The Rochester International Film Festival is a great event but it’s at an awkward stage. We did some work for the festival and we have tickets to the events so we are sort of invested. Sponsorship is down everywhere and certainly a huge influx of money might solve some of the problems but unlike the local Jazz Fest, this event has not really caught on so that it grows each year regardless of the economy. There were a lot less movies shown this year and no movies at the Dryden because the venue is too expensive. The movies we saw were great and that’s why I’m complaining.
Yesterday we saw a beautiful movie about the search for the reincarnation of a Tibetan Buddhist monk, a movie called “Skin” that told the story of black girl born to white parents in South Africa during Apartheid and a Russian movie called “Mermaid” about a girl with special powers. The Film Fest delivered the goods but the package made us feel like we were in the Twilight Zone. We drove out to Corporate Woods for one of the film parties and fittingly heard a band wearing suits. And the next night we finished the evening at High Falls where there were two loud bands playing at the same time so we couldn’t talk about the films we’d just seen. There should be movies shown all over town. The ticket price should be a lot less. The web site should at least have links to trailers or the film’s official site. And the parties should be downtown. I’m sure I forgot something but somebody has got to figure out a better way to promote this thing.
3 Comments
I had a similar reaction to the film fest this year. It seemed less organized than previous years. We spent a lot of time standing in line outside well past show times and in one case (Skin) we were denied entrance because they oversold the show. One of the festival folks had the nerve to tell us we should not expect we could arrive at show time and expect to get in! Fortunately we got refunds with no hassle.
The little flip book animations they were selling were cool.
Paul, Columbia has had some success with their True/False Film Fest, http://www.truefalse.org/ They focus on nonfiction film and video.
The High Falls party was a debacle- absolutely awful. A loud obnoxious band, virtually no food, crappy donated wine…terrible. The passes cost $175 which means that even if you managed to see ten movies you were paying $17.50 per movie which was a lot more than just buying tickets. This makes no sense. My feeling is that this is either the last year or they need a major overhaul. It was nice meeting Lynn Redgrave tho…