Posted on Tuesday, 26 July 2011

What does a film festival offer us? Maybe the ideal goal of a film festival is to offer us the exact opposite of what distributors do. In the world of the “general release”, cinema-going can be a fairly narcissistic affair. We bring our wallets along, are confronted by several films, all different genres, and we make a choice, thus affirming our individuality. We don’t just go to see The Tree of Life. We are also saying ‘I am a person who chooses to see The Tree of Life’.

To put it another way, going to the movies can be like visiting those online dating sites where the goal is not to date other people but to date yourself. This is why you have to include in your dating profile all your interests, all the music you like, what kind of books you read, all in the name of “compatibility”. And when the time inevitably comes and you realise the person you meet is not yourself, the romance falls apart.

Of course, real love is not strictly related to compatibility in this sense. Love doesn’t happen when you find your “other half”. (“You complete me,” says Tom Cruise to Renee Zellweger in Jerry Maguire and she concurs only to prove that she’s some kind of sociopath.) It happens when you are ready to open yourself to a person’s radical Otherness, to love that which is beyond you. I’m saying all this only to articulate what my ideal of a film festival experience is – the chance to be confronted by something that isn’t “you” and be taken by it. The multiplex is where we go to look in the mirror. A film festival is where we go to fall in love.

Loving MIFF so far this year (think I’ll only be seeing 10 films though - SOFT!), and particularly enjoying the Blogathon blog posts by the six Melbourne film bloggers who accepted the Festival’s challenge to each watch and review 60 films in 17 days.

I liked this hopelessly romanticised quote from Brad Nguyen’s blog comparing going to film festivals with the pursuit of love (even though the quote includes the term “radical Otherness” - ack).