NEW ARTISTIC DIRECTOR HAS SEEN CHANGES
Brian Owens oversaw his first film festival in 2004 and he remembers carrying canisters of 35mm films to the local UPS to ship back to filmmakers around the world.
It was the inaugural Indianapolis Film Festival, which Owens founded nearly 15 years ago. Things have changed, to say the least.
“Now somebody just sends you a file and away you go,” says Owens, in an interview from his home in Nashville. “So, yeah, it’s a drastically changing industry.”
For the past decade, Owens has witnessed these changes first-hand as artistic director of the Nashville International Film Festival, a post he took over in 2009. After helping double its audience during that time, he oversaw his final festival in Music City this past May.
Hired as Calgary International Film Festival’s first artistic director, Owens officially begins his job in October. But he plans to be on hand for this year’s festivities, from Sept. 19-30, as an observer. He took some time to chat with Postmedia this week about the future of Calgary’s biggest film fest.
Q What are your initial impressions of the Calgary International Film Festival?
A I think the programming team has done a great job, I think the marketing has been solid. Everything looks really professional. I only had a day-and-a-half in the city and it was really foggy, so I couldn’t see a whole lot. The parts of the city that I was able to experience I enjoyed and I’m looking forward to experiencing the whole of the city.
Q Are there aspects of the festival you would like to see changed?
A I wouldn’t necessarily say change. My hope is to go there and enhance the quality of things that are already happening; through expanding the competition, growing the pool of entries and taking a couple of the relationships that I have with some studios here to bring more special presentations and larger titles up there.
Q As far as I know, this is the first time the festival has had an artistic director separate from the executive director. What is your role going to be and how is it different from Stephen Schroeder’s? How will you be interacting with the veteran programmers here?
A As artistic director, my job each year will be to shape the vision of the festival. It happens organically to a degree. But I think for it to happen organically, there needs to be someone there who is also guiding it. The filmmakers, obviously, have the biggest say. But as you start to see what’s happening in the pool of entries and what’s happening in the annual trends in cinema, that’s how you start building a complete festival. It’s always been left to Steve to do that but Steve has so many other hats to wear and jobs to do as executive director that they felt like it was the right time to create this position and I have 15 years experience doing it.
Q You founded the Indianapolis International Film Festival in 2004. How has the landscape changed for film festivals and cinema in general?
A (laughs) I don’t even know if it’s the same business. People still sit down and watch movies on the big screen and people still make movies, but how they watch them is so vastly different than it was 15 years ago and how the content is created is so different than it was 15 years ago. It’s been so democratized that literally, anybody with an iPhone can make a movie, not that everyone in the audience wants to see everybody’s iPhone movie. But there is that capability to do that. In a way, that democratization has been fantastic because it’s opened the doors to fresh voices who wouldn’t have had access financially to create a film before. If there is a drawback, it also means there is a lot more to wade through to get to the highest-quality stuff. So it has its ups and downs. It’s been fascinating to watch the changes happen from this viewpoint.
Q Presumably, one of the frustrations for festivals programmers is that audiences will flock to higher-profile films that will be in the multiplexes in a few months but stay away from smaller, hidden gems. How do you encourage audiences to be more adventurous?
A I think there’s different ways of doing that. There’s obviously making recommendations but as I develop my relationship with the audience and work with the programmers to grow their relationship (with the) audience, there are ideas I have to bring people in a little bit earlier so there’s more community ownership of some of the films before the festival begins. I’ve already got one for this year’s festival that I’m trying to hype up from here. It is Thunder Road, Jim Cummings’ feature film. Actually, we programmed it here. We were one of the first ones after it world premiered at (South by Southwest) to have it, because I’ve been supporting Jim’s short work for quite a while. It’s a new American film and there are not major names in it, but it’s a remarkable work of cinema that is both occasionally hysterical and occasionally heartbreaking. I hope that it gets as much attention as the larger titles do.
Q A big part of the Calgary film festival is Canadian cinema. What is your impression of Canadian cinema? Is it something you’ve been exposed to in Nashville or Indianapolis?
A Oddly enough, as I was growing up the first one I ever went to in Indianapolis was the Festival of Canadian Cinema. There were a couple of transplants who wanted to bring a part of their homeland to Indianapolis. It’s not around any longer, but I’ve been aware of Canadian cinema and a fan of Canadian cinema basically before I was doing this. I think of the Fast Runner, I think of Strangers In Good Company, I think of (Calgary filmmaker Gary Burns’) waydowntown. That’s one of the things that cracks me up. When I first got (to Calgary) I was like 'Oh yeah! I remember that movie!' One of my favourite filmmakers is from Canada, Jamie Travis. If anyone hasn’t seen the Patterns trilogy I strongly recommend it.