The quest to pick up my pass to actually attend the film festival didn’t clue me in to the main challenge that would bog me the rest of the day. As it would turn out, the movie pass wasn’t the only thing I would have to drive for.
It’s not uncommon for a film festival to have movies playing in multiple locations. In all three of the festivals that I had attended, there were multiple locations that were screening the movies. But the different theaters that were booked to play movies were often in relatively the same spot. For instance, when I went to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) later that fall, while there were about 4 or 5 movie theaters that were playing the films submitted that year, they were confined to the same general area, the theater district.
This disbursement makes sense because this way one theater wasn’t forgoing all the new releases the play the film festival. Or looking at it from the reverse side, no one theater gets a monopoly on playing the film festival, as well as the promotion and fanfare that comes with it. Actors, directors, producers do attend these events, so spreading this about allows multiple theaters to benefit from the buzz of the festivals, while also not losing out on business if new releases are really strong during the weekend the festival is going on.
This festival…took it to an extreme.
THE extreme.
There were four different locations that were playing movies for the festival. Only one of them was a movie theater.
I’m not completely positive why all of these films weren’t shown at the actual movie theater. With four locations, they would have only needed four screens, and this theater did seem like it would be able to accommodate that for a weekend. Or, short of that, having a couple of screens booked, and maybe only other location, that could perhaps have multiple rooms that could play movies would have been good too. But maybe the theater was only willing to allow the festival to book one screen.
Either way, what they came up with was the worst possible solution.
Four locations – only one of them an actual theater – ALL of them a roughly twenty minute drive – AT LEAST – from each other.
I didn’t even notice how bad this was at first because the first movie I saw was at one of the closest locations to my hotel room, and a MUCH shorter drive in comparison to the trek I made in the morning just to get the pass.
But as the day went on, and I realized I needed to factor in an additional half hour in between each screening just to allow myself time to get to the next location – because of the movies that interested me, none were in the same place for consecutive showings – this added up to a lot of mileage and a really long day. I ended up skipping a movie in the middle of the day because there was no way I’d be able to make it for the start of the showing, and to be honest, I could already see I just didn’t have it in me to make the drive to jump right into another feature.
Also keep in mind that every time I parked, because this was in an area I was unfamiliar with, I definitely was locking my car, which as you might recall from previous post did work, but would trigger the car’s alarm every time I unlocked the doors. This ended up becoming such a long day, and I was absolutely ready for sleep by the time I crawled into bed.
Leave a Reply