The Healing Magic of the Film Festival

This past weekend, the 33rd annual Seattle International Film Festival kicked off in Seattle, the annual collection of a few hundred films from all the corners of the world’s many film producing countries to the Northwest for my ecstatic perusal. As far as film festival’s go, I’ve always had a sort of reversed mental image in which grand premiers and galas are held every night within a central theater in which directors and movie stars from around the world arrive.

Technically, this only occurs in three or four film festivals around the world, and it often only occurs for a small handful of films participating in the film festival. I generally have no idea what a festival like Sundance or Cannes feels like to attend as I’ve never been, but I do know that in Seattle, the festivities are much more reserved, much less apparent, and for those not participating, only mildly obnoxious.

With the highest per capita movie attending city in the nation, Seattle has managed to wrangle together the biggest film festival in the country on an annual basis, this year consisting of 405 films. However, the festival is not privy to the kind of exciting new world premiers that Cannes gets, because so few people know about it. Wong Kar Wai’s first English language film for example, the opening film in that world famous French festival, will not make its North American debut for months to come.

It doesn’t help either that SIFF starts at the tail end of Cannes, crossing over its tail end and losing whatever international recognition it might be able to muster up in the first place. But, lasting for almost a full month, SIFF is the kind of city wide event that any movie adoring public would just gobble up. And we do. It’s a long time coming each year, but when that first schedule arrives with it’s 400+ movies, I sit down and start sorting through them, looking for the next big feature that I’ll be able to say I saw way before anyone else.

What is it about the film festival atmosphere then that so captures the hearts and minds of a city and gets everyone so involved? It’s not the prospect of so many new films. To be truthful, most of the best films screening at SIFF will be screened in a few weeks at any of the dozen or so art house theaters scattered throughout the city. Once again, this is a big movie going city. No, it’s more of a dedication to the manner in which you’re seeing these films. When you walk up to the theater, wait in the ridiculously long lines, pull out your special SIFF tickets and sit down in a packed house to a film that very few if any people have seen in America yet, it’s a special feeling.

My first film this year for example was this beautiful French compilation film called Paris Je T’aime. Comprised of 18 short films by internationally renowned directors like the Coen Brothers, Alfonso Cuaron, and Gus Van Sant, each film was a speech on love and the nature of love in Paris. It was not only a great movie, but a fun movie and the place was sold out. I had bought my tickets on the day the schedule showed up, so I was set, but more than 300 people stood in the reserve line to get extra tickets, and that’s not including the pass holders who got turned away. To make a long story short, this was a popular film and with most films at SIFF getting 2 screenings, it was amazing how quickly it sold out.

Sitting in that tiny Capital Hill theater, watching a film with no previews, personally introduced by a staff member, was a great deal of fun and the kind of thing I look forward to every year, and despite that massive line, Paris Je T’aime opens in a regular run in a University District theater this Friday. It was all for the experience.

What I’m trying to get to here is that the point of a film festival is not to show off the best new films from around the world (though that is a great side effect), nor to posh up the city with a bunch of overindulgent stars and directors. It’s about the film goers, the people who make these films popular by spending their money to see them. It’s about the experience of going to a movie, the spectacle of sitting down with a few hundred people and watching a film as though you’re the only people on the planet doing so.

There’s something to be said for the blockbuster atmosphere, standing in line with millions of others to watch the next chapter in the world beloved series of pirate, superhero, or green ogre films too, but it’s just not the same. And when you pay that much money and sit with that many people to see a film that just plain fails, you might become a slight bit jaded to the movie industry. To which I say, go to a film festival if you can; it will reignite your passion for the cinema.