the blessings of secluded screening environments

having only spent a few hours in the small, Norwegian southern coastal town of GRIMSTAD, I´m struck by the pure brilliance of placing a major film festival in a rural area. as is the case with my personal favourite film festival, LILLA FILMFESTIVALEN i BÅSTAD (THE LITTLE FILM FESTIVAL IN BÅSTAD), the secluded milieu brings with it more than just a slower pulse: it brings a focus and an honesty to the arrangement. I suspect that the legendary film festival in TELLURIDE, COLORADO serves as a template. though I have never had the chance to go there, I think I can imagine the attraction.

as with a truly great film watching experience, the intimacy of the moment is a huge factor in the relationship between the screened and the voyeur. by making a big city´s giant offerings a non-issue, and thus employing an artistic force majeure, the experience encircles all of your doings and brings you closer to the experience, as well as slowing you down, to allow you take it all in. in short; what´s there is what´s there. i´ve been to film festivals in major cities where the machinery of running from screening to screening in opposite sides of the city becomes more important than the film watching experience in itself. the sheer magnitude of the thousand and thousand films screened comes to a point where you stop watching the films and start having meetings and making advanced excuses for not doing what you went there to do - to be engulfed into the beauty of filmmaking.

the following five days will be good to me in more ways than simply allowing me to immerse in cinematic wonders. it will bring peace and mind and a slower tempo to a mind that has been in creative overdrive for quite some time. this, I will relish.