SLO Film Festival is ‘back to the bare bones’ due to COVID. Here’s what to expect
Five days before the 2020 San Luis Obispo International Film Festival was set to start, the coronavirus pandemic sent organizers scrambling.
“It was absolutely crisis mode. We were having meetings every day” to determine how to handle the situation, festival director Skye McLennan recalled.
The festival recovered, she said, by going online.
The 2021 San Luis Obispo International Film Festival kicks off Tuesday with a fully revamped format that focuses on virtual screenings and at-home experiences rather than “all the glitz and glam” of mixers and red-carpet soirees, McLennan said. The festival runs through Sunday.
“Really, the core this year is the films,” she said. “(We’re) coming back to the bare bones of who we are.”
COVID-19 almost cancels 2020 SLO Film Festival
According to McLennan, COVID-19 forced organizers to completely revise plans for the festival just before it was scheduled to begin.
“We were going to scale down and only have a couple venues. Then all the venues started shutting down,” said McLennan, who came aboard as festival director in May 2020. (Before that, she served as associate director for a little less than a year.)
Rather than cancel the festival entirely, organizers reached out to filmmakers to see if they’d be willing to share their films with ticket holders virtually.
“I doubted that many filmmakers would agree to sharing movies in this public way but decided it was worth asking,” festival artistic director Wendy Eidson told MovieMaker magazine in April 2020. “I put together an email to all the filmmakers and got an amazingly positive response almost instantly.”
In the end, the festival was able to share about 60 films with viewers at home, which Eidson called a “resounding success.”
The filmmakers “just wanted people to see their films,” McLennan said. And the online movie screenings offered festival-goers a welcome distraction during the early days of the coronavirus crisis.
“There was a lot of anxiety and fear and a lot of unknowns occurring (then),” she said. “Just having something to take your mind off of it, a world to travel to ... people were really grateful for that.”
Not everyone took advantage of the virtual screenings. McLennan said organizers refunded about 40% of tickets sold for the 2020 festival, while some customers opted to transfer their passes to the 2021 festival and a “generous amount of people” donated their pass or ticket purchases.
“We took a pretty hard hit (financially),” McLennan said, although she didn’t disclose specifics. “It was pretty rough. ... We’ve had to cut staff and a lot of our resources because of it.”
Some of those staffers have returned. And the festival has made efforts to remain in the public eye over the past year — offering special movie screenings online, including the documentary “Vinyl Nation” in December, and hosting outdoor silent film screenings at Piadina restaurant at Hotel San Luis Obispo.
According to McLennan, the rejiggering of the 2020 festival gave organizers an opportunity to ask some key questions: “What is it that we do? How do we serve our community? Why do we matter in our community?”
“We thought a lot about the core of what we do,” the festival director said. “That is bringing independent film to San Luis Obispo County and bringing stories that people have never heard before. ...”
In fact, McLennan said, the festival has a new mission statement. “We want to expand minds, open hearts and entertain people through worldwide independent cinema,” she said.
What’s in store for this year’s festival?
According to McLennan, the 2021 San Luis Obispo International Film Festival features a “really diverse set of films and storytelling that’s super unique.”
The lineup includes 10 narrative features, 20 documentaries, 63 short films and 18 music videos. The festival received a total of 850 submissions, McLennan said, including entries in two new categories: animation and music videos.
All movie screenings will be virtual, with the exception of the ever-popular Surf Nite in SLO event. The festival is also offering online question-and-answer sessions with filmmakers that viewers can watch after the movies.
“We do have some live discussions as well, over Zoom,” McLennan said.
The festival starts Tuesday with a screening of “My Salinger Year,” based on the Joanna Rakoff memoir of the same name. Margaret Qualley stars as an aspiring writer who takes a job at one of New York’s oldest literary agencies — a position that requires her to sift through fan mail sent to reclusive “The Catcher in the Rye” novelist J. D. Salinger.
On Thursday, Surf Nite features screenings of the surf documentaries “White Rhino” and “The Endless Summer.” The outdoor event, originally scheduled for Wednesday but postponed a day due to rain, will be held at the Sunset Drive-In San Luis Obispo — rather than its usual home, the Fremont Theater — and face masks and social distancing are required.
“We’re really excited to bring that experience (back),” McLennan said. “That’s really such a fun night ... in an iconic location.”
The festival focuses on “Celebrating Central Coast Filmmakers” on Thursday, while Friday features “Culinary Adventures in Film,” complete with suggested food-and-drink pairings, McLennan said.
Perhaps the biggest change involves the festival’s flagship award.
“Star Wars” screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan received the King Vidor Award for Excellence in Filmmaking in 2020, accepting the honor remotely from his Los Angeles home. Other recipients of the award, named after the Oscar-winning director of “War and Peace,” include Josh Brolin, Jeff Bridges and Alfred Molina.
Rather than focusing on one individual, the King Vidor Award Tribute on Saturday will look at the “wide variety of amazing individuals that have visited San Luis Obispo ... and graced the stage of the historic Fremont Theater with their presence, humor and memorable charisma,” according to the festival website.
Organizers will present two Zoom panel discussions: “Meet the Distributors” and “The Power to Promote Social Justice.” Ticket holders for the King Vidor Award Tribute can enjoy a watch-at-home kit with wine and treats, and a Zoom after-party.
The festival ends Sunday with the Filmmakers of Tomorrow panel, mixer and awards, as well as the Closing Night Awards.
But the main focus of the festival’s final day is the U.S. premiere of “Where There Once Was Water,” directed and co-written by San Luis Obispo County photographer Brittany App. The documentary looks at the American Southwest’s complicated relationship with water and seeks to offer solutions such as reintroducing salmon to streams, managing cattle holistically and using biodiversity techniques for vineyards and crops.
McLennan called the documentary “absolutely beautiful.”
App will participate in a “Where There Once Was Water” panel discussion along with speakers including Jason Haas, general manager of Tablas Creek Vineyard in Paso Robles.
According to McLennan, the festival is placing a special emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion this year after receiving a grant from the city of San Luis Obispo.
Courtney Haile, co-founder of RACE Matters SLO County, programmed “Short Films, Big Stories: A Program of Diverse Voices,” a collection of “outstanding narratives and documentaries from BIPOC (black, indigenous and people of color) filmmakers, whose visions amplify unique stories and experiences,” according to the festival site.
Those five short films are paired with two discussion panels: “From the Bottom Up: Building Representation in Film” on Thursday and “Power of Media to Promote Social Justice” on Saturday. Tickets for the “Short Films, Big Stories” program are free with registration.
Festival passes range in price from $60 to $300, and include virtual screenings and online Q&As. Movie lovers can also purchase admission for special events, or buy tickets to individual films and packages for $10 to $12 apiece.
Lessons learned from coronavirus pandemic
According to McLennan, COVID-19 has “forever changed completely” the way the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival and other film festivals operate.
“It’s changed the landscape and the way we think of things,” she said.
But the coronavirus pandemic also taught organizers some valuable lessons about how a film festival can work.
“There’s a lot of things about the festival this year that we’ve had to do because of the pandemic that are actually beneficial to the festival long term,” McLennan said, such as offering virtual screenings and pre-recording Q&As with filmmakers.
“Normally, if our festival was in person, (filmmakers) wouldn’t be able to come to SLO,” she explained, and would miss out on communicating with moviegoers.
Lack of proximity to San Luis Obispo County also barred some movie lovers from attending the festival in the past.
By moving film screenings and events online, the festival can expand its audience base beyond the Central Coast, McLennan said.
Plus, she added, “We can do virtual screenings all year long. That’s something we considered doing in the past and it seemed really hard. Now we’re experts at it.”
“There are a lot of positives that have come out of something really terrible,” she said.
Will the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival return to “normal” in 2022?
“We are all definitely hoping for that,” she said, but the festival’s return to a pre-pandemic state will depend on what makes audiences the most comfortable as well as “how well we’re doing vaccine-wise.”
“We really want to put as much focus and energy into the virtual stuff as possible,” she added.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story said Surf Nite will be held Wednesday. The San Luis Obispo International Film Festival has rescheduled that event for Thursday at the Sunset Drive-In in San Luis Obispo due to wet weather.
This story was originally published February 26, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "SLO Film Festival is ‘back to the bare bones’ due to COVID. Here’s what to expect."
