Without Festivals

Let's take a look at the 2010 Best Of lists and figure out where did premiere the films elected :

• Cannes = 28 (21 from 2010; 7 from 2009)
• Berlinale = 8 (5 from 2010; 3 from 2009)
• Venice = 6 (4  from  2010; 2 from 2009)
• Sundance = 4
• NYFF = 4
• TIFF = 1
• Locarno = 1
• Tribeca = 1
• Taormina = 1
• Film Press' own discoveries = 0

From 5 top10s from the English specialised press (Sight and Sound [top12], Film Comment, Cinema Scope, indieWIRE, LA Weekly) for the best (released) films of 2010.

Look at that. Who would think that Cannes is as lame as the press says it is every year? Who would dare to suggest that festivals don't do their job? Not the critics who voted in these polls, right?

Wow. I wonder what the press establishment would do without Film Festivals...

The English and American press believes that international film festivals are useless (see here or here or Dekalog3: On Film Festivals, 2009). We heard a lot of whiny complaints last year about how festival programmers suck, how "festival films" are self-indulgent, how critics are so much better than this circus... Well. As it turns out, it seems that the pretentious film critics ultimately rely on the line up of major film festivals when they reveal their favourites of the year.

How many films did they discover on their own, before the festival scouts could pick them up for their "commercial" line up?
Zero. Not a single film in these Top10 best of lists (even if you go past the 10 first films on the list!).
After all the trash talk on festivals, I kind of expected these loud mouths to come up with at least a few films that were NOT first screened by one of the lambasted festivals...

And this is not even an objective consensus established internationally (nor the films that I consider to be the best), these are lists they wrote themselves. These are the films they think are the best! And where did they get to watch them first? You guessed it, at the festivals!
They could have intentionally ignored all "festival films" and put greater films that slipped under the radar, just to prove their point. No. Apparently they aren't that smart. Even when they are asked to name their personal favourites, they still pick "festival films"! The very films they ridicule at the end of a sleepless festival marathon. It doesn't make sense! Where are the BETTER films that are rejected by "commercial" festivals??? Where the fuck are they?

I'd like to see these critics make a better job than what festivals do. I'd like to see critics stop reviewing whatever the commercial industry decides to distribute officially, and roam around the globe on their own to find the gems that the major festivals don't show us every year. Find them and write about them BEFORE their international premiere in a festival. Prove your taste is less of a sell out than what your presumptuous accusations suggest, while you sit pretty in your festival seat waiting for the goodies to come to you on a platter. When will critics be the first to reveal to the world the unknown talents of world cinema?

Also we'll ignore the fact that Uncle Boonmee (a film that tops most other lists) is nowhere to be seen on the indieWIRE nor the LA Weekly poll. Not on the undistributed films list addendum either! While Film Socialisme is on both lists (released films + undistributed films) for the indieWIRE voters... because these listmaniacs don't know how to tabulate an "either/or" list. Where did they learn how to stuff ballots??? I wonder...

Let's also ignore the fact they think The Social Network, The Ghost Writer and Black Swan are "visionaries, risk-takers, misfits, mavericks", the most creative, the most inspiring, the most enlightening this year.

This is quite amusing. A list tells us more about the taste of the people who make them, about what is released commercially in their country, and about their ability to answer to a poll, than about the objective greatness of today's cinema. And the more they make lists, the more obvious all this becomes.

Just remember this next time you think you have something clever to write about how festivals function in today's economy...

Related:

• Sans Cannes 
• Films de festival
• The critic who cried wolf
• Maronniers cannois 
• American Isolationism 2 
• Branding Abu Dhabi, Israel and the USA
• Mushroom Festivals