Artist Statement: Growing up a cinephile, one realizes how big a role movies play in our young adult years. Film festivals like Tiff Next Wave are important to me because they promote active participation from those who attend, and because of this they get youth involved with the cinema they love. Having attended Next Wave since I was in high school, this course has encouraged me to examine it in a new way. Tiff Next Wave film festival is a festival that is fascinating because while it targets a specific demographic of individuals, multiple counter publics also exist within this cinematic public. A festival that promotes involvement and interaction is interesting when looking at a public as a relation between strangers, so I wanted to focus in on it for this assignment. Next Wave markets itself to anybody under the age of 25 by making all of it’s screenings free if your under the age requirement. It also showcases films made by people under 25, and is partially programmed by people under 25. For the creative part of this assignment I wanted to use some of my own illustrations to create promotional posters that could be used in advertising the festival to keep in line with the youth involvement this film festival promotes from all of its aspects.
Tiff Next Wave’s interactive elements are what makes it a festival of intrigue and excitement for attendees each year. It transforms the Tiff Bell Lightbox into an organized space set up for young audiences to be able to see films for free for one weekend every February, thus targeting a ‘next generation of film lovers’. It is interesting to see a festival that in itself contains a multitude of small publics unified as one public by the common element that we are all film lovers under the age of 25. It also makes the experience of a festival accessible to youth all over Toronto encouraging them to interact not only with cinema, but also with each other. This interaction between the attendees at the festival is what establishes it as a cinematic public. In Michael Warner’s article he speaks about the different aspects of publics and counter publics and one of his significant points to remember is that a public is a relation among strangers. Warner says that “This dependence on the co-presence of strangers in our innermost activity, when we continue to think of stranger hood and intimacy as opposites, has at least some latent contradictions—many of which come to the fore, as we shall see, in counter-public forms that make expressive corporeality the material for the elaboration of intimate life among publics of strangers.” The corporeal presence of the film festival puts in place a frame work for the Next Wave public to form. However, it is the interactive arrangement of events at Tiff Next Wave festival that encourages this discourse between youth attendees. This is done by the interconnection of events in the programming that not only allow youth to view cinema but also work on their own skills and view the work of other youth in similar social groupings as them. The festival hosts a young creators co lab that allows emerging filmmakers to interact with industry professionals, a battle of the scores where local bands can make their own scores for films, as well as a program of shorts made by youth in Toronto. Since a public is a relation between strangers, events like this encourage discourse more than most film festival publics.
The Tiff Next Waves festivals mandate is to provide a film festival experience showing movies that are accessible for free for anyone under the age of 25. The audience the film festival is targeted at are people under the age of 25 years old, because of the FREE factor. If you’re over the age of 25 you have to pay regular Light Box admission prices to see the screenings, so the appeal of this festival is really the zero cost screenings targeted at youth. This festival will have an advisory board where youth work with professional specimens more familiar with the inter workings of festivals to curate a program befitting of the audience it wishes to attract. Examples of possible films could be those not yet accessible to the general public but have been screened at previous festivals, that the industry members could screen with the youth board to choose the options for programming.
The films would be screened at the Tiff Bell Lightbox to keep everything organized and inclusive in one specific spot. To encourage the festival to be as interactive as possible the less spread out the better in order to create an interactive and intimate atmosphere. To attract old attendees and new comers to the festival, social media would be an ideal platform. The social medias that would be the most effective in spreading word about the Next Wave Festival would be Twitter and Instagram. Luckily the audience the festival hopes to draw in is one that is heavily influenced by the online world, creating an online community would be effective to get the word out about this festival. Twitter and Instagram are both heavily used by the younger demographic and advertisements and accounts tied to the festival would be a good way to reach the target audience.
The film screenings that make the most sense for Next Wave are films both about youth and for youth, that come from a myriad of different perspectives. The Next Wave public is a large one, targeting a demographic of people from all different backgrounds so long as they are under 25 years of age. The films that are part of the program should encompass the perspectives of all the counbterpublics that exist in the youth public community, as well as films made by youth from those counter publics as well. Diversity and inclusiveness are two important factors to help open up attendee discourse and to represent the youth public as best as possible.
Since Tiff Next Wave also showcases short films and music made by youth, it would be encompassing for our logo to also use art made by the youth attending the Tiff Next Wave festival. As part of the social media campaign, it would be a good strategy to encourage involvement from the festival goers to have a Logo making call go out a fair amount of time before the festival starts actively promoting so that art made by youth can also be integrated into the festival. The same goes with the posters set up to advertise the festivals, as well as the program brochures handed out to attendees at screenings. Much of the art work would be submitted online, and sent into Tiff by October so all the choices made could be implemented in time for the festival.
Tiff Next Wave is an important film festival for young film lovers and creators both now and going forward. It encourages and promotes the involvement of the people who attend it, so they have an active participation in the public that extends far beyond just showing up. This in turn relates to Michael Warners point that a public is a relation among strangers, and it’s great to see a festival that promotes this discourse among a younger demographic of cinema lovers and film makers.
FILM 3610G - CINEMATIC PUBLICS & PARTICIPATIONS: MOVEMENTS, MANIFESTOS, FILM FESTIVALS, COLLECTIVES 