i've been trying to make sense out of the apparent breakup of the alliance that organizes the philadelphia film festival and the philadelphia gay and lesbian film festival each year. in past years the festival has been organized by the philadelphia film society, an organization of which i'm a member. the PFS was orginally founded by TLA entertainment group to organize and manage the film festivals, but TLA remained a major sponsor of the events even after PFS spun off and became independent of its parent.
then recently, something happened. it seems that TLA will no longer sponsor the philly film festival or the gay and lesbian festival. instead it's creating a pair of new festival that just happen to be scheduled at the same time as the PFS-organized festivals. the PFS issued a press release, which it sent via email to all its members last week. i was inaugurating in washington, so i didn't really focus on it at the time, but the full text is reprinted here. does anyone out there have the real scoop?
and so, we're facing having two competing festivals going on at the same time in both in late-march/early april (when the regular festival is scheduled) and again in july (when the GL festival is scheduled). i really can't see how that will be a good idea. will each of the two fests be able to come up with a full complement of films? will they each resort to lowering their standards for submission to fill out the schedule? won't they both be relying on the same pool of film-lovers who volunteer and run the fest each year? (not to mentioned the same pool of festival goers) the PFS press release optimistically cites other cities where two high quality film festivals manage to co-exist in the same city, but in each case the city had a film fest that was a lot better established than the philly fests when the newcomer came along. i just don't see how this can turn out well.
and most seriously, i suspect that the film festival passes i get through my PFS membership won't work at the new TLA fest. that means that i might have to actually pay full price for one-half of the screenings during the festival period? outrageous!
in any case, i'm really curious what happened to cause this PFS/TLA split. this guy seems to think the issue was money. but i can't see how having two fests directly compete against one another wouldn't be a net loser for both sides. the other reports about the split aren't much more informative about what actually happened.
UPDATE (1/29/09): glomarization points to a city paper article about the split. it seems to attribute the split to clashes over which films would be included in the fest. i guess that explains it about as much as anything could.
