NEW YORK – It’s the time of year when the first flashy people walk the red carpet and Oscar ads pass all over the world. An avalanche of new movies hits the screens. Cinemas in Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York were applauded. Movies, more than ever, feel alive.
This year, 3 of the top 4 fall film festivals, all of Telluride’s, which had to be cancelled, continue despite the pandemic. But videos are just one component of what they usually are. Most north American premieres will be made digitally or in the drive-in. For a season founded on crowds dressed in badges and featured films, it’s about rething what a film festival is. Or maybe just redoble on a mission.
“A stage like this forces you to compare the fundamentals,” says Dennis Lim, programming director at the New York Film Festival. “What do you want a festival to take place? You want movies and you want an audience. Our task is to choose the films and deliver them to the audience in a meaningful way. If we can’t do that in a movie theater, what can we do?»
The answers, for programmers at the New York Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival, will begin to be revealed later this week. TIFF opens Thursday with the release of Spike Lee’s david documentary David Byrne, “American Utopia”. New York continues on September 17, with “Lovers Rock” through Steve McQueen. Venice, the oldest festival in the world, has been taking a position since last week.
Those in Italy admit that Venice has been almost normal. Masked spectators are seated in separate seats. A barrier stands out from the red carpet to discourage crowds of spectators. Greetings are kissless. It’s gone a little bit from the romance of the videos.
But not everything. Jury chief Cate Blanchett said it’s a little “miraculous” for the festival to take place. Pedro Almodóvar compared to months of detention in a prison. “The antidote to all this is cinema,” he said.
Unlike the Cannes Film Festival cancelled in May or the impromptu virtual edition of SXSW, Venice controlled to host a festival in person, albeit on a much smaller scale. Toronto and New York aim for hybrid festivals. New York has partnered with Rooftop Films to host movie parks in Brooklyn and Queens, from the festival space at Lincoln Center.
Toronto does the same, but also with indoor projections (of only 50 people) at its center, the TIFF Bell Lightbox. The festival lately calls mask dresses only when traveling in a theater, not in the show. Even a few days before opening night, theatrical screenings aren’t absolutely out of the office in New York, they deserve the state’s theaters to reopen.
New York and TIFF, in combination with the same provider, have introduced virtual platforms to host virtual projections. A limited number of tickets will be available, but the scope of the festivals will be expanded. Anyone in Canada will be able to purchase tickets, for TIFF screenings, and New York Film Festival films will be briefly available across the country.
However, the main studios don’t finish any movies, or Netflix. Postponing the Oscars until the end of April didn’t help. The overall calculation of the Oscar season, in which the stir is first created at festivals, has another calendar this year.
Tom Bernard, co-chair of Sony Pictures Classics, believes the race would possibly have replaced, but the importance of festivals remains there. The specialty label has several films on its way to festivals, adding Sundance’s hit documentary “The Truffle Hunters” and “The Father,” starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman.
“We have movies that we want to put into the Oscars race. Festivals do this because they have been the hallmark of festivals for a long time. That hasn’t changed,” Bernard said.
But it is also that festivals, accustomed to having the highlights for a week or two, will attract the same attention in a year in which many have much more urgent considerations than the advances of the upcoming films.
“We think that while the truth is very hard right now, stories are more vital than ever,” said Joana Vicente, CEO and Co-Director of TIFF. “We also want to think about all the artists who have been affected and who want the festivals to give them a platform. This will ensure that the culture is still alive. “
Many filmmakers not only need to stay out of the pandemic, they need to succeed in the audience as much as they can, and participate in conversations like those that followed the death of George Floyd. McQueen, who has three films from his anthology Small Axe at the festival, called Lim a week after Floyd’s death.
“There’s an explanation for why they wanted to release this film now,” said Lim, who runs NYFF with festival director Eugene Hernandez. “He had entrusted the films to George Floyd and asked us to take a look at him. “
Tommy Oliver’s “40 Years a Prisoner” about the clash between philadelphia police and black liberation organization MOVE that sparked a violent raid in 1978, scheduled for release next year, but will air on TIFF before airing on HBO in December. Africa Jr. , the adult son of two imprisoned MOVE members, the film captures long scars left in families and communities through police abuse. According to Oliver, it is important to help the public perceive the history of today’s tragedies.
“The hardest component was that Mike and his circle of relatives wouldn’t get to see an audience watching him at a festival. I’ve had it before and it’s amazing,” Oliver says. “But Toronto is an amazing platform. Most of the time, we can’t do things exactly as we think they are. It’s about how to adapt and move with everything that comes up. Is that ideal? No, will it work? Yes, I do. “
The queues at those festivals are even more than you expect. TIFF offers new works through Chloe Zhao, Spike Lee, Werner Herzog and Frederick Wiseman. New York also has some, as well as films through Sofia Coppola, Christian Petzold, Jia Zhangke and Garrett Bradley, Sundance’s celebrated entry, “Time”.
According to festival leaders, a common thread is that filmmakers need to help this colorful ecosystem of film culture, which, on a general festival night, is noticeable in the crowd of outdoor festival-goers at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto. or heard in the murmur of Alice Tully Hall discussions in New York. Vincent and co-director Cameron Bailey generally opposed traffic to jump from one position to another to deliver movies. .
“The funny thing is, we felt like the festival last week or the week before,” Vincente said. “We’re pre-recording a lot. “
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Follow AP screenwriter Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter. com/jakecoyleAP
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