The Saint John Jewish Historical Museum. (Image: © 2018 Google)
The seventh annual Saint John Jewish Film Festival is going virtual this Saturday.
“This year was like, ‘Wow, how are we going to do this!?,’ said Katherine Biggs-Craft, Executive Director and Curator of the Saint John Jewish Historical Museum.
Many of this year’s local and global film festivals, such as the Toronto International Film Festival and FIN Atlantic Film Festival, pivoted to hosting online screenings of their film selections for patrons to watch from the comfort of their homes. “All the other film festivals that happened had gone virtual so we said, ‘We think we can do this, so let’s go ahead with it,’” said Biggs-Craft.
She explained that in previous years the festival’s opening night screening and gala was held at the New Brunswick museum, with the rest of the films screened at the synagogue.
“People come and they recognize that this is something different, it’s not something they’re going to see at the Cineplex,” she says. “It is something they wouldn’t ordinarily have the opportunity to see or to even go looking for.”
Over fifty people have purchased tickets, with multiple people planning to watch a single shared screener.
“We’ve had a really good response, most of our ticket holders didn’t buy just one or two films – they’ve bought the whole series,” said Biggs-Craft. “The links we get for each film are good for 24 hours, so people aren’t stuck at that seven o’clock time slot when we were showing the films.”
The Jewish Historical Museum worked together with film distributor Menemsha Films to pick this year’s festival selections. “We’ve tried to get a good mix of things, but it’s still the six consecutive days so it still has that marathon feel to it that we would normally have,” she added.
Whether or not the film festival will be virtual next year, or a mixture of virtual and in-person screenings, will depend on how much the pandemic has subsided and whether a vaccine is available.
Biggs-Craft has created survey questions to get a sense of how the virtual screenings worked for audience. “Part of us would like to go back to in-person because it’s nice to actually see the people and talk to them after the film and see what they think and did they like it,” she said.
The festival will take place from October 17th to 22nd.
