Universal Cinema Film & TV Journal’s Amir Ganjavie interviewed Michael Rabehl, Director of Programming for the Cinequest Film Festival in Silicon Valley. Their conversation touches on the film selection process and how a festival held in Silicon Valley handles the challenges of technology.
Amir Ganjavie, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): How are you trying to differentiate your festival from other film festivals that are happening in the US or other parts of the world?
Michael Rabehl (MR): First of all, we still go with our founding of any theme which is maverick cinema. So we’re showing new voices, new adventurous voices, people who are trying to do something different with cinema. And, of course, that’s not every film in the festival. I mean, every film can’t be doing something very different, but we do that. And, secondly, we’re in the heart of Silicon Valley. So we’re still looking for those innovative storytellers. A lot of the people come to the festival who work at startup companies, work at tech companies. So they’re really looking for something that is doing something adventurous and different. And so, a lot of our more popular films tend to be those really out there movies. We got the maverick, we got the innovation and we also are still looking for technology in the way people are using technology to forward their storytelling. Those are the three different ways that we really differentiate because we’re right here in Silicon Valley and that’s the hub of those startups, the adventurous, the tech people, the highly educated markets and stuff like that.
(UM): What kind of movie when you see it, you see that it’s a good movie, it should be in our festival. Is there anything like that?
(MR): Usually what happens in the process, at least I’m talking from just my perspective of things with the features, the shorts team does it probably differently with it because it’s very subjective all the time. But for me I usually have a short list of about anywhere from 150 to 175 features that are on our list of films we really like and then we have to decide from those what we’re actually going to invite. Usually 80 to 90 of those. So we have to basically cut it in half.
(UM): Yeah.
(MR): So being able to decide what we like is again, very subjective but we have a team that we work with. So we each have a meeting like this on Zoom sometimes. We discuss our top films, we discuss some of the films that we saw that maybe weren’t our top films, but deserve a place, things like that. And we have a long day and we end up coming up with a selection of films that is a wide mixture of voices, representation of gender and race and so on. And we just say these are the 10 films that we love so much. Each of us will probably pick our top 10 and we’ll make sure that those get invited and then we’ll go for the films that maybe didn’t make our top 10 but are still really important to show. So it’s really like, there’s no really simple answer to that question [laughs].
(UM): Okay I understand [laughs].
(MR): Because when we discuss it, we all have our own points of view on what we should do. And yes, I do oversee it but I want to have everybody in our viewing team have a say in what we program. And I want them to be a part of the process because everybody’s looking at it differently and art is going to affect everybody differently. I mean, I may not see something in the movie that somebody else sees. And I’m not going to say, oh, I don’t see it and just say no. I’m going to listen and try to figure out a way, like hey maybe they’re right let’s try it out. So I mean it’s a very democratic process I guess is the best way to put it.
(UM): How does the selection process work? Do you have specialized programmers for each section? If yes, how is the decision made? Do you have final say?
(MR): Well, I’m personally involved managing the whole thing, but I look at the films. I look at the films in the feature film category, the feature documentary category, the television, and the music videos. And then we have a whole team that deals with the student short films, other short categories, the screenwriting, all that stuff. So we have various teams that do different parts of it. I just oversee a lot of it. I’m also highly involved in the selection process of the feature films and documentaries. But the only thing I do with the short film team is I check in with them to make sure everything’s going okay. And they pretty much select all of them. I mean, I maybe have a hand in selecting a few of the shorts sometimes. But it’s rare. It’s only when it’s like a special case or something like that.
(UM): Because of the democratization process in filmmaking, there are many more films that have been produced because of digital technology and I imagine that you are receiving lots of films. Some programmers told me that because they are receiving too many films, they pay more attention to films with a distributor already attached. Are you dealing with the challenges of receiving too many films?
(MR): That’s a good question because I don’t think we faced a challenge where we have too many. Yes, we don’t always make our deadlines because we have to finish watching the movies. So if we have a deadline by a certain date, sometimes we end up making the decisions a week or two later. That’s just part of it. But we have a team that watches films from May through early January. We have a team that covers all of it. So we haven’t faced a challenge where we haven’t seen the movies. We don’t really have pre-screeners, we just have the team that does it. So we don’t have people that look at it and then recommend it to us. We look at them all [laughs].
Sometimes if we see a film early on and then we might have forgotten what we saw because we see so many. We look at our notes on it because we keep notes on everything and then we go back and look at that again. Like, what was that again? And just, we don’t look at the whole thing. What was that again? Why don’t I remember it? And then we look at it like oh, that’s what it was. Okay, yeah, that’s why we liked it so much. Okay, things like that. But as far as your question about, how to handle the challenges of too many? I don’t think we’ve run into that yet. And we get between the shorts and features, we get about 4,000 films submitted. And we have a team of about 15 people across all those sections that look at all those. I mean, our co-director of the short film program, he looked at I think he told me 1700 shorts last year. He told me what it was. It was really high up there, but I personally watched about 750 to 800 features in that seven month period. So you average that out to at least four or five a day [laughs]. So it is something that we take very seriously and we go through them and make sure that we see them all. But we don’t really have people look at it ahead of time. Now if we do run into a situation where we get thousands and thousands more films, and we need more people, we just get more people to watch more but right now our team is managing what we get.
(UM): Do you have any kind of quota or, for example, quota in terms of race and geographical location, gender, I’m just curious.
(MR): We don’t have a set number, but we do very consciously go out of our way, at least for all the years I’ve been programming with the festival, we go out of our way to say okay, there’s two films that we really like. This one is directed by a woman or a Latino or whatever. And then we just go from there and say we’ll pick this one to have more of a mixture, that kind of thing. We don’t have a set quota like a number that we have to meet. It starts out with quality first, storytelling quality first and then we take into consideration all the other factors.
(UM): Some festival programmers told me that because they are being funded by the government or because they are funded by some private organization, they have to take into account some considerations. For example, taking more films from Europe or taking more films from their own local culture. So I’m just curious if you have something like this in your festival.
(MR): We do not have anything like that. I mean sometimes we have sponsors that come in and say, okay, you have many films that relate to this. But it’s usually like one screening kind of thing. It’s not like a whole section. I mean, our grants only come from the city. So the city doesn’t put any requirements on us as far as like, we have to have X number of films from this or X number of films with this. They do have questions like how many Bay Area artists do you represent or how many do you celebrate and stuff like that. But it’s not anything that there’s a specific number we have to meet. We tend to just program for what the audience asks for. We survey the audiences every year and we look at the comments, we look at what the audiences have asked for more of and then we go from there. But again, it’s rare. I mean, one of our sponsors likes to sponsor all the international films. So they just want to get a good amount of international films. They don’t give us a number though. As long as they just represent those international films. So it could be 10, it could be 20, just depends on what we find in the mix. They just want to have quality films and that’s all they ask for.
(UM): Does it mean that films that are more pleasing to the audience have more priority for you?
(MR): We don’t actively say that that’s what we want. But again if it comes between two films, one is really dark and depressing and one is really happy and fun, we’re probably going to go for the more happy and fun movie. But it’s not something we prioritize. We still want to show great cinema and that’s really what our goal is. It’s to bring films that people don’t necessarily always get a chance to see. So, yeah, we do program some films that have distributors, but our priority is discovery. We want to discover new voices and discover films. I remember years ago in our student program, Nathan, who runs that, he discovered a student short film from Chloe Zhao and now she’s out there making big films and we showed her first student film. That’s the stuff we look for moreso than we do for the big films from distributors. We look for films that actually discover new voices.
(UM): And in terms of controversy or controversial figures, say that Polanski submits a movie to your festival or Woody Allen, would you accept their movies? How is your reaction to the filmmakers that are canceled or…
(MR): I don’t think they would submit because they probably don’t submit anywhere. They probably just are sought out [laughs]. We do take those things into consideration, of course. I personally will still show a film if it’s great. I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t. I mean other festivals are doing it too. They don’t shy away from showing great movies. Of course, we’re not going to show the latest from [laughs] I don’t want to name any names but I mean the people who really have committed egregious crimes. I mean, yes, there are people, the couple you mentioned that could be controversial but they still are being shown at festivals around the world. Other people, again, I’m not going to mention names, current people we’re not going to probably show their movies [laughs]. Again, I’m not going to name the names on this call.
(UM): And in terms of political tensions. For example, do you show movies from Russian filmmakers?
(MR): Oh yeah, coming up in August we have at least one Russian feature. I think we might have a couple of Russian shorts and music videos and also I think we might have a television series that’s from Russia too. So yeah, we don’t shy away from that just because, I mean, it’s not the artists in those countries who are doing anything bad. We show Russian cinema, we show Iranian cinema.
(UM): But for example, if somebody says that funding of this movie is problematic or it comes from the Russian government or Iranian government, do you consider these aspects or do you look at the final product?
(MR): We don’t typically show anything that’s from the government of the countries, no. We don’t show government films. We look at the artists who are creating stories in those countries, but typically the government isn’t involved in any of that. So I think that we’re pretty safe on that front. We’ve never shown anything like a propaganda kind of movie or anything like that.
(UM): How do you provide a platform for discovery? What percentage of your festival is for premieres?
(MR): We do aim to have a good number of premieres. I’m trying to remember the numbers from last year. I don’t remember the numbers off the top of my head. But yeah, it’s somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of our program, our world or US premieres. Again, it’s not something that we actively say we have to hit a certain number. A lot of our premieres tend to be a lot of those more adventurous movies. We don’t necessarily say, oh, we have to have 30 premieres, 35 non-premieres. We don’t do it that way, we just hit what we get. And then if we get premieres out of it then awesome. But we don’t actively turn away people just because they haven’t premiered with us or something like that.
(UM): In terms of relationships with other film festivals, what festivals are you attending and what films are you inviting from those festivals to yours?
(MR): We don’t go to too many festivals. I go to maybe one or two a year. The rest of the team doesn’t go. It’s just me usually. So I usually end up at Toronto or something like that and then I go to maybe one European event and we’ll invite some films from both of those because first of all, they’re usually premieres there. Usually at Toronto they’re world premieres. So the chances of us getting a nice US premiere to help a film or even at the time that they’re premiering at Toronto, they typically are getting picked up for distribution in the US. So we’ll find out which films are getting picked up. Maybe they have a good March release date. It’s usually looking for the films that fulfill our spotlight programming.
(UM): And in terms of supporting filmmakers, how do you try to support the filmmakers that get awards at your festival? Do you offer any kind of financial award or do you provide for example any technological screening possibly? How do you try to support them?
(MR): We don’t have a cash award, no. We do try to help where we can, of course, we provide them the accreditation of the festival. Our hotel partners will often give us X number of nights to offer to filmmakers. And then a special rate on top of that. And then sometimes, if we can’t, we can’t always, we will try to help them in other ways to provide them with stipends, stuff like that. But it’s really, we’re a non-profit. So we don’t really have a lot of cash to be able to do stuff. We basically have to rely on our sponsors to be able to do stuff for us.
(UM): What percentage of the movies are from the US and how many are international? Do you prioritize US films or is it just a good combination?
(MR): It’s about 50/50. I want to say, like right now in the upcoming program we have about 85 features I think, and I believe 41 or 42 of those are from the US and the rest are all international. And the same with the shorts side of things, we show a lot of international and US shorts too. So I think it’s about 50/50.
(UM): And you mentioned that innovation and technology is very important. I’m just curious if for example, in the face of AI or the new challenges to films, have you tried to bringing those aspects or…?
(MR): Yeah, at the festival we show some technical presentations. In fact at the upcoming festival, we will be doing some AI presentations.
We do try to have those new innovations. In fact, if you look back at the history of what the festival has done back in 1998 or ’99, the festival was showing QuickTime movies that long ago. And that was when the industry itself was saying, oh, digital film is going nowhere. It’s going nowhere. It’s going nowhere. I don’t know why you guys are doing this and a lot of people wouldn’t be involved in it because they didn’t think it was going to be the future and look where we are now [laughs]. We actually were showing digital films back in the late ’90s. And then in 2000, I think it was 2002 or 2003, we actually showed streaming movies online back in 2002, 2003. We had a Silicon Valley company that was doing something and we showed something like 10 features online at the time and we had a selection of the audience get involved and select which two features they wanted to see shown at the festival itself. And so we did a preselection for the audience and they selected two films. And those films actually got distribution. And at least one of the filmmakers is working on a lot of different projects right now. In fact, we’re showing one of her films in the upcoming festival, her new films. And she’s working for TV and nonfiction TV and doing a lot of work now. She’s a big producer.
(UM): In terms of online and hybrid, did COVID in any way change the structure of your festival? At Sundance I realized now they always have an online portion.
(MR): I think that’s pretty standard for most festivals now. I know that even Toronto did it last year. This year I think South by Southwest did a little bit of it, Tribeca is doing it and so I suspect that’s going to continue. The time of COVID actually changed the festival industry and what festivals do. So I don’t know, I can’t tell you what it’s going to be like 10 years from now. I could tell you for the next few years you’re still going to see a lot of hybrid.
(UM): What is your vision for the festival in 10 years? Do you have a utopian dream about your festival?
(MR): I’m not sure I have an answer to that, but I would like to be able to continue building upon that discovery aspect and it would be nice in 10 years to have Cinequest be known as the discovery place for future voices of cinema. I don’t want to necessarily be somebody to keep on showing films that have shown at 30, 40 festivals. I want to show films from people who really want to create the future of the industry and storytelling. So I mean we’re doing that already but I want the profile of Cinequest to be known as that.
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