Universal Cinema Film & TV Journal’s Amir Ganjavie interviewed Matthew Curtis about the film selection process and working at the Florida Film Festival.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Amir Ganjavie, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): Can you introduce yourself and tell me about your role in your organization?
Matthew Curtis (MC): I’m Matthew Curtis, and I’m programming director for both Enzian Theater and the Florida Film Festival. Enzian Theater is the only full-time not-for-profit art house in the Orlando market and all of central Florida since 1985. The festival was founded in 1992 and started out very small. I was working retail, actually being a video and import buyer for Peaches music and video, which was like the Sam Goody’s of the Southeast. And so the festival was founded in 1992. I was on their programming staff and selection committee, and I helped write the printed program. Then in 1996, the family that built the theater and started the festival offered me the full-time programming director job. So my background was in film and exhibition and distribution.
I studied film in college. Then I went to New York. A sales director at Corinth Films in New York City from 1980 to ‘87. Corinth was started by two guys, John Poole and Peter Meyer who sowed their oats at Janus Films in the mid and early seventies. And Janus had the greatest, in the States at least, the greatest classic film collection period bar none. And John and Peter formed their own company, Corinth Films, and I worked for them as Sales Director dealing with colleges, film societies, art museums, things like that.
When Enzian opened in 1985, I was renting them movies. So I was renting them Buñuel’s L’Age D’or, Fellini’s 8½, Lewis Milestone’s Of Mice and Men. I knew about Enzian. They were putting some of our movies on screen like Ken Burns’ Huey Long documentary. When I moved down here in ‘87, I became a part-time consultant for the theater because of my film experience in New York. I helped them with their programming and marketing and writing their bimonthly newsletter. But it wasn’t until the summer of ‘96 that I was offered the full-time programming director job.
(UM): Can you describe the programming process in terms of selection? Do you rely on a team of programmers, or are you the one making the final decision?”
(MC): For the film festival we have senior selection committees. Generally with three people. And then we also have a lot of associate programmers that look at stuff first and we always get at least three opinions on every filmsubmitted to us. Realistically, we get close to 3000 submissions, and there’s no way that three or four committees of three people are gonnabe able to watch all that. We have a process thatstarts in mid-August. We open for submissions and committees start receiving preview links soon after that. In January, we try to get the American Independent Competition portion selected. Usually, before I leave for Sundance we try to get that taken care of. And then when I get back from Sundance over the next three or four weeks till about mid-February, we’re trying to confirm and select everything else, all the showcases, all the international stuff, all the midnight movies, music films, everything else, you know? So Florida films, all that. But there’s, I think last year we had a total of 39 different people on as programmers on selection committees watching stuff and rating things.
(UM): Do you specialize more in American cinema, international films, or is there a mixture of both in your selection?
(MC): It’s definitely a mixture. I mean I think the American Independent Competition maybe dominates the programming because it’s so special. And we do get a lot of, certainly a lot of East Coast and Southeast premieres. Some US premieres, a couple of North American premieres here and there. I think the lifeblood of the festival is the American Independent Competition, which is basically 10 narrative features, 10 doc features, 10 doc shorts preceding those doc features, another supplemental doc shorts program we call “X Real.” So however many films are in the program, it’s like six times real, three times real, whatever. And that program just basically started as another outlet.
And when you’re putting shorts before features, you have to be very cognizant, not only of compatibility, but of time. So you can’t put a half-hour to forty minute doc short in front of a hundred minute doc feature or anything like that. No. The Real program actually began as a sort of place to put the longer shorts. They didn’t have to precede a feature. But over the years, even that’s evolved. We’ve had a number of films in that program that have gone on to win Oscars, who got nominations.
(UM): We often hear about the state of Florida’s involvement in education and the school system. Does the Florida government have any interference or involvement with the festival?
(MC): The local government and state government have left us alone. We show some provocative and controversial films. We don’t show films that the majority of people would consider pornography I mean. They trust the fact that we’re an artistic institution and we believe in freedom of thought and freedom of expression. And that’s something we’ve always represented in our programming.
(UM): When it comes to movie selection, do you have specific criteria or defining qualities that make you say, ‘That’s a good movie. It should be in my festival. It should be in my program’?
(MC): There’s no simple answer to that. It’s almost like we know it when we see it. When something is that special, occasionally we’ll program it because it fills a niche or fills a need to balance out the program somewhat. We try to be as diverse as possible in our programming and as eclectic as possible. Everything from family films to the most insane midnight movies and Midnight Shorts since that program started 25 years ago, that’s one of the most popular programs in the whole festival.
A lot of times you watch a movie and it’s so good, and you’re just thinking, oh, please don’t blow it. please God, please wrap this up nicely. Know how to end your movie. And some people can do it, and some people can’t, you know? We don’t have one type of film we specialize in. Obviously we’re the Florida Film Festival. We’re looking for lots of homegrown product. Last year, I think about a quarter of our programming actually had some type of Florida connection.
But anything goes at this festival. We’ve shown some things that people’s jaws have dropped. We recommend, because these films are not rated, please choose responsibly. We don’t like to be provocative for the sake of being provocative. But we do like to shake things up and we like people to talk and be challenged by some of the films. We’ll show some really mainstream things that’ll be playing the local commercial house in a few weeks. But we’ll also show some things that are very unlikely to ever get on a screen in central Florida, you know? And that’s part of what we do. That’s why we exist.
(UM): Do you have any specific quotas or guidelines regarding the representation of race, gender, or geography in your selection process?
(MC): We’ve always been cognizant of this, and we like to hit the 50% mark for women directors and non-binary directors. And we’ve been doing that for a number of years. I think we have enough great stuff in the pool of films we get that we don’t have to worry. We had 168 films selected this year, 50 features and 118 shorts. And of those films, 53% were women directors and non-binary directors. And then in the American Independent competition, it was even higher than that. It was 56%, which is awesome. We love to see that.
It’s nothing in writing. It’s something we try to build towards, but we would never just take a film simply because it had a higher premiere status. We really like as many of our films as possible to be at least a Florida premiere. We’re the only Oscar accredited festival in the state of Florida. All three shorts programs are accredited live action documentary and animation. And there’s only like two dozen festivals accredited for those categories in the world which is crazy to me because I just think we’re an excellent regional festival.
(UM): What is your current policy regarding Russian filmmakers? Do you accept their works, or is there a distinction made between the filmmakers and their government?
(MC): That’s a sticky question. Let’s see. Last year we had a film for the international showcase that we loved which blew everybody away called Captain Volkonogov Escaped. .
It blew us away. And we had it booked from Samuel Goldwynand they withdrew the film a few weeks before the festival. And the film has been shelved ever since. Russian filmmakers, we definitely showed some things from Ukraine this year. I don’t know if anything made the cut from Russia, but we’re open minded about it. If it’s something that’s an independent filmmaker and an independent short or whatever, yes, we definitely would consider it, if it was something that’s supported by the state, we’d have to have a serious conversation about it.
(UM): A few weeks ago, Eric Kohn from Indiewire wrote an interesting article about the double standard with The Flash.
(MC): I saw that article.
(UM): He asked about Polanski and Woody Allen. If Woody Allen or Polanski submit their work to your festival, would you accept them or not?
(MC): If the film was mediocre , then I think it would be an easy decision. And let me just tell you right now that Woody Allen and Roman Polanski do not submit their films to this festival. We’re not Tribeca, New York Film Festival, South by Southwest, Sundance. We’re not quite there. We’re a really good regional festival. But I would say only if the film was incredible,would there be a really serious conversation about the controversy. Because one of the things, one of the realities in the situation is we can’t do this festival without our hundreds of volunteers, and we can’t do this festival without our sponsors. And you have to tread very carefully when you’re talking about angering a serious sponsor of the festival that can keep the whole thing going. You don’t want to give them a reason to pull their funds and pull their support.
There’s no hard and fast rule. I did read Eric’s article but I think it would be a case by case situation. I can tell you for repertory purposes because we have a lot of classic films and stuff, we have shied away from where we used to do Woody Allen all the time. We have shied away from Annie Hall and Manhattan and really great films. I am a huge Woody Allen fan as a filmmaker., It’s not worth the complications and the hassles.
There’s enough other great cinema that has no outlet that needs a place to play that we can accommodate without controversy. But I’m a huge Polanski fan and a huge Woody Allen fan. And a huge Bertolucci fan for that matter. I’m the programming director, but I don’t make decisions in a vacuum. I have plenty of people to answer to. I have a programming coordinator as well, who’s my angel and devil on my shoulder sometimes. We’re making program decisions, especially ‘cause we’re a single screen. This place is a miracle. It’s a nonprofit 200-seat, single screen movie house. It’s been that way since 1985 and it’s survived through the pandemic too.
(UM): Do you offer any educational programs for kids?
(MC): We have a monthly series called Peanut Butter Matinee which is usually the final Sunday of every month. We bring in a classic family film, introduce it, talk about the filmmaking, talk about the filmmakers, why it’s an important film. Every summer we do the KidFest film series. Up until the Pandemic we were doing a KidFest young filmmakers camp. That was like a two week program where the kids would learn about film history. I would always start this film series with silent comedy. We’d rotate Chaplin, Keaton and Harold Lloyd.
Because we’re not doing the KidFest film camp, we’re still wrapping our heads around that since the pandemic destroyed that for a while. And hopefully it’ll start back up again next year. But because we’re not doing a silent comedy for Saturday Matinee Classics in September, we are doing Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last, it’s hundredth anniversary, so we’re gonna do Harold Lloyd in September. We do Science on Screen at least four times a year. We have an expert come out and introduce the film and answer questions.
We had somebody come talk about dreams. It was Paprika, the Japanese animated film. We had a scientist come out and talk about dreaming and all the different technical things.
(UM): Has the Covid pandemic caused any changes to the structure or format of your festival?
(MC): We’re a spring festival so the whole world shut down in 2020. We postponed the festival that year and did it in August. We were able to pull it off in August for virtually every single filmmaker whose film got into the festival. Their screening at the Florida Festival was the only time their film played on a screen. We never went completely virtual. Every film that we programmed that year got one screening in our theater at the Enzian Theater. We were at reduced capacity. We had very few filmmakers show up, but they got their film shown on a screen to an audience in a theater.
And then it was also available virtually. Everything I played at least once, unless the filmmaker or studio said we don’t want our film shown in the theater. We’ll only give it to you virtually, which happened twice. In 2021, we did the same thing, but got much more participation from filmmakers showing up because the vaccine had come out already. People felt more confident traveling and being around other people. Obviously, we took incredible precautions, cleaning in between every screening and everybody wearing masks and all that.
There was no doubt that Covid affected attendance that first year. And we might have been the only one doing the hybrid thing where we weren’t strictly virtual. I don’t think there were very many festivals at all doing in-person screenings that first season. It went off without a hitch. And we were very proud to do that, and people really appreciated it.
(UM): In the long run, has COVID affected the number of attendees at the festival?
(MC): I mean, I would say attendance is a challenge, but obviously film festivals do attract an older audience. And certainly in Florida, some of the older audiences do not come back to theaters for anything, for regular programming, for the festival. They’ve gotten used to watching things at their home, the safety of their home, and streaming everything. And that part of the audience has not come back. But interestingly, our special programming audience has come back almost completely, where our regular programming audience still is like 30% less than it used to be.
People come out ‘cause things play one time. Regular programming of film runs anywhere from one to four weeks. That’s the thing people won’t come back for, but special programming or things you got one shot at seeing this on a big screen again or catching up to it finally in a theater, that’s what people are coming out for. I would say our last two years of the festival were our best two years ever. We sold more passes, more tickets, had more filmmakers, I think we had over 120 filmmakers at this year’s festival. It was fantastic. So yeah, it feels it has been a little bit of a slow process, but it does feel like it’s getting back to normal.
(UM): Regarding support for filmmakers, do you offer any cash awards for films that win awards? How do you generally try to support and encourage filmmakers through your festival?
(MC): We do not, but we do fly in every competition feature director, we fly in and put them up for up to five nights. Every single filmmaker that attends this festival will be put up at least two nights. We don’t have the sponsorship levels to give out cash awards. We’ve never done that. We do give out really nice, beautiful engraved awards. We’re incredibly selective programming wise. If a film wins an award at our festival that means something. There’s year-round publicity on the website of winners and press releases. Any film that wins our grand jury award is eligible for the Academy Award the next year and has cleared a very big hurdle to make the short list for the Oscars. But we don’t give cash awards. We do treat filmmakers well, but we don’t do cash awards.
(UM): What vision do you have for the future of the festival?
(MC): Even though the pandemic was three years ago now, we’re still not back a hundred percent. Especially regular programming which is 50 weeks out of the year, and the festival, the Florida Film Festival is 10 days out of the year, even though we work on it for eight months prior, eight or nine months prior. My vision would be that the theater and the festival become more self-sustaining. It’s a miracle that a single screen non-profit art house has survived through all of this since 1985, and the festival’s now going into its 33rd year and made it through the pandemic and all that.
So we’d love to be able to have more screens, we’d love to get more name talent coming in for the festival. At some point I’d love to have the bandwidth and the space and the schedule and time and everything else to do something with virtual reality. We really haven’t done much with television. There are so many incredible things being done on television that it would be nice to be able to showcase some newer work prior to it airing that’s incredibly artistic and cinematic.
(UM): I wonder if there’s anything else that you think might be interesting for our reader to know about your festival?
(MC): I’m just incredibly proud of what we’ve pulled off after all these years. In the beginning when the festival was first founded, I was like, is this going to even fly? Are people going to come? And after all of these years the fact that we’ve not only sustained but grown in reputation and respect and accreditation by the the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I’m incredibly proud of that. I expect it to continue, and I certainly hope it will.
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