I attended my first ever film festival in Long Beach Island, New Jersey when I bought tickets for the Lighthouse International Film Festival. I didn’t know what exactly to expect, so this smaller festival was a good one to dip my toes into for that reason.
It gave me a good sense of what to expect for film festivals going forward, and because the other two I ended up going to that year were much bigger, it was nice to get a feel for them on a smaller scale.
I learned it was wise to arrive about twenty to thirty minutes before they would start seating you. Yes, this did mean standing for that amount of time, but it also meant getting in sooner and seats – in general, but also better seats – were more readily available. This also avoiding the bad etiquette or arriving late or even from being barred entry because the film had already started.
I learned that the director was often there for the screening of the films and typically would both introduce it and participate in a Q & A after the film was done. I got my first taste of scheduling out my day to watch movies. It was a full weekend, but after work, running a mile as part of my conditioning for marathon training, and then the drive to southern New Jersey, I arrived late Friday night, and with my hotel room only being booked until noon on Sunday, when the earliest movies would be only halfway done, and driving a car that I couldn’t lock the doors without the alarms going off every time I unlocked them and open the door for the first time, I decided to focus on just the Saturday showings.
As of this post, this is still the most number of movies I’ve seen in a theater in one day, not just for film festivals, but even just going to the movies in general.
But even though it was small in comparative size to the later competitions that I would attend, but that did not mean it was without its challenges. In fact, I’d say that I had more challenges in this film festival than the other two combined.
I’ll ignore the inability to lock the car doors without the alarms going off as that was an issue I had beyond the film festival, and one that persisted until the car died. I will however include the start of the trip itself, which was driving into the heart of the thick smoke that was going through New York at the time. The smoke had actually made it all the way upstate to where I lived, to the point where I had to keep my windows closed and didn’t like going outside for more than a few minutes. Because of this festival’s location, I had to drive towards it, and the thickness and smell just got worse the closer I got to the location, which I could’ve avoided altogether if I didn’t go.
The thing is, I don’t even think this would make it onto the podium of challenges that lay ahead for me that weekend.
I’ll start to go into them, next time.
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