showed up the first year of our festival and said ‘I really love this, I want to make films.’ She had a film last year but I don’t think she made it to the official selection. But this year her film made it to the official selection and it’s really good.”
The Canadian International Fashion Film Festival takes place Saturday at 10 a.m. at the Glenbow Museum. For more information visit canifff.com.