Halifax: The Atlantic Film Festival’s executive director Gregor Ash and festival director Lia Rinaldo had a lot of soul searching to do before deciding to go on with the 21st AFF.

They were expected to kick off the festivities three days after Sept. 11, the events of which no longer need description. They decided to carry on, running Sept. 14-22 in Halifax, despite irregular air traffic, undeliverable film prints and cancellations by delegates afraid to travel, which in turn shut down many scheduled Industry Series workshops, the Strategic Partners conference and other events.

‘It has been a challenge [since Sept. 11],’ says Ash. ‘It was a hard time looking at what we had created and trying to figure out what was going to be left, but public and industry response has been fabulous.’

Going into the first weekend, Rinaldo adds, ‘we were all pretty devastated. I have family in New York and Washington, so I was pretty upset and conflicted about whether to do it. Even our opening night party I struggled with, but it ended up being really wonderful. These people were looking for some kind of release, so it was probably our best opening ever.’

From the Independent Film Channel Canada’s opening gala party, which followed the screening of Sturla Gunnarsson’s Rare Birds, it became clear that this edition of the festival was going to be special. It morphed into a place for the community to appreciate films as opposed to a venue to seek out partners and make deals. According to Rinaldo, attendance slowly rose over the course of the festival, resulting in a 7% increase in overall attendance and 17 sold-out events.

For the IFCC, however, the landscape was ripe to seek out potential content. According to Deborah Carver, the young diginet’s GM/VP of marketing, her interest in the festival was more than promotion.

‘Personally, I’ve been going as a film lover, but it has been extraordinarily good timing for the IFCC that we are launching a channel during a month that is full of film festivals,’ she says. ‘It has been a wonderful way to reach our niche potential audience [via the sponsorship] and we’ve also been able to get wind of some new exciting projects.’

Canadian showcase

The festival’s program included screenings of Canadian fare such as Helen Lee’s The Art of Woo, Noam Gonick’s Hey, Happy! and David Weaver’s Century Hotel, which ran as the Canadian Gala, as well as imports like Marc Singer’s Dark Days, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and Benjamin Quabeck’s Nichts Bereuen.

Traditionally, the backbone of the festival has been the Atlantic Focus program and this year was no exception.

‘Our Atlantic program is at the heart of what we are,’ says Ash. ‘We’ve tried to build a place where Atlantic filmmakers can come together to meet each other and people from away, and expose themselves to both work and people so they can make more projects.’

John Brett’s Voyage of the 7 Girls, Thom Fitzgerald’s Welcome to the Freakshow, and Colin MacKenzie’s remarkable doc Jerry Granelli: In the Moment are just a few of the films created by Atlantic Canadians that made the cut this year.

‘Without the festival, I probably wouldn’t have made the film,’ says MacKenzie. ‘The festival was involved in programming my short [A Grannellian Adventure] a couple of years ago, which took a very long time to make. It won an award and gave me the confidence and the interest to make this piece, which is really what I wanted to do.’

Producer Natasha Ryan, whose film Zoe’s Waltz premiered as part of the extremely well-attended Atlantic Shorts I (of II), says making the festival cut was always her goal.

‘We were excited to be accepted and really excited to finally see it on a big screen,’ she says.

Rinaldo admits, however, the Atlantic Focus is becoming harder to program as more Atlantic film options present themselves each year.

‘Every year there is more work being made here, so we have to turn down more,’ she says. ‘In the last five years we’ve stopped taking industrials or TV series and it has been tough to show people that we are making up specific programs that apply to a film festival. The Atlantic program is where we started and it remains our core. We build everything out from that.’

Newfoundland-based producer/ director Mary Sexton appreciates the AFF’s efforts to shine the spotlight on Canadian films, and criticizes other Canadian festivals for doing what she feels is the opposite. Sexton’s new documentary Tommy: A Family Portrait, about her brother and CODCO member Tommy Sexton, premiered at the CBC gala screening to a standing ovation, but was rejected by the Toronto International Film Festival.

‘[Other] festivals are becoming so Americanized and international that they are not celebrating our documentaries and features,’ says Sexton. ‘We have to put Canadian feature films and documentaries on the screens so Canadians can actually see our work.’

Rinaldo says that because of the timing, the awards component of the festival seemed ‘hollow,’ therefore only one award was presented. The TMN People’s Choice Award was presented to Rare Birds during the closing-night gala party following the screening of Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner).

Rinaldo calls her experiences with this year’s festival ‘a lesson in crisis management,’ and Ash agrees. He says in the midst of events and screenings being cancelled or rescheduled (once the print finally arrived), AFF staff learned quickly how to simplify. For example, the Academy luncheon, which was scheduled to feature journalist Laurie Brown in conversation with actor/director Sarah Polley, had to be scrapped due to travel difficulties. It was quickly turned into a luncheon celebrating local Gemini nominees and happened to become one of the more memorable events of the festival.

‘We got back to audience and film, and people responded positively,’ he says. ‘It gives us something to look at next year: What really is the show, and who is the show for?’

At the end of it all, many of the films previously thought MIA showed up; many small and large gatherings went on, and a very well-received and well-attended film festival took place, thanks to some quick thinking from dedicated organizers and a very healthy film community.

-www.atlanticfilm.com