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Film festivals: I'm not a fan

Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises
  • Posted at 5:02pm
  • 17 October 2008
  • by AndrewCollins-RT

I can't be doing with film festivals. I admire those intrepid critics who spend their entire year with a complimentary bag slung over their shoulder, traipsing from screening to screening in the far-flung likes of Telluride, Haugesund or Karlovy Vary – or indeed the more glamorous likes of Cannes, Venice and Berlin.

Their feet hardly touch the ground, and when they do get home, they must spend days pressing "0" on their phones hoping to be put through to reception. They're welcome to it.

I enjoy the London film festival, of course, but that's probably because it's my local. It runs until the end of October, and was previewed on Film 2008 last Tuesday. Like the best festivals, it is user-friendly and treads the line between star power and artistic roughage, and this year showcases the Royal Premiere of the latest James Bond movie Quantum of Solace on 29 October.

This time last year, it opened with a gala showing of David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, in which a notorious bathhouse knife-fight between a naked Russian gangster (played by Viggo Mortensen) and two thugs had some patrons leaving the cinema.

At their worst, film festivals are little more than an industry jolly for foreign distributors, an excuse for hardened hacks to bad-mouth the latest Lars von Trier film from the safety of the hotel bar, and a chance for restaurateurs to double the price of the calamari. And nothing whatsoever to do with ordinary people seeing movies.

Meanwhile, the locals hope for a glimpse of the top of Salma Hayek's head as she sashays down a red carpet behind a phalanx of photographers.

I went to Cannes once. I'd just been made editor of a film magazine; too late for proper press accreditation, I was given a laminated pass that was so lowly I had fewer privileges than a member of the public.

I ate an expensive seafood salad, saw Chris Penn on a veranda, failed to get into the VIP area of my own party and found myself on the same yacht as producer Jerry Bruckheimer but failed to recognise him. And I slept on a camp bed.

I wasn't long in the job.

My advice – watch the films on telly. It's cheaper.

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