"Festivals of Their Own" in the Key of Cat

The article, "Festivals of Their Own," is, at a glance, a brief retelling of the history of film festivals. However, upon closer examination, the article elevates "film festivals" past the status of individual and separate physical events and instead observes "the film festival" as a phenomenon that is still evolving. The article is also pregnant with ethos, sown through the narrative, the history of film festivals.

In summary, the growth of the film festival phenomenon can be seen running parallel to the life of an organism, like a cat. The phenomenon is born into the world unable to walk, eyes unopened and screaming with all the wanton vigor that can be mustered by a newly formed kitten. Before the first festival in Italy, there was no metric, no guide, no established precedent for how to treat this newly formed “entity.” So like a feral kitten, everything that defined the first festival was determined by its surroundings. In this case, our kitten had the misfortune to be born into fascist Italy just before World War II.

Eventually our kitten makes it to France, where it reaches adolescence. Now more mature, the phenomenon begins to look more like what we would identify as a film festival today, eyes opened. Though The Cannes Film Festival was originally wide open to underground films and filmmakers, with time, those with more commercial clout began to move in. So, having acquired a taste for the easily attainable and usually higher-quality commercial-grade food, our kitten no longer needed to scavenge and could no longer stomach the lower quality scraps that were unknown, underground, low-budget films.

This is a motif in the stories of many film festivals. Beginning with the best intentions and open to submissions from high and low, many festivals eventually gain notice, and with notice comes commercial success. The author of “Festivals of Their Own,” puts forth that film festivals should exist to help the filmmakers. The article also states that, unfortunately, many people who organize film festivals do so for their profit rather than the edification of its contingent of filmmakers.

In response to the article, I hope those of us organizing the Visions Film Festival and Conference will do our best to offer a medium where any filmmaker can have his or her work shown, but I also want to maintain Visions as an event that encourages the betterment of filmmakers, by offering the opportunity to network and a platform for rigorous debate.