Global film fests offer watch-from-home options
In the work-fromhome era, global film festivals come up with watchfrom-home options for cinephiles, writes Indira Kannan
Montreal-based documentary filmmaker Nathalie Bibeau was excited about premiering her first documentary feature at Toronto’s annual Hot Docs, North America’s biggest documentary film festival that usually runs from late April to early May. Instead, she watched as Hot Docs announced a postponement of the festival in April and then moved it online in May. This year’s Hot Docs Festival Online ran May 28 to June 6, and some films were also shown on Canada’s state-owned broadcaster CBC.
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has downsized the film festival screen this year. “We basically reinvented the whole festival to move to the online model, all within a twomonth period,” says Shane Smith, director of programming at Hot Docs.
The change didn’t actually hurt Bibeau; her film, The Walrus and the
Whistleblower, which chronicled an animal trainer at a famous amusement park in Niagara Falls who quit and started a campaign to end the practice of keeping marine mammals in pools, won two top audience awards at Hot Docs. But the filmmaker felt cheated out of the festival experience. “I don’t want to sugarcoat it, this has been heartbreaking for me because part of the joy of getting a film into a festival is that live connection with your audience and also with prospective buyers, the networking, and just the cocktails,” Bibeau says.
Some festivals have simply cancelled their events, the most prominent among them being Cannes, which moved its film marketplace online, but plans to present some of its selections at other leading festivals. The Tribeca Film Festival in New York, usually held in April, was also cancelled, but its organisers partnered with Youtube and other film festivals
like the ones in Toronto and Mumbai to present an online event titled We Are One: A Global Film Festival, from May 29 to June 7.
Another organiser who decided to go online is Jitin Hingorani, whose Jingo Media puts on two festivals promoting South Asian cinema in Dallas-fort Worth and New York every year. This year, he combined the two into an online film festival titled Escapist Cinema of South Asia, or ECSA, running every Saturday night from May 16 to June 27. “Instead of doing a typical two-day back to back film festival, we wanted to spread it out throughout the lockdown because we knew people would be observing shelter in place for 5-6 weeks,” Hingorani says.
The primary challenge of going online was to find streaming platforms that would be secure. As Hingorani notes, “As soon as we mentioned the words online, the first thing the filmmaker thinks and justifiably so, is, ‘Well, is my film going to be secure? And do I want to take this film online, does it affect my OTT rights, my digital rights for the film?’ It was really difficult navigating with each filmmaker.”
Bibeau confirms that was a big concern for her as the director and a producer of her film. “Hot Docs offered me the best security they could in terms of the film,” she says, “They had encryption technology embedded in the streaming of the film, they also put a watermark on the film with a user specific code. There was also a cap on views to ensure that it was an exclusive product.”
Hot Docs geo-blocked its content to the province of Ontario, while ECSA offered most of its films to viewers around the world. In both cases, the festivals widened their reach. “We have people in our database now, true global cinephiles who will tune in for a screening down the road because they’ve been exposed to our programming,” says Hingorani. “I’m thinking of making this a year-round event, like a movie club for independent films,” he adds.
The We Are One festival was offered free worldwide, but that was not an option for commercial ventures like ECSA. Both ECSA and Hot Docs slashed their ticket prices, but the online festivals also cost less to mount. Gone were the costs to hire venues for screenings and parties, flight and accommodation expenses for guests. “My after-parties are more expensive than the actual festivals,” quips Hingorani.
The film festival season kicks off in earnest in September and, so far, some of the big names, like the Venice Film Festival, have maintained they will go ahead with their schedules as usual. The Toronto International Film Festival, or TIFF, too has said it will have some form of physical festival, but is also planning a digital platform. The online component may be here to stay even after things go back to normal. “I think we will continue to have some kind of online engagement even if it’s just on the industry side to include those who may not be able to travel as much any more,” says Smith.
That’s a worry for filmmakers like Bibeau, but with the pandemic still showing no signs of winding down completely, the script for film festivals is being revised on the fly.
THE ORGANISERS OF THE TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL PARTNERED WITH YOUTUBE AND OTHER FILM FESTIVALS