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From: moriarty@fluke.UUCP (Jeff Meyer)
Newsgroups: net.movies,net.misc
Subject: Film Festivals: A query (also summary of the Seattle Festival)
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Date: Fri, 21-Jun-85 03:09:18 EDT
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Posted: Fri Jun 21 03:09:18 1985
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Well, it's been about a week since The 10th Annual Seattle
International Film Festival closed, and I have to admit that this is
one of the reasons I really enjoy living is Seattle.  It also makes me
very curious -- are there festivals like this one anywhere else in
the country?

First, a brief summary: the Seattle Film Festival is run by Dan
Ireland and Darryl MacDonald, owners of "The World-Famous
Egyptian Theatre", where the majority of the films are shown (half
were also shown at the Pike Street Market Theater this year). 
They work at getting premieres and films which they feel the
audiences of Seattle would really enjoy.  This year there were
about 200 films shown, about 70% of them being foreign.  The
Festival has a reputation of finding independent films, or films on
the shelf, and launching them into sucessful independent runs;
good examples are: _Soldier_of_Orange_, _The_Stunt_Man_ (for
which I am enternally grateful), _The_4th_Man_, _Choose_Me_ and
_Blood_Simple_.

This is definately a festival for movie *fans*; next to no seats are
reserved, except for the people premiering the film (i.e. no
distributors).  This strikes me as different than Cannes (and
Filmex?), as it is not tailored to get the distributor's eye -- it is
designed to catch word-of-mouth support, which is valuable in
Seattle (apparently Seattle and Portland have what marketeers call
a "market average" type of viewer for the smaller films).  Also,
they do something here which I have not heard of at other
festivals of this size: they have producers, directors, writers and
actors come up after the showing of the film and answer questions
from the audience.  This is a really wonderful part of the festival,
as the insights gained into how the industry really works are very
engrossing.  People seem unusually frank, and it makes for a very
interesting evening (the majority of the questions are suprisingly
well asked -- no People Magazine questions).

So anyway, does your city have a festival like this?  How is it alike
and different than my description of the Seattle festival?  How
large is it?  Who does it cater to?  I'm very curious to find out how
widespread festivals like this are....

Thanks in advance....

        "History is made at night.  Character is what you are in the dark."

					Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
					John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.
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