In the last of our reports from Your Festival Your Community from students of University of Edinburgh’s MSc Film, Exhibition and Curation, Melina Waeltermann stresses the importance of considering inclusivity at all levels, how funding can affect this and how local film festivals balance these concerns in their programming and delivery.
First of all, I’d like to point out that I’m very thankful for the opportunity to take part in the event. It was the first time that I attended a conference and it was great to see how Regional Screen Scotland managed to bring together ‘Your Festival’ and ‘Your Community’ at one table to share experiences and insights on the curation and organisation of film festivals all across the country.
I especially enjoyed the panel discussions which were informative and engaging because of the great panellists and well selected questions by the chairs. However, as a member of the audience who witnessed the panels, I learned for the future as a possible host of panel discussion to always have a microphone ready. Because although the theatre was not too big, some participants, especially the older guests, had some difficulty in hearing everything and therefore following the discussion. This brings me to my focus on inclusion and exclusion not only at events like ‘Your Festival, Your Community’ but in the exhibition of film and in the curation of film festival programmes in general.
I attended the workshop ‘What’s next?’ led by Emma Mortimore. It turned out to be the right choice to inform the development of models for my own future curation. In the first round of the workshop, we gathered concerns for the future by the experienced festival curators and programmers. Here, it became clear that the biggest concern was the funding of film festivals in the future and how the established networks and partner relationships can be maintained when the next generation of curators is ‘taking over’. Because of the difficult funding situation, there is a big concern about an increasing commercialism of film festivals and with it a loss of a curatorial ethos. Another aspect was sustainability – especially in relation to the smaller community festivals and how it can be ensured in the future.
It was very interesting to hear about these concerns from experienced and considered programmers and curators because they feed into my own thoughts about festival programming and curation. These are also dealing with the question how we can ensure a curatorial ethos when funding becomes increasingly difficult and the festival circuit more competitive so programmers are happy with every film they can get. This development makes it harder to create more culturally inclusive programmes and to enrich the diversity in festival screenings. But this is exactly what I hope for and what I aim for in the future. Therefore, it was also encouraging to see that established curators are already concerned about these issues because the last aspect mentioned in the workshop was about change. Although new people are always welcome to join a festival community, the tasks are usually covered and the community members may feel offended when someone from outside is coming in and wants to change up things. Of course, nuisance is not an option but change is because everything is always continuously changing and we are better off if we prepare for change and adapt methods to cope with it.
Events like the one so successfully organised by Regional Screen Scotland offer a brilliant opportunity to discuss these issues and to bring people together who might have different backgrounds and interests for their community but who share the same passion of bringing film to the people.