Film Festivals: A Place For Found Family & Cultivating Community | Black Writers Week

Championing an existing, creative-focused third space allows one to contribute to cultural history. Oftentimes, but not always, artists create and produce their work for it to be viewed and received by a wider audience. While this varies amongst mediums, audience reception is tethered to the success of any art form that takes place in a theater setting. 

Unlike other third spaces for community gatherings (e.g. malls, parks, libraries, and churches), film festivals and casual cinema attendance require, sometimes a significant, financial input from those who wish to partake. Some of the biggest film-buff festivals, such as Sundance, Cannes, Telluride, and Venice Biennale, feed off of exclusivity due to the steep cost that comes with attendance. Passes alone can be upwards of $500, and a single movie ticket for a film festival can be as much as $50 (or more) for premiere screenings.  

This cost is not only a barrier to film appreciators but also to filmmakers. Filmmaker, Mario Novoa outlines here the various requirements one must pay for when attending a festival. While some filmmakers often have their travel and lodging accommodated by the distributor or other sponsors, for independent and emerging artists, this is not always financially feasible. For critics and casual fans, the total attendance budget can be out of reach. 

I’d also be remiss to not recount the alienating feeling of being one of the only young, people of color in the audience. In 2022, I attended my first “exclusive” festival, Telluride Film Festival, which takes place over Labor Day weekend in a remote mountain town in Colorado. Although I was truly enamored by the movie programming and overall experience, I very vividly remember seeing and introducing myself to another Black woman attending. She is a well-known editor, and in our brief, but welcoming and warming, conversation, she mentioned how she likely would not return on a personal dime due to the excessive costs and unfortunate lack of diversity of the audience. This is not to say I ever felt unsafe or unwelcome; I simply desire that these institutional diversity initiatives also extended into the implementation of accessibility initiatives.