State of the Alternative Festival

Abstract

It seems that everywhere you look these days there is a plethora of film and video festivals. While many claim to differentiate themselves from mainstream Hollywood fare, many of these fests seem to replicate the programming of the bigger indie fests such as Sundance or Telluride. They also often seem more intent on garnering tourism dollars than promoting film and video as an expressive art form. What has become of the festivals organized around the artist and their work? Many of these festivals have seen government funding they depended upon dwindle, forcing some established, non-mainstream festivals to close their doors. Federal funding for the arts continues to come under fire and it may appear, in some circles, that the potential audience of film and video artists hangs in the balance. Yet three new festivals have emerged within the last four years, championing work their organizers feel has been neglected within the greater circle of national film and video festivals, and doing so without government sup port. These festivals are the Crested Butte Reel Fest in Colorado, the Madcat International Women's Film and Video Festival in San Francisco and the THAW: Festival of Film, Video, and Digital Media in Iowa City. The Crested Butte Reel Fest held its first official festival in 1998 yet traces its beginnings to 1996 and the existence of an underutilized video projector at the Center for the Arts in Crested Butte: an evening of shorts organized by film producer Bob Nowotny developed into the idea of a full-fledged festival targeting national (and eventually international) artists working in short form film and video. The festival solicits narratives, documentaries, experimental work and animation under 60 minutes in length, purposely avoiding the tendency of high profile fests to favor feature-length narratives. The festival also encourages student entries in all its categories. Barbara VanHanken, the current director and co-founder of the festival, describes the festival's philosophy as one which honors the filmmaker. [1] Armed with help from locals Nowotny and writer/producer Mark Schweisow, VanHanken, a part-time resident of Crested Butte, set about raising money to realize this event. She openly admits to havi ng no background in either film curating or festival organizing yet, due to her son's enthusiasm for the medium, dedicated herself to the project. Because local Crested Butte businesses were constantly inundated with requests to support community activities, VanHanken first utilized local volunteers as festival workers but looked to national corporations for fiscal sponsorship. Once the festival planning was officially underway, many local businesses contributed to the festival by donating food, gift certificates and providing free or reduced accommodations for the visiting filmmakers. Corporate money, donations, entry fees and admissions to screenings allowed the first year's festival to not only break even on expenses but to carry over funds that served as seed money for the following year. Ariella Ben-Dov co-founded and organized the first Madcat International Women's Film and Video Festival in 1996. Noting that there had not been a women's festival in the San Francisco Bay area since 1990, Ben-Dov sought to establish an international festival where experimental and avant-garde work by women could find an audience. During her initial research into the feasibility of organizing a women's festival, Ben-Dov discovered that not only were women sorely underrepresented at open call festivals but that there were few established women's festivals. (Ben-Dov notes that the AIVF Guide to Film Festivals only listed a handful of women's festivals internationally.) I had an inkling that this was not due to the fact that women weren't making interesting and worthwhile films and video, recalled Ben-Dov. The programming that has emerged reflects her interest in work that employs challenging modes of visual storytelling. …