Curating the 2020 festival

We started production of the 2020 Festival in September 2019, with an open call on FilmFreeway for submissions. We received close to 400 films. Of those films we selected only 1 film for the main presentation, and two films for the ongoing installations. The rest of the films came to me through active searching, curation and festival directors in other countries. The films presented all short form (not more than 30 minutes in length) ranged from documentary to narrative dance film to abstract dance film to animation. Films came from the UK, the USA, South Africa, Hungary, Brazil, Sweden and the Netherlands.

The Jury consisted of all women from different age groups: in their twenties, thirties, fifties, seventies and eighties. As with the 2018 Festival that looked at the depiction of the Brown and Black Body on Screen, the Festival’s theme needed to be represented in all aspects of the process, including the jury, so an intergenerational group of professional film-makers and dancers judged the films about the aging body on screen. It also meant that we wouldn’t suddenly abandon diversity on screen, since the first Festival explored the depiction of the Brown and Black Body on Screen. Many films included young bodies interpreting older bodies, where the aging person was just sitting as an object being observed rather than an older “presence.” All those films did not make the cut, as many films confirmed ageist ideas.

We ended up with a small selection of films fit into two programs, Virtual Reality Films, installation films, and a conversation/panel. Tickets were reserved, the venue ready, postcards and posters printed one month ahead of time. Thus, when COVID-19 happened, although we were not yet closed that first week of March, we were in a good position to make some changes and shift.

Canceling was never an option for me. I told the team “we are not canceling, we are doing this online, and we will figure it out.” Although at the time, we had never done an online Festival, nor did we know what would work.

We reconfigured the festival from in-person, to an online event - creating an opportunity to come together as a global community to reflect through beautiful films, on our shared humanity and our elders and to accomplish the goal: to reduce stigma around aging and Dementia.