Ask a Programmer: Movieline's Guide to 5 Major Fall Film Festivals
Thom Powers
Toronto International Film Festival (Sept. 8 - 18)
Title: Documentary Programmer
How many years have you been with the festival?
Six years at TIFF.
How many films are in this year's festival? How many films were submitted?
336 films at TIFF (268 are features) out of 3,461 submissions.
Approximately how much time is spent planning your program each year?
I have my eyes open year-round, but the most intense period is May-July.
What are you looking forward to most this year?.
It's always exciting to debut work from veteran filmmakers such as Werner Herzog (Into the Abyss), Fred Wiseman (Crazy Horse) and Jessica Yu (Last Call at the Oasis). But in some ways it's even more gratifying to showcase work by lesser known filmmakers such as Girl Model (directed by David Redmon & Ashley Sabin) or Undefeated (directed by Dan Lindsay & T.J. Martin).
How would you define your festival's identity, and how does it fit into the festival circuit?
TIFF is many festivals in one. You can focus on a specialty like star-driven work in Galas, documentaries in Real to Reel, emerging filmmakers in Discovery, high adrenaline in Midnight Madness or experimental in Wavelengths, and more. But I think it's most fun to sample a little of everything to get a take a wide survey of cinematic trends.
Has awards season's ascendancy impacted the fall festival climate for better or worse?
TIFF has long been seen as a key launching pad for awards season with successes such as Slumdog Millionaire, The Hurt Locker and King's Speech. Increasingly, the festival has also played a similar role for documentaries such as last year's Inside Job that had its North American premiere at TIFF.
Place us in a selection committee meeting. What are the conversations? What are the disagreements? How are they resolved?
At TIFF, programmers are given autonomy, so very little selection happens by committee. If I love a film that everyone else hates, I can still program it. Yet we often share work with each other to get second opinions.
What do you most look forward to at each year's festival? What do you least look forward to at each year's festival?
Most: the excitement that comes with filmmakers unveiling their years of hard work before audiences for the first time. Least: the anxiety that comes with that.
What's your favorite festival memory?
I'll subvert the question and focus on the memories I hope to be making this year with U2 taking the stage for From the Sky Down -- the first time a doc has been Opening Night of TIFF; or President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives appearing for the world premiere of The Island President; or first time filmmakers Dan Lindsay & T.J. Martin presenting Undefeated.
What's your advice for aspiring festival programmers?
Establish your voice - whether it's through journalism, blogging or Twitter. Stake out your area of expertise. Learn how to build an audience. If you can get several hundred people to buy tickets based on your recommendation, you're a programmer.
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Comments
This is great. Thanks for this.
Thanks very much for this. I happen to be flying into New York for a few days the night their festival opens. Don't know how feasible it is to hope for a ticket to something.