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You may know that the first Modern Film Festival in Kannapolis will debut Sept. 25-27 – smack in the middle of the fourth Charlotte Film Festival, which gets under way Sept. 21.
Yes, it's bizarre, and an explanation will be forthcoming. But we're actually lucky: Since 2006, SEVEN multiday movie events have taken place locally from year to year between mid-August and early October. Fate, common sense and bad luck coincided this year to reduce us to a more manageable slate.
So where'd everybody go?
The Charlotte African American Film Festival, a first-timer last September, will move to Feb. 12-14, 2010. That lets founders Floyd and Stephanie Rance have a month to themselves and recuperate from their Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival, which runs every August.
Dennis Darrell premiered his Reel Soul Film Festival last October. A stroke laid him low around Independence Day; he says he's now back to full strength and is planning two screenings for mid-October, but not a full-fledged festival.
The NoDa Film Festival mounted six extraordinary themed series at Neighborhood Theater from 2006 to 2008, including a festival of rare Asian cinema in August 2006 that drew 1,400 people. Lack of financial support and poor access to a venue have put NoDa on hiatus indefinitely.
Darrell and NoDa's Jeff Johnson took part in a tribute The Light Factory mounted for Charles Burnett in August 2007. The Light Factory did another for George Romero last February (postponed from fall 2008), but efforts to mount a retrospective for veteran director Allison Anders foundered after grants fell through.
The Cackalacky Film Festival, meanwhile, has dropped off the radar. Though the for-profit festival opened to fanfares in fall 2006, the pitiful version in 2008 drew virtually no one. (I went to a Saturday afternoon screening, saw three cars in the parking lot and drove off without entering.)
Most of these events would be welcome re-additions to the calendar, assuming they claimed less crowded months. But what possessed the folks behind the Modern Film Festival to insist on late September?
Artistic director Michael Knox says he “sort of got stuck with September. We are having an outdoor music festival… so we wanted it to be warm enough for people to want to be outside, but not the dead of summer, when everybody is out of town. May and October are out, because of the races at Lowe's Motor Speedway…
“For local community support, we needed to make sure we did the event when it wasn't competing against events organized by the city, chamber of commerce or visitors' bureau. Also, to work with the Gem Theatre, we needed to pick a time period that wasn't (full of) blockbuster movies, so we didn't take a huge amount of business away from the Gem.”
Two thoughts come to mind.
First, an April festival would seem to fulfill all these requirements and give people around the region an excuse to visit Kannapolis. (The Gem, an old-fashioned theater that lives up to its name, is worth a visit any time.) Moviegoers tired of Hollywood's pre-summer blahs might've welcomed the break.
Second, this is another example of the insular way in which people too often think. Sure, “Wicked” and “Jersey Boys” will vacuum up playgoers from halfway across the Carolinas. But I suspect the guy who e-mailed me last year about the Charlotte Film Festival is more typical: He didn't want to come “all the way from Gaston County,” as if the festival took place in Montreal.
I don't have to talk folks into driving that distance for a stock car race. But if I pitch a unique moviegoing experience, I'm probably spinning my wheels.
