STATE OF THE ALTERNATIVE FESTIVAL.

It seems that everywhere you look these days there is a plethora of film and video festivals. While many claim to differentiate themselves from mainstream Hollywood fare, many of these fests seem to replicate the programming of the bigger indie fests such as Sundance or Telluride. They also often seem more intent on garnering tourism dollars than promoting film and video as an expressive art form. What has become of the festivals organized around the artist and their work? Many of these festivals have seen government funding they depended upon dwindle, forcing some established, non-mainstream festivals to close their doors. Federal funding for the arts continues to come under fire and it may appear, in some circles, that the potential audience of film and video artists hangs in the balance. Yet three new festivals have emerged within the last four years, championing work their organizers feel has been neglected within the greater circle of national film and video festivals, and doing so without government sup port. These festivals are the Crested Butte Reel Fest in Colorado, the Madcat International Women's Film and Video Festival in San Francisco and the THAW: Festival of Film, Video, and Digital Media in Iowa City.

The Crested Butte Reel Fest held its first official festival in 1998 yet traces its beginnings to 1996 and the existence of an underutilized video projector at the Center for the Arts in Crested Butte: an evening of shorts organized by film producer Bob Nowotny developed into the idea of a full-fledged festival targeting national (and eventually international) artists working in short form film and video. The festival solicits narratives, documentaries, experimental work and animation under 60 minutes in length, purposely avoiding the tendency of high profile fests to favor feature-length narratives. The festival also encourages student entries in all its categories. Barbara VanHanken, the current director and co-founder of the festival, describes the festival's philosophy as one "which honors the filmmaker." [1] Armed with help from locals Nowotny and writer/producer Mark Schweisow, VanHanken, a part-time resident of Crested Butte, set about raising money to realize this event. She openly admits to havi ng no background in either film curating or festival organizing yet, due to her son's enthusiasm for the medium, dedicated herself to the project. Because local Crested Butte businesses were constantly inundated with requests to support community activities, VanHanken first utilized local volunteers as festival workers but looked to national corporations for fiscal sponsorship. Once the festival planning was officially underway, many local businesses contributed to the festival by donating food, gift certificates and providing free or reduced accommodations for the visiting filmmakers. Corporate money, donations, entry fees and admissions to screenings allowed the first year's festival to not only break even on expenses but to carry over funds that served as seed money for the following year.

Ariella Ben-Dov co-founded and organized the first Madcat International Women's Film and Video Festival in 1996. Noting that there had not been a women's festival in the San Francisco Bay area since 1990, Ben-Dov sought to establish an international festival where experimental and avant-garde work by women could find an audience. During her initial research into the feasibility of organizing a women's festival, Ben-Dov discovered that not only were women sorely underrepresented at "open call" festivals but that there were few established women's festivals. (Ben-Dov notes that the AIVF Guide to Film Festivals only listed a handful of women's festivals internationally.) "I had an inkling that this was not due to the fact that women weren't making interesting and worthwhile films and video," recalled Ben-Dov. The programming that has emerged reflects her interest in work that employs "challenging modes of visual storytelling." Ben-Dov also admits to having had little knowledge about what producing a festival w ould entail. She credits this lack of knowledge with allowing her to jump boldly into the work required to make Madcat a reality. Utilizing individual and in-kind donations, entry fees and a volunteer staff, Ben-Dov held the first Madcat Festival in March of 1997.

THAW, a festival featuring new media work, as well as film and video, was the brainchild of two art students attending the University of Iowa (UI) in Iowa City. In 1995, Renee Sueppel, a graduate student in the Intermedia program at UI, and Lloyd Dunn, a member of the film/music/sound performance group The Tape Beatles and a recent graduate of the same program, lamented the lack of opportunities to view video art and experience other non-traditional arts events and decided to organize a festival recognizing the artistic possibilities of video, film and the emerging area of digital media. Miriam Bennett, an organizer for the 1997 THAW festival, notes that a strong aspect of the original festival vision was that video and CDROM work would not be treated as the "inferior cousins of film." Placing no restrictions on form or content, the THAW festival sought work that was often "overlooked, overshadowed or ignored by conventional exhibition circuits" (as stated on the 1996 entry flyer). Kent Lambert, the current director of the THAW 2000 festival, notes that the "no restrictions based on content" philosophy of the festival may have scared away community contributors but the festival remains firm on this conviction. Thanks to the work of the organizers, community artists and friends, entry fees and the university-provided screening spaces, the first THAW: Festival of Film, Video, and Digital Media debuted in 1996. This first festival screened nearly 40 films and videos and utilized space at the UI Museum of Art to "screen" a number of interactive CD-ROM pieces.

Clearly, without the guarantee of funding that a federal grant would provide, the, festival organizers have had to rely on their ingenuity in organizing resources to ensure that their festivals remain a reality. Not surprisingly, the strategies employed by these directors vary from fest to fest as do their results. In the initial year of each festival's founding, entry fees were cwcial to the funding initiative, yet other sources were tapped. VanHanken approached several large corporations in search of funding and for the first Crested Butte Reel Fest secured small grants from Merrill Lynch and a local arts group, the Crested Butte Society. Since her initial foray into the world of corporate funding, VanHanken has secured contributions from such national corporations as Skyy Vodka as well as businesses in Crested Butte and the surrounding area. She is also looking into the possibility of a partnership with United Airlines to help filmmakers attend the festival.

The directors of both Madcat and THAW embrace a different philosophy and choose not to pursue corporate funding for their festivals. Bennett attempted to secure funding from a national soft drink manufacturer but found the company only wished to donate a small amount of their product in exchange for prominent advertising space. She notes that local Iowa City businesses have been more generous in offering support, often by donating services. In 1998, for example, printing costs were an in-kind contribution and a local bar has held benefit concerts to raise money for the festival. Likewise, Ben-Dov has turned to the Bay area community for support in various ways, much of it coming in the form of contributions of food, drink, hotel accommodations and printing costs. One of the more interesting fund raisers Ben-Dov organized was a raffle involving "sex toys" donated by a Bay area business. All three directors note that community support has been crucial to their success and that the festivals have all utilized local volunteer labor as well as donated screening spaces.

Despite community support no festival can claim success without an audience in attendance and all three directors note an incredibly positive response to their efforts. THAW screenings hosted hundreds of festival goers while there were 1200 attendees at the latest Crested Butte Reel Fest (this is particularly impressive since Crested Butte has only 1500 year-round residents). Madcat began as a theater-based event showing work over the course of a single weekend but for the 1999 festival Ben-Dov expanded the event by moving it to an outdoor venue and screening two programs per week for one month. All numbers aside, perhaps the best indication of a successful event is that enthusiastic festival attendees and local businesses have stepped forward to volunteer their services for future festivals. This connection between the various festivals and their respective communities continues to grow.

Given the types of programming each festival has targeted, the structure of the festivals vary. While the Crested Butte Reel Fest's programming focuses on aesthetically challenging film or video shorts, the festival utilizes some of the organizing sensibilities of neighboring powerhouse festivals such as Telluride or Sundance. Actor Tom Skerritt's family sponsors one of the major awards and an entertainment personality is featured as the awards presenter (director Ed Zwick in 1998 and actress/filmmaker Carrie Hamilton in 1999). Cash awards, presented by categories, are accompanied by certificates and sculptural "statues." However, one of the most important goals has been to get filmmakers to come to Crested Butte and interact directly with the festival audiences. Attending artists receive free or discounted accommodations and many complimentary meals. Attending artists also benefit from organized networking workshops as well as producing and directing workshops led by people successful in both the Hollywood and independent film circles. In 1999, the Independent Film Channel offered to include all award-winning shorts in its cable programming. Due to these efforts, many filmmakers do attend the festival (14 filmmakers in 1998 and 20 in 1999).

The Madcat Festival takes a very different approach to this idea of high profile celebrities and awards: it features neither. While many well-known women filmmakers such as Barbara Hammer and Su Freidrich populate the programming line-up, they are screened side by side with lesser-known artists. No preference is given to work about women; the only parameter for work is that it be directed by a woman. The festival also offers no preference to work produced in the Bay area. Ben-Dov speculates that this may have distanced some local artists from involvement with the festival but maintains that this approach reinforces the basic tenet of the festival--the work is the focus. According to Ben-Dov, the goal of the festival is to help audiences become active participants in the viewing process and for them to have the opportunity to question filmmakers about their work. Madcat encourages filmmakers to attend the festival and has offered selected filmmakers accommodations donated by area hotels. During the festival there is an organized question and answer session designed to create a dialogue between filmmaker and attendees. States Ben-Dov, "Madcat hopes to encourage mainstream movie buffs and cinema theory heads to come together to watch innovative and cutting-edge work."

Because it is a festival of film, video and digital media work, THAW is positioned to be a much more aesthetically diverse festival. The people involved in the organization of THAW see the festival's structure as fluid, varying from year to year to serve the work submitted. Selected work has taken the form of traditional one-channel film and video screenings, performance and installation work as well as interactive digital work. As to the question of awards, "My opinion of awards is that there should be lots of them," states Bennett, a co-organizer of the festival. There is no "Best of" category, rather, jurors are encouraged to select a group of pieces they feel deserve special recognition. As for "stars," there seem to be two types in this fest-the artists' work and the supporters who help make the festival happen. Says Lambert, "THAW is much more about the, work shown than about the public identities of its participants." But, according to Bennett, you can "buy THAW fame." Last year, as a fundraising stra tegy, anyone who donated $500 to THAW became a "THAW Star." If a supporter donated $1000; he or she became a "Superstar."

In a world where new festivals seem to emerge and disappear at an alarming rate, the immediate success of 'these three' festivals surprised the original organizers. But none chose to rest on their laurels. In each case, plans are underway to improve the future festivals both financially and for the artists. For Crested Butte 2000, VanHanken has taken on Jessica Hunt as a co-director. Together they hope to develop the Crested Butte Reel Fest into its own non-profit organization with a board of directors and to secure more prize money and incentives for filmmakers to attend. Madcat's Ben-Dov has added development directors to her once one-woman operation and hopes to cultivate international relationships to ensure that the festival includes a strong diversity of work. Ben-Dov is also working on touring the Madcat festival, targeting universities, museums and other venues. THAW, which finds that most of its attendees are university students, is pushing to become an even more community-centered event. It is hop ed that by moving out of the university-sponsored facilities and into local theaters and art spaces, the community of Iowa City will take more ownership of the festival. In keeping with its anti-corporate sensibility, the festival has added a fundraising committee and hopes to hold many city-based fundraising events. Due to its focus on digital artwork, THAW also hopes to feature videos on its Web site and is considering conducting an on-line festival simultaneously with the site-based festival. Lambert could be speaking for any of these fests when he sums up THAW's philosophy by stating, "It's about the work, and if we find ways to make that work available to more people, then I'd say we've done a good job." In the case of all three festivals, they can all claim to have made this philosophy a reality.[2]

LEANN ERICKSON teaches film and video production at Temple University and is an independent film and videomaker.

NOTES

(1.) All quotations were taken from telephone interviews with the author, October-December 1999.

(2.) Crested Butte Reel Fest: www.crestedbu tereelfest.com; Madcat International Women's Film and Video Festival: www.somaglow.com/ -madcat; THAW Festival of Film, Video, and Digital Media: www.uiowa.edu/-thaw.