FILMBATH FESTIVAL 2021

Tue May 2022

by Creative Director, Philip Raby

Relaxing on holiday In Cornwall in September last year, I got a phone call from colleague Holly which shook me out of my sunshine relaxation.

‘A FEW MONTHS EARLIER’ appears on the screen as we scroll back into early summer. 

Faced with the choice between a festival indoors at a cinema which might well cause customers to stay away in droves, we had plumped for another event at Green Park Station (as we did in 2020). 2 screenings a night for 7+ days – a lineup of about 14 films. The key to success is to find films that people will make that extra effort to come and see while at the same time maintaining our 50% ratio of F-Rated films and a broad diversity of voices behind the camera – not an easy challenge, but hey!

The programme we had developed was intended to cover all of these requirements. We had a closing night films – THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE (for which Jessica Chastain subsequently won an Oscar). We had an opening night film, MOTHERING SUNDAY, from a new young female director and produced by long term FilmBath allies, Liz Karlsen and Stephen Woolley. Wonder of wonders, we had Celine Sciamma’s new film, PETITE MAMAN (which went on to huge critical acclaim). Pretty much every title we had lined up (GAGARINE, TITANE, LAMB, PIG) were titles we felt 100% proud of being able to offer our audience weeks or months ahead of them being available to the wider public. 

The main question was whether that audience would venture out in significant numbers on a chilly November evening.

‘BACK AT THE CORNISH CAMPSITE’ 

I’m standing beside the camper van with my jaw heading towards the sand. Holly has just told me that the broken glass in the roof of Green Park Station – which was due to be mended in good time – was NOT going to be mended in good time. Goodbye GPS, hello ….. Where?

A quick round of phone calls revealed that the Little Theatre would be happy to hire Screen One to us for a whole week (hooray), as long as we paid for the screen for the entire day. In other words, however many/few films we showed, we would have to pay the same amount.

This meant that in order to make the most of the space we were paying for, we had to go from a programme of 14 films to a programme of 35 films – and we had two weeks. No time to start ringing around distributors to get new titles – we’d already had some frustratingly protracted negotiations about being to screen titles such as BELFAST, and several excellent Netflix titles. 

It was all about 21 films NOW. The idea we came up with was to combine 2 elements – our F-Rating and our 30 years of history and programme films made by women over the last 30 years. It was a pretty good idea, and it meant we could show films at a low cost for a potentially younger audience (after-school screenings). The downside was that we were showing films that were available elsewhere.

And of course the ongoing elephant was COVID, which meant that a significant number of our core audience were either nervous of getting infected in public spaces, might be ill during the festival or had simply got too comfortable on the couch at home. We have run a film festival every year in Bath since 1990, TWO in 2020 we weren’t going to mis one now.

November came, the festival launched (with an excellent event in Widcombe Social Club, where we screened the not-to-be-missed I’M YOUR MAN), and we crossed our fingers. Despite that cunning commercial tactic, audiences were the lowest we’ve ever known. Disappointing? Yes. Surprising? No.

My take on the whole event is that we did amazingly well to put on such a strong programme in the circumstances we found ourselves in. I can look back and wonder whether we might have swapped this film or that film in/out of the lineup – but I cannot say that it would have made the slightest difference. The people who came enjoyed the films they saw, and not running a festival would have been the worst thing of all.

The fact that we have the resources to weather such a tricky year is a testament to the organisation’s resilience and flexibility, and there were (as there always are) lessons to be learned. We move on to 2022 with a sense of having successfully met a huge challenge, and a hope that fate will be kinder to us this year.

Wonderful films go on being made, and most of them don’t get a looking in Bath. FilmBath rectifies that. See you in November 2022.

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