Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

WFF scales back festival offerings

And other (more positive) news from Whistler’s movie
68355_l

It supposedly takes one decade for a film festival to be relevant so it's dismal timing for the Whistler Film Festival, celebrating its 10 th anniversary this year, to lose its major sponsor.

American Express pulled out of the festival to focus on bigger city markets, leaving the WFF $300,000 short in it's total expenses. Shauna Hardy Mishaw pleaded to council last week to give them a one-time investment of $145,960 from Resort Municipality Initiative (RMI) funds to help the festival along because without it, she told council, the festival would have to go on hiatus. The WFF says that a one-year hiatus is tantamount to a permanent cancellation.

"Hollywood moves so fast," says director of development Jane Milner.  "Institutionalizing a festival depends on your credibility, on being there and being there year after year. You just can't stop. It would just go away."

WFF, which is set to run Nov. 30 to Dec. 4, has secured a spot in the industry's favour. Milner has just returned from the Toronto International Film Festival, one of the most celebrated festivals in the world, where she received positive and enthusiastic responses about what has been happening at the Whistler festival.

"In the film festival world, we've arrived," Milner says.

Unfortunately for them, reputation does not guarantee financial stability. Milner says the Whistler Film Festival Society (WFFS) had known since the end of last year's festival that American Express was going to pull out and that Hardy Mishaw and Milner had been "going back at them for months" but they had made a strategic corporate decision to move on.

If the RMI money comes through, they will still have to scale back some of the festivities. Milner says that festival programming will remain the same but superfluous events, including the opening gala, will have to be scrapped.

"Unless somebody steps forward to pay for an opening gala, it probably means we won't have the opening party with the free drinks and nibblies before the opening film," Milner says. "But there are frankly so many parties that go on that have nothing to do with us, they just go on because the industries go in and put them on privately. There are lots of ways to have fun."

Council agreed to the WFFS's request, on the condition that the money is used for technical equipment and venue rentals, and as long as the provincial government agreed to it. The province must approve all RMI spending.

"This was not an easy decision for council," says Mayor Ken Melamed. "We don't want to set a precedent for supporting events because that's not what we do. There are a lot of events in Whistler and we were quite concerned about the perception that that kind of support is available."

The $150,000 is being re-deployed from the $250,000 that was earmarked in 2011 budget for the Rainbow Theatre renovation. The $2.5 million project has been pushed back until spring 2012.

The RMOW has contributed $50,000 annually to the film festival since 2006 and providing the society seed money the first year to help it off the ground. Since then, the five-day festival had grown to contribute roughly $10 million to the local economy, attracting around 10,000 visitors.

The prospects are even greater, now that the WFF has attracted two significant opportunities: an agreement between WFFS, Telefilm Canada and the China Film Group (CFG) to create the China Canada Gateway for Film, which will guarantee nine China-Canada co-productions over the next three years that will premiere in Whistler; and a partnership with Variety , the premier entertainment trade magazine.

The mayor says council wouldn't have allowed the RMI funds to be allocated if "this new energy that has been injected into the festival," hadn't been apparent.

"This gives a lot of confidence going forward that we the festival is going to be on firmer footing," Melamed says.

The specifics of the partnership are under wraps until the agreement is officially signed at the 2011 WFF, but Milner says it means Whistler will be the meeting point for production companies wanting to distribute in China, the largest film market in the world.

"This is all about doing business," she says.

The specifics of the Variety partnership have yet to be cemented but Milner says, "We will be making some great announcements in the next few weeks."

"When I was talking about festival credibility, there's nothing better than a partnership with Variety," she says.

The magazine has connections in every major film market in the world, not to mention star film critics and access to just about every celebrity on the planet. Variety executive editor Steven Gaydos says he'd like to create a culture in Whistler that celebrates award-season films - the sort of late-fall, early-winter films that are released in time for Academy Awards and the Golden Globes.

"This could be a really terrific partnership if we find the right kind of event, the right kind of filmmaker," he says.

He says Whistler is virtually unknown to people in Hollywood and, given its proximity to Los Angeles and it's natural beauty, could become very popular - especially with a world-class film festival.

"If Whistler decided to be a cultural tourism destination and highlight the fact that it's a place for couples and sophisticated people - and for families and kids as well - (then) it really (needs) to reach out to people in our show business constituency," he says.