|
|
| Thursday, January 28, 2010 08:05 AM |
| (Last updated on Friday, January 29, 2010 06:18 AM) | | Too Many and Not Enough: The Film Fest Deferred |
 by Fëanor |
poppy just sent me this article, which reports the sad news that CineFest couldn't pull enough money together and will not be presenting a film festival in April this year. It'll be the first time in 19 years that there has been no film festival in Philly in April.
When CineFest and the Philadelphia Film Festival finally split for good, I expected one of them to go under, but I thought for sure it would be PFF, not CineFest. It had been my impression that CineFest had gotten away with all the money and the contacts, and PFF had been left with practically nothing. But PFF rallied and threw together the 18th 1/2 Film Festival last year (which was actually quite nice), and now here's CineFest announcing that they won't have anything for us until 2011. Now that April 2010 has been vacated, the folks at PFF are apparently considering pouncing on it and throwing yet another festival of their own, but it seems unlikely that they'd be able to put something together on such short notice.
It's funny and sad that we've gone from there being too many film festivals in Philadelphia to there now being too few. It's a shame that these organizations had to split and that the wonderful tradition of the Philadelphia Film Festival had to be broken. That being said, for purely selfish reasons, I'm actually okay with there not being a festival this April, as there's no way I'd be able to attend, seeing as how I'll have a new baby to take care of. But here's hoping that whenever I do get the chance to go out to a film festival again (assuming that happens, in some distant future), there will be at least one around for me to go to!
UPDATE: To follow this up - last night, the Philadelphia Film Society, which runs the PFF, sent out an email that essentially said "too bad, so sad" about the cancellation of CineFest, and then proudly announced the dates of the fall festival: October 14 - October 24, 2010. So there. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
