Nantucket Film Festival Completes 27th Edition, Joins Other Regional Festivals in Pandemic Return Challenges

At first glance, the island of Nantucket looks more idyllic than a thrill, a doll of sand and wood 30 miles off the Massachusetts coast. Tourists had to return to the cobblestone streets, past the shops and restaurants in the center of the city’s century-old square. Summer came and the ordeal of Covid began to be erased from memory.

Yet the pandemic is taking a heavy toll on the Nantucket Film Festival, which on Monday wrapped up its first fully customized premiere since 2019. Like several dozen other well-established regional festivals in the US, Nantucket navigates the toughest work environment of 27 years of existence. Today, the annual list of awards was announced, led by the winner of the Audience Award for Feature Films. it’s not over. Director Sean Malin has described his film as one of the strongest and most eccentric epithets of the late Yogi Bera of the New York Yankees.

While the excitement of yoga may apply to dozens of movie events that are a step or two behind top global festivals like Cannes, Sundance and Venice, the game has changed dramatically as early as 2020 before the spread of the coronavirus. They’re back: a personality mod in a transformed marketplace where the festive laurel still carries weight, just the other way around.

“People are hungry for experience.“, – Mistel Brabey, art director of the NFF, said in an interview with Deadline. “They’re so excited to be back in the movies.”

Still, the festival has scheduled Slate, about two-thirds of its previous scale, and a screening night for the opening of the National Geographic documentary. the fire of love Dreamland Theater was only 70% full.

While optimistic about progress, Brabé acknowledges that a key factor influencing the festivities is the rise of multiple award-winning streaming services. In addition, movies powered by streaming services are less theatrical and therefore “often skipped by festivals,” he added. “We have no doubt that this will affect regional festivals. “

Not that Brabbée has anything against the flow. Like other festivals, Nantucket places it with a lot of slate. Ben Stiller, one of the founding members of the Nantucket festival, is attending and returning frequently this year to show the episode. Release, its Apple TV+ series. The relationship between festivals and streaming is entirely new, especially considering that many new streaming episodes have appeared on the market in the last three years.

Mark Famillo, director and president of the Sarasota Film Festival, says expectations for events like his are being reassessed. “We had a budget five or six times larger than the current budget,” he said. At its peak, Sarasota received 50,000 visitors and estimated the impact on the region’s economy at around $50 million. Economic impact is always an imprecise science, but it measures the amount of additional spending people gather for vacations on food, shelter, and local services. Sundance estimated that the 2019 edition raised $182.5 million in the local economy, but the last two festivals have been too far apart due to longstanding Covid concerns.

While bringing donors and sponsors together during this challenging time is never easy, some of the festival’s additional buffers include regional production and a program during the awards season. For example, Palm Springs and Santa Barbara benefited from the warmth of the Oscars and their location near Los Angeles. Government funding was available for many festivals during the pandemic, Nantucket says it will account for 25% of public support revenue in 2021. (However, many small festivals and cultural events have failed to receive government support, which creates an even worse situation. The situation is better established by regional supporters). The natural patronage of most festivals, large and small, waned as economic pressures increased.

At the Woodstock Film Festival, which takes place each fall in the Upper Hudson Valley, a new and significant interest in local production began to emerge. Many new soundstages have popped up nearby, bringing new people to the city in conjunction with the year-round events at Woodstock. Meira Blastein, co-founder and CEO of Woodstock, said that the awards ceremonies held at the City Theater reached small but important academy voters in the region. (The Montclair Film Festival in New Jersey has been delayed to fall 2021, but you can get a similar opportunity.)

These new sources of income and vitality have increased the financial burden of all festivals during the pandemic. Many went online immediately in 2020, but then had to invest in a plethora of safety measures when vaccines started and companies started coming back in 2021 (before the Omicron wave in the second half of the year and early 2022). “We definitely needed to save some extra money for Covid,” Blaustin said. Said. “Raising money for the festival is always a challenge. Fortunately, we have long-term, loyal fans who understand our needs and want to see us not only stay but grow. ”

After recovering from a housing crash and financial crisis in 2008, Sarasota has seen encouraging signs of unexpected developments: New residents have moved to Florida because of remote work, taxes and other incentives, Famiglio says. “This influx didn’t fully resolve the challenges we faced, but it did alleviate them,” he said. “It brought a different feeling, a different culture.” He said the calendar for the annual event in April is starting to reflect the new roster, mostly young. The broadcast’s serial programming “definitely changed the circle of the festival,” he said. “It’s like sticking a needle in an arm, it’s an attitude. It’s a whole new art form.”

The work-from-home era that made life difficult for festival organizers in the early days (“I didn’t even know what Zoom 2020 was,” laughs Woodstock Blaststein), has turned into sunshine for some festivals. Where once seasonal migration drew crowds of people into the city during certain weeks of the year, now the possibility of creating year-round accommodation is more realistic. “We see traffic jams in April, you didn’t see that until July.” from Nantucket brabey Aforementioned. He added that “the face of the island is changing rapidly” as the real estate market grows, with many of the long-term residents and business owners associated with the festival.

This year, as the weekend progressed, excitement grew for Nantucket’s less casual offerings. The annual Late Night Stories event continued with attendees including film director Peter Farrell; John Turturro didn’t come just to talk to him on stage Release Stiller, but to read the staged parts of the future Spike Lee-directed movie. Howard’s Beach. The town included Ramin Bahran, Jenny Slate, and Cooper Raif, among others.

The path of all independent films is somewhat uncertain, and film festivals also find support by connecting with other cultural events. Nantucket has comedy, food and wine, and more activities on the pier. “Our partnership with the community has quadrupled in the last two years – it’s such a beautiful piece of silver,” said Brabey. “The island is full of festivals and we all support each other.”