During Cannes 2023, Universal Cinema Film & TV Journal’s Amir Ganjavie interviewed Wim De Witte the Program Director for Ghent Film Festival. What follows is that interview.
Amir Ganjavie, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): Can you introduce yourself and tell me about your organization?
Wim De Witte (WDW): I’m the program director of the Film Fest Gent. And I’ve been there for quite some years. I started there when I was a student at the Ghent University, as an intern, and then I got involved in the festival and I’ve been doing a lot of very different things. But for the last four years, I’ve been the Program Director of the festival.
(UM): What is the importance of Cannes to you?
(WDW): Cannes and Berlin are the two festivals that we try to attend each year. Because there are a lot of films to be seen, a lot of [potential] films for our program. We are a bit “Best of the Festivals”, we don’t go for World Premieres. But also, of course, to meet a lot of people.
In Berlin, it’s a bit more relaxed because the period is still long before the festival is set up. So, it’s some time to talk to people and to discuss, to hear their thoughts, and to hear which are the upcoming projects. I think that’s the main importance of these festivals. We try to attend other festivals of course, as well. But sometimes you have financial constraints or time constraints.
(UM): And how do you define the Ghent Film Festival? I see there is a very good concentration on music and cinema, so what is your vision for the festival?
(WDW): The festival started in the seventies as a place to show films that did not have a distribution at the time, and that needed to be discovered by Flemish audiences. And it’s still the starting point for the film selection of our festival. At a certain point, there were so many festivals internationally, so we were looking for something to set us apart from the other festivals worldwide. And at about that time we were contacted by the classical music festival, Flanders Festival, which is held in September just prior to our festival, to do a screening of a silent film with live music.
I think it was music by Shostakovich. I’m not sure which film it was. So, it fitted perfectly in their [festival] because it was classical music. And it fitted perfectly in our [festival] because it was a film. And from that project, we got the idea, why not focus on music and cinema? We were the first festival that had this focus and that started to invite composers to the festival.
Very early on, we had guests such as Ennio Morricone and Georges Delerue. Delerue, who was François Truffaut’s composer was a frequent guest at our festival, and we have our music award named named after him. Several others followed.
And then in 2000, we did the first ever concert of Hans Zimmer. And that was really the starting point of an additional organization within our festival organization, which is called the World Soundtrack Academy. It’s a worldwide academy that gathers composers, people involved in the film, and music in film professionals. And we bring them together for a series of industry talks and panels and to distribute awards. So that idea grew in 2000. And in 2001, we had the first edition of the World Soundtrack Awards Ceremony. It’s the composers who choose the best composer of the year for film, television, best song, and best discovery. Additionally we also have some programs for young composers, a composition contest which we also organized.
The festival will have its 50th edition this year in October, and the World Soundtrack Awards will have its 23rd edition in October.
(UM): And in this conceptualization, what importance do you give to the music, how do you define the relationship between cinema and music?
(WDW): Well, what we try to focus on is the creative partnership between the director and the composer. Of course, it started for us through the composer. We had a lot of composers who wanted to bring their work [and have it] lifted up to concert music. Not all film music, I have to tell you is suitable for the concert hall. Film music is often written in short cues to be used in the film. So if you want to perform it in a concert hall you often need to re-orchestrate the work.
And so a lot of the film music that we’ve brought, was performed for the first time on a stage separately from the film. But more and more we evolved towards trying to build a better bridge, better relation between the director and a film and the composer, because we often heard from composers that they sometimes get a bit frustrated by directors, but vice versa as well.
And so what we want to do as a film festival focusing on music, is bringing these two worlds together. And try to have them think about the role of the soundtrack is a bit broader than only the original music.
We also have an award for best music in our film program. This award is decided upon by an international jury. The award can go to either and original score or to the use of existing music or even perhaps sound design. It’s the jury’s decision. We don’t want to propagate that the film needs to have music from the very first [frame] to the very last. I think the idea that we want to bring in, is that a director and a composer, start working together very early on in the process and that they think about how the soundtrack of the film might help the audience experience [the film].
(UM): What is your definition of good movies?
(WDW): That’s very difficult. I don’t have a definition.
I think it’s important to tell you that I’m the Program Director. I have the final responsibility, but it’s not me alone who chooses films. Because obviously in choosing films, there are a lot of objective reasons that influence our choices. We ask of each film to screen it in (at least) it’s Belgian première, and of course sometimes a film that we want to show will have a release before the festival. Or it got picked up by a [streaming] platform. Then we prefer not to show it. Sometimes a film’s release in only planned months after the festival and the distributor feels our festival is to early.
So, there are a lot of different reasons why a film is sometimes not on the program and [other] films are on the program. I don’t have a definition of what is a good film, but I think by being in this job for quite a time and being involved in the festival, and also having a bit of an idea of what our audience [enjoys], those I think are some of the main things that we take into account to make a program.
(UM): I’m wondering if the emphasis or the concept of diversity makes the selection more difficult because I feel sometimes right now people are not very sure about what is good taste, bad taste, if what the value as, for example, is it western, male, gay? Do you find any challenges or concerns in this?
(WDW): That’s a difficult question and I don’t think there is a straightforward answer to this. I think one of the things that we worked on the last few years is, it’s not me alone who is involved in the [selecting] process. There are a lot of other people, and we even broadened up this programming committee helping us out with making the choices. And so, my role is to oversee it and to make sure that this diversity is there. And I think we can still show films, even if I don’t like them or other vice versa, I might like a film and somebody else might not like it. As long as we also can still discuss films and discuss the ideas in a film or the views of the director. That’s why it’s very important for a festival to welcome filmmakers to have this confrontation with the audience. Let them explain their film. I don’t have a straightforward answer to this, but it’s definitely a concern, but it’s a right concern.
(UM): And I realized you mentioned that at the beginning you were very interested in promoting films that didn’t have any kind of distributor, but more and more I see that even at your festival it’s become very interesting to see what movies were originally picked by Big Film Festivals to show at them. So, the question of discovery seems less important for festivals that…
(WDW): Well, discovery, if you mean that we don’t present world premieres. No. That’s a definite choice. We don’t want to have a program with only world premieres because we know that then we cannot guarantee the same quality, whatever that may be. Our [preference] is Belgian premieres, we still want our audience to discover a lot of films at our festival. And so, at this stage, the largest part of our program is still non-distributed films. So it’s still the same idea as in the beginning of our festival. Only now at this stage, of course, has been broadened with films that do have a distributor and will be released out of the festival. And then in that way, in this mediatized world, what we hope is by having these bigger films and bigger guests, that we might also be able to attract press coverage also for the non-distributed films. And that might be a door, an entrance, for an audience that does not know the different kinds of cinema that we also present.
(UM): And as you mentioned this year it’ll be its 50th edition of the festival. Do you have any special events planned?
(WDW): And after our previous festival we reached out to 25 directors to be inspired by the music and make a short film to it. So we gave ourselves a birthday present consisting of 25 originals shorts, and 50 people working together on them. And later this week we announced the people who already confirmed this project.
(UM): And about each year you also highlight some composers? Is it clear who will be there for this year?
(WDW): We will have several concerts this year. We will have some films with live music, those we’re still working on, but we will have two major big symphonic concerts. One will be focusing on music from video games. We are still working on this program, but one of the artists already confirmed is Austin Wintory. He’s an American composer whose done films, but he’s mainly known for his video game music for Journey, Abzu, and some others. And then the second concert is, of course, the World Soundtrack Awards Ceremony, which is the closing event of the festival. And Eiko Ishibashi, the Japanese composer who did Drive My Car, will be in Gent for two projects. She will be a part of the World Soundtrack Award Ceremony, but there will also be a screening of a film with live music by Eiko Ishibashi.
And then two other names that have been confirmed for the World Soundtrack Awards are Laurence Rosenthal, an American composer who did a lot of films but also a lot of television. One of the films he did is A Return of a Man Called Horse and one of the television series he did was The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. He will get a Lifetime Achievement Award.
And because of our 50th anniversary we decided to have a second lifetime achievement award for the Italian composer Nicola Piovani. He’s best known for his collaborations with the Taviani Brothers. And of course, because he won the Oscar for La Vita è bella (Life is Beautiful).
(UM): And you mentioned at the beginning that you are the programming director, but you have also programmers. So, is the decision is that you have a special programmer for each section—
(WDW): Not for each section. No. What we have is we have a program committee that we enlarged a bit last year. They watch several of the films with us. These people watch a lot of screeners at home, they give in their reports. And then there is my colleague, Michiel Philippaerts, who is responsible for the short film program. And I have the main responsibility for the music program and for the feature film program. And then there is a separate programming committee for the music projects.
(UM): And in terms of covid, how has it altered your festival?
(WDW): Well, of course, it’s an experience that we won’t easily forget. But we have been very lucky I have to say because we were able to do the 2020 edition because we fell into this very bizarre period between lockdowns. Of course, with a lot of restrictions. And we had an online platform at that stage in 2020, but we decided in 2021 to not have it anymore because, there are a lot of online platforms, and we don’t need to add another one.
When we did this online platform in 2020, a lot of the sales agents were very cooperative at that stage. But of course, what you get online is only a fraction of the selection of what the festival is about. And if somebody does not know our festival, then he or she might get a wrong idea about what the festival is about.
But above all we really want to propagate the cinema experience. The collective cinema experience. I think that’s the role of a festival to bring people together to connect people through culture, through what they see, through the films, through the discussions that we organize and the talks we have with the filmmakers, with the composers, with the actors who are there.
Of course, a lot of the industry talks that we do are filmed and put online after the event.
(UM): And you mentioned that you hope the screenings create the possibility for people to discuss the subject. And you’re bringing, for example, a filmmaker. Suppose I’m a filmmaker and I’ve made a controversial film, or I’m a controversial filmmaker, but I made a good film, would you invite me?
(WDW): When Russia invaded Ukraine, we did not invite Russian state-backed films, but we wanted to have independent Russian voices still being heard. That’s a very difficult question. But then again, we try to not have too much intervention, we’re pretty independent in deciding what is in the program.
(UM): I’m just curious, for example, if somebody comes and makes a movie against abortion and it is a very good movie, will you discriminate or not?
(WDW): If it’s a very good movie, then we will try to screen it, and then we would definitely be interested to hear the director talk about what his or her ideas are. Because that’s the way we move forward. We discuss with each other, and we don’t always agree with each other. And sometimes we agree to disagree with each other. [It would] be great if the world would work like that. Because it doesn’t always work like that. We have to be honest.
(UM): At the end of our discussion conversation, I wonder if there is anything left that you think you want to address or add to our conversation?
(WDW): There’s still a lot left to talk about. It’s a bit difficult at this stage. We don’t have a pretty good view of what our next festival will be. We know that we have the 50th-anniversary edition. One of the things that might be nice to tell is that we will be looking back a bit on the 50 years. We’ll have a program of classics that will show some of the films that were milestones on our history. Highlight some of the films that were presented before. But apart from that, we’ll try to look forward as well and make a good festival focus for the first time on music for video games, which is new. We’ll also have a video game award.
We are also investigating VR. We have been doing that for the last few years, but have not really found a project in the last few years that convinced us. Sometimes it’s more the idea of “Look what we can do with this new medium.” But I think we are onto a Belgian production that, hopefully, we’ll be able to present at the festival. It will be the first VR project at our festival. I know we will not be the first festival to present [VR], but for us and our new audiences, it will be new.
But it’s still very early. We don’t have a clear idea of what the films will be and what the guests will be.
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