Going From Real to Virtual for the Chattanooga Film Festival 2020

I don’t think I’ve ever had a “normal” experience with the Chattanooga Film Festival, whatever that may entail.

The first year, I broke a pretty crucial bone the day before the festival and showed up a day late after having surgery the day before, my jaw wired shut. Instead of having popcorn and whiskey with the rest of the CFF crowd, I was living on bottles of Ensure, the occasional soda, and liquid pain medication. If a movie got too gory or gross, I had to focus all my energy on not feeling nauseous, because, you know, that’d be a pretty rough way to go. (Needless to say, Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge had to wait until I was at home with a screener link and a handy pair of scissors...) It’s honestly wild to consider that I somehow managed to fit in thirteen movies and turn in a couple reviews that weekend, considering those buckwild circumstances.

But regardless of the oddness of my appearance and manner that weekend, there was rarely a moment at CFF where I didn’t feel welcomed. I was a part of a huge group of film lovers, and they loved talking about movies with me, even if my responses came back quietly through gritted teeth. 

The second year was probably as close as I’ve ever gotten to whatever might be considered “normal”. I saw a lot of really, really wonderful films, and I did my first ever interview. My favorite memory from Chattanooga comes from that year, too: sitting outside with a couple friends on a nice night and watching The Creature from the Black Lagoon. We all took in the classic film with the new context Mallory O’Meara gave in her introduction, and it was a really lovely experience that showed just how deep the love of cinema runs in that community.

And then this year, I was so looking forward to getting back there. The first wave of announced films was really exciting stuff, and I was excited to see some of my friends again…

Then, well, I think we all know what happened.

I lived in suspense for a while and watched every single event I was supposed to go to get cancelled, one by one, as we all did at the beginning of the outbreak, until the fateful day came that I opened up Twitter and saw that the festival had been postponed. It was a super disappointing moment, of course, but by that point, I expected it.

What I didn’t expect was to discover that the festival was going digital. The list of films had definitely been affected by the format, as any concerns about piracy increase exponentially when something is streamed online. (Pour one out for Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s Synchronic.) But still, with a dwindling quarantine watchlist in all the streaming apps, some exciting new movies you can’t see anywhere else was an exciting promise, even if I couldn’t be watching them in a theater packed with passionate attendees.

But that really does sum up the virtual film festival experience. It’s just another watchlist to burn through, but this time, you only have a weekend to do so. At the start of the weekend, I went through the list on the website and was delighted to see that I’d still be watching as many movies as I saw last year. 

Jumbo

However, the circumstances and environment couldn’t be more different. I watched Jumbo on my laptop as the rest of my family watched the Downton Abbey film in the background. The Wanting Mare was similarly accompanied by Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which is not an ideal way to watch a slow-paced, meditative sci-fi drama. Other times, I was able to go off alone and watch something. 

Even with the occasional downsides, like bad movie-watching environments, there are still a lot of positives to the virtual experience. You can make your own movie schedule and space them out as much as you want instead of having to run from screening to screening. You can take a break to watch something else and cleanse your palette. (I REALLY needed that rewatch of The Muppets on Sunday morning.) You don’t have to feel bad about leaving an event you realize is either a waste of your time or just very much not for you, because all you have to do is click an X instead of walking out of a full theatre in the middle of the event. Then, that time isn’t even wasted, because you can just turn around and click a different film.

And on top of the personal advantages like that, there’s something to be said for the accessibility of the fest. During a live commentary on their film, Spring, Benson and Moorhead mentioned that the audience currently watching their 2014 release was the biggest audience they’d ever had for one of their films, even more so than their premiere for Synchronic. By moving the festival online and providing such an affordable price point of only thirty bucks, the usual CFF audience expanded hugely, and the films that remained in the virtual film festival got seen by many more people than they might have originally in a theater with a capacity of a couple hundred.

But, even though I saw so many people on Twitter talking about how they still felt a part of a community, that wasn’t true for me. I was just a person sitting in my room at my parents’ house, taking in movies by myself. And even with all the positives of a virtual experience, nothing will ever replace the experience of sitting in a theatre with a bunch of people who love cinema as much as you do and taking in something special. For instance, I found Jumbo absolutely riveting, but I can’t even imagine how much better it would’ve played for me in a theatre with an audience. That atmosphere is an irreplaceable asset. 

So, even though a relatively introverted person like myself found a lot of value in this new format, I’m still greatly looking forward to seeing movies with my friends again in 2021. The theatre experience is something I sorely miss, even with its occasional frustrations and technical issues. There’s nothing like being alone, together, in a dark room, completely absorbed in a movie’s world. I look forward to the day we can all have these experiences again, but I will wait patiently and stay in quarantine as much as possible until then. I hope everyone reading this does, too.