So You Want To Run A Thai Film Festival?

You heard it. We were looking forward to the Phuket Film Festival under the directorate of Scott Rosenberg who was kind and willing enough to write this exclusive report for us. Scott cancelled the fest 15 minutes too early … And you think the title says it all? Sit back, relax and enjoy the back story. Here’s Scott, unplugged:

So you want to run a film festival? Or maybe just work for a film festival? You think it is a fun, glamorous job where you get to meet interesting, artistic, people from around the world, party hearty at luxurious food and beverage affairs and watch lots of great movies.

Forget it! The reality of the situation is a 24/7, sleepless job where you do get to watch lots of mostly boring/awful movies, deal with some really great but some really egotistical people that work in the film industries of the world and are so exhausted at the parties, you can’t eat or drink or have any fun.

By Scott Rosenberg, (former?) Director of Phuket Film Festival

Being a director of a Festival, is a physically and mentally exhausting job – I know, I am (was) the director of the recently shuttered Phuket Film Festival.

My long tragic story begins back in 1995 when while working for the Board of Investment of Thailand as a consultant, I convinced then Secretary General Staporn Kavitanon to add a bit of culture to his gigantic industrial BOI Fair at Lamchabang.

Khun Staporn said: “Scott how much do you need?”

I said: “Two million baht.”

He said: “Ok” and the Greater Mekong Region (GMS) Film Festival, Thailand’s FIRST film festival, was born. You see at that time Thailand was at the forefront of the movement to help develop its neighbors in Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam and Lao PDR – build roads and ports and help develop a sustainable private sector that could integrate with world markets.

Surprisingly however, the filmmakers of the region had never met and never had an opportunity to view each other’s artistic work.

We brought in filmmakers from around the region and screened about 15 films to people that attended the Lamchabang shindig. It was really great to see the filmmakers talking together, comparing notes on latest equipment, shooting techniques and complaining about lack of government support for their film industries.

This festival was not that difficult to put together and run – I had massive infrastructure (BOI) behind me.

But then, in 2004, when we first tried to put a Phuket Film Festival in place, the reality of the job became apparent.

However, let me backtrack a moment, lots happened between 1995 – 2004.

First in 1997 there was the 30th Anniversary of Asean, A Private Sector Salute that we put on through the auspices of The Brooker Group. First a gala laser show in Indonesia, host nation of the Asean Secretariat before Indonesia’s then-President Suharto – and then a two day series of meetings between the heads of state of Asean and business leaders from around the region.

Despite the Asian economic meltdown we cautiously moved ahead with the event. The importance of having good partners/sponsors and the need to identify everyone’s needs and allow them the “face” necessary to make their investment worthwhile helped save the day for this event.

Leapfrog forward to 2003 when our Thai PR & marketing company AMW International Co. Ltd. was handling on the ground operations for the international CineAsia confab. CineAsia organized by (at the time) VNU out of New York, brought together distributors and exhibitors from all around Asia and major movie distributors from Hollywood to discuss the latest in film exhibition programming and technologies.

One of our clients at the time, SF Cinema was just opening the first modern multiplex on Phuket (at Central Festival Phuket) and we thought what better way to celebrate the opening of their theater AND expand the reach of CineAsia to include the production side of the business then to combine the two events.

We began to plan to put the film festival together on Phuket but we ran into a brick wall – we failed to consider the timing of the event. CineAsia was held annually at the beginning of December – the height of Phuket’s “high” season. Thus we found no hotel rooms available and those that were available were dramatically overpriced – we called off planning for the festival – and lucky we did.

The festival would have ended exactly one week before the tragic Boxer Day Tsunami: some of our people would still have been on the island and who knows what would have happened.

Fate has a strange way of playing its hand.

It took three years before another opportunity presented itself on Phuket to stage the festival – the opening of the SF theaters at Jungceylon in October 2007.

But first, why even bother trying to stage an international film activity on Phuket?

As everyone knows, Phuket has already developed into a stand-alone international tourist destination, with a diverse culture which would be enriched by a major international film festival.

Phuket already runs neck and neck with Bangkok for the number of international films (documentaries, music, videos, motion pictures, commercial shoots), filmed annually in Thailand.

The high-end demographic living on the island would certainly appreciate the stimulation of interaction with audio visual artists from around the world. There are also a number of property developers on the island that would appreciate the opportunity to showcase their exclusive properties to the “Hollywood” types and other “A-listers” that would attend a film festival on Phuket.

And of course, many major international film festivals have “beach” (or water) locations – Cannes, Venice, Pusan, Hawaii and others. The beach atmosphere tends to lend a relaxing, fun mood to the event. Asia lacks a major “fun” film festival along the lines of the Sundance Film Festival where filmmakers and movie lovers can go for relaxation, vacation and FUN!

The Phuket Film Festival can take up that role.

(Bitter/Sweet was to be our opening film – a Thai/U.S. comedic love story set on coffee plantations of Krabi)

Major film festivals in Asia operating today include the Pusan (Korea) International Film Festival (October); Tokyo International Film Festival (October); Bangkok International Film Festival (September – Bangkok has fallen from grace in recent years because of lack of government support due to scandal two years ago); Goa (India) International Film Festival (November – National Film Festival of India); Singapore International Film Festival (April-May).

And it goes without saying that movies are an international cultural outlet – everyone loves the movies!

The first Phuket Film Festival hosted by SF Cinema and Jungceylon in October 2007 and organized by AMW International was by any means a resounding success.

The Festival took place over 7 days, screening 40 films from 15 countries, with 7 hosted parties, two seminars including one on preservation of film at which UNESCO gave their prestigious Silver Fellini Award to the Thai National Film Archives (accepted by Thailand’s minister of culture) – 13 foreign filmmakers attending in support of their film screenings, over 3,600 theater visitors with a recorded 100% approval rating – all for a budget of a little over 7 million baht.

On the media side, PFF 2007 received world wide attention from articles written in at least 7 different countries (there may be more that we do not know about) and attendance at the Festival by over 30 press representatives.

Several special Phuket Film Festival segments of “Destination Thailand” (totaling about 36 minutes of airtime) were independently produced and broadcast in Thailand and abroad.

These significant milestones are not even mentioning recognition by Disney International, who supported the Festival by, for the first time in major film exhibition history in Thailand, opening two films in Phuket BEFORE releasing in Bangkok. Thanks to Disney, PFF was the second film festival in the world to feature the Golden Globe and Oscar nominated “Across the Universe.”

Now there were behind the scenes problems, ouy-vey were there problems. Both SF and Jungcelyon are not in the business of putting on film festivals while we, the organizers are professionals in the field but they were the bosses – they were paying the bills.

After serving on juries at international film festivals and traveling to festivals around the world, I have some expertise in the “business” of film festivals.

Projection booth problems where SF staff had no knowledge of how to use different equipment than they were used to, new SF staff problems not knowing what to do or where to do it but most of all, problems with the host hotel.

The Millennium Hotel adjacent to Jungceylon was supposed to be ready for the festival, but it was not. SF & Jungceylon had to find replacement hotels for the people coming in for the festival. The main host hotel became the Mercure, which itself had only opened a month or so before the festival began.

What a fiasco that hotel was!

Besides rotten sewage odor smell seeping into most rooms, two, TWO guests on different floors awoke to find people (one a woman, another a man) in their rooms. An oversight on the part of someone at the front desk in making key cards? Who cares, what extremely poor security.

And what about two of our filmmakers observing a Thai woman and a Caucasian man fornicating in the first floor swimming pool at about 11.30 at night? filmmakers were loving it – envisioning movies that could be made of the experience.

But come on, what a representation of Thailand! Why didn’t staff tell the fornicators to go to their rooms? Ok, ok – Thai staff are shy and reluctant to intervene.

Training is the operative word here. Why aren’t staff trained better?

Shall throw in the problem of the lock on my door which kept me locked out of my room for 45 minutes, the hotel assistant front desk manager that entered my room without my permission and had staff empty a can of deodorant aerosol in my room to cover up the foul odor – destroying open food, my toothbrush and about 2,000 baht worth of medication in my bathroom?

But if that is not enough, how ’bout the continued knocking on my staff’s door without anyone there when they checked through the peep hole and the refusal on the assistant hotel manager’s part (Khun Narongchai) to rectify or acknowledge the situations.

When asked to write a letter apologizing to the Festival VIP guests that had odor problem in their room, Narognchai admitted this to be a problem from the start of operation of the hotel and asked that I provide email addresses of the VIPs. I asked the guests, prominent directors and producers who did not want their private email addresses given out – I told Narongchai: “No.”

So he refused to write a letter.

I later found out from another hotel staff person, Khun Ekachard, that the email addresses would have been used for marketing purposes, Narongchai denied that only to be confronted at a later conversation where Ekachard made the marketing claim in front of Narongchai and was told to “shut up” (in Thai) by his boss.

Like I said, what a fiasco!

After taking a year off to gear up for a bigger, better event in 2009, AMW International Co. Ltd. moved to organize the Phuket Film Festival in a more strategic time frame in June – situated right after the Festival des Cannes and right before the Shanghai International Film Festival, offering film festival professionals an opportunity to visit Phuket between the two major film festivals;

Many film festival professionals plan a “circuit” over a short period of time – we know that film professionals come into the spas of Thailand after Cannes – we hoped to capitalize on this.

And in fact this turned out to be true as the Shanghai International Film Festival was going to play Cadillac Records after us and have Adrien Brody travel to the fest after visiting Phuket. We would split the cost of Adrien’s coming out.

The same with Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) who is chairman of the Shanghai jury. We were negotiating with his people for him to visit Phuket a couple of days before flying off to Shanghai.

So what happened? Why was the Phuket Festival called off?

Problems started during Songkran with the violence on Bangkok’s streets. We began getting email from festival participants asking if everything was ok, if the problems in Bangkok would affect the Phuket Festival.

Disruption by red shirts (and others) were in select places in Bangkok, not against tourist (foreigners) and would have no effect on the festival, they were told. Adrien Brody in particular was concerned about the violence as he and his partner had planned to travel around Thailand after the Phuket festival.

The long week of holidays beginning May first was the beginning of our downfall. When the central government announced the Asean meeting would be on Phuket, a partner on the island asked what we would do. I asked him what he thought we should do and he said: “Go on, it wouldn’t affect the festival”.

But then, almost daily, Deputy PM Suthep Tueksuban talking from Phuket and Bangkok began talking about the strict security measures that would be in place for the June 13th – 14th Asean meeting. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva added his two satang talking of imposing the Internal Security Act and finally Defense Minister Prawit Wongsuwon talked about sending 5,000 troops to the island to help local police.

Now you have to think this security build up would have to start at least a week before their meeting which put it smack in the middle of the festival.

That week was filled with sleepless nights – it was an emotional and physical roller coaster.

I spent the days analyzing news reports of how the government was going to handle the Asean meet on Phuket, what the armed presence would mean to the Festival and our VIP guests and any inconveniences that might be caused, as well as surveying partners on the ground in Phuket who were feeding us information about how farang on the island may take a vacation during that period (there goes our box-office revenue stream which helps support the festival – me thought) we have had to decide to keep the Festival afloat or cancel it.

On Wednesday, May 6th, I was so stressed I asked my assistant to take me to the hospital – but we never went. There was too much work to be done. Sad but true.

(Wild Chaba was to be our closing film (short) – filmed on Phuket this year)

Anyway, we decided it would be best to cancel the festival and over that long weekend, we emailed major partners, including the Tourism Authority of Thailand and said a decision would be made by 5 pm on Tuesday (May 12th) whether to close the festival or not. A draft press release was also sent to everyone.

On Tuesday at 4.30 pm I received a phone call from a contact at TAT who was a bit miffed that we were going to close the festival (don’t know why, they had only authorized funding of around 500,000 baht for the festival) and after talking about the government’s plans on Phuket and how we could not operate under martial law (almost) conditions, she asked that we postpone – something I responded would be difficult to do. However I agreed to check it out and found a free period in August just after Her Majesty’s birthday.

I immediately contacted our big name talent from Hollywood to explore options with them. Award winning director Darnell Martin (“Cadillac Records”) who was going to bring her 8 year old son with her to Thailand said, thanks but she would have to pass as she did not think it appropriate to introduce her son to real guns and soldiers.

Academy Award winning actor Adrien Brody expressed deepest thanks for inviting him and expressed a desire to come to Thailand one day but backed off from attending just in case the situation turned bad like during Songkran. Adrien is not able to travel to Thailand in August as he is shooting a movie at that time.

The only big name not concerned about the military was Academy Award nominated director Gus Van Sant who was going to attend the Festival with three of his actor/director buddies. Gus would also be available to come to Thailand in August. His message was that he has heard so much about Thailand, and Phuket and he really wants to experience it.

To compound the situation, we learned that the World Comedy Film Festival first slated for April in Bangkok, but then cancelled, was raising its head again in June 10th – 17th overlapping the Phuket Film Festival by two days.

Now that is no big deal, two very different film festivals but they knew – TAT knew of our fest, why overlap? Something sinister was afoot.

This feeling goes back to when they first were scheduled for April. Because of our Spotlight on Taiwanese film, we were trying to program Cape #7, Taiwan’s entry into the Foreign Language category of the 2009 Academy Awards.

We were told by the producers that the Comedy Festival had already requested the movie. We dropped our request for the film as all Phuket Film Festival movies (with few exceptions) must be at least a Thailand premiere.

Well I distinctly got the impression that the Comedy Festival was now going to try and “borrow” the film after we played it along with the film star Chie Tanaka who we were hosting in to the Phuket Film Festival. This feeling spurred on by an email from one of their directors asking us to “cooperate” with them.

“Cooperate” with them? We were operating on a budget of 4 million baht of which only 500K was to come from TAT. They were operating on a budget of 14 million baht granted them by TAT (another sore point but a political decision which I don’t agree with, but understand). Why steal from us to save them money? Pisses me off.

A side story that goes to my opening on why you don’t want to run a film festival, as I said, Chie Tanaka was going to attend – we were going to award her an Emerging Asian Star Award. Her manager confirmed her attendance but said she must travel business class, her assistant must travel with her as well as the manager AND a makeup person and hairstylist AND the festival would be responsible for paying the makeup and hairstylist person per diem at the festival.

I said F–K that! Business class ok, can do that but no assistant, no manager and certainly no makeup and hairstylist. Thailand has a vast amount of great make-up and hairstylist people. Let her try our professional crafts people. This is what the festival is all about promoting Thai locations, movies, production services.

We were still negotiating when we cancelled the festival.

Another reason behind this bad feeling about the Comedy Film Festival came from the schedule on their website:

June 7th – 10th : VIP welcome in Phuket

Thai AirAsia, Aleenta Resort Spa, have sponsored a VIP welcome or, post-flight “Rest and Recovery” package in the beautiful island of Phuket. Celebrities will be treated with spa and health treatments as well as Phuket Marina boating trips.

Smack in the middle of the Phuket Film Festival they were bringing their VIPs down to Phuket? I don’t understand EXCEPT we were planning a yacht party for our VIPs on June 7th (to be paid for out of TAT sponsorship). Was TAT trying something sneaky here? Don’t know and now that we are closed – don’t care?

Anyway, we had begun to gear down over that long weekend (May 8th -11th) and Wednesday, May 13th, I mailed out over 1,000 press releases.

15 minutes after the last press release left my email box, Khun Dumri from the Thai Post called and said:

Hey, have you heard? The government has postponed the Asean meeting until October.”

The next few words that came out of my mouth are not quotable.

I felt like I was in a high powered chess game and I had just been check mated. I like to believe the letters we sent to the Thai prime minister, the foreign minister and Asean Secretariat had some effect and caused them to move the Asean meet but they should have done it sooner. We contacted them in late April.

Why not go on with the fest, recall the press release, some have asked. How stupid would that look? We already lost our Hollywood contingency, certainly we could go on without them but would our funders be happy with that?

For now, I am going to sit back, decompress and not worry about the Phuket Film Festival.

It is a shame! The people of Phuket, the people of Thailand deserve more than the bungling way TAT and the central government operate. For them it is politics above cultural activity which helps educate and entertain the populace.

Maybe someday they will learn.

And by the way, what I said about watching some really boring movies – we had about 160 movies submitted for the Festival. Only 30 movies made the cut. Average viewing time 60 minutes each movie submitted to judge if they were good enough for the festival – you do the math – lot of boring time.

Anybody want the red shopping bag filled with rejected movies sitting in my office?

+++ And some closing remarks by Wise Kwai’s Film Journal:

First held in October 2007, the Phuket Film Festival promised to be another Cannes Film Festival, trading the glamorous south of France setting for the azure waters of the Andaman.

Already a popular getaway for the elite of Hollywood and Europe’s film industries, surely they would flock to Phuket if there was the promise of combining work with lots of play.

The first edition of the festival was a relaxed affair, with filmmakers and actors freely mingling with audience members. The selection tended to favor independent fare, which in other words means films no one had ever heard of – but they were still worth watching, perhaps even moreso than the usual multiplex offerings.

Among the guests on opening night was a contingent of Filipino filmmakers who turned up wearing traditional tribal garb. There was also fedora-sporting New Zealander whose specialty was creating art in the sand.

But there was also a bonafide Royal, veteran Thai director MC Chatrichalerm Yukol and cast members of his Naresuan films, as well as a bevy of other Thai stars, like soap-opera queen Lalida Panyopas, supermodel Metinee Kingpayom and her brother Mike. Even bad boy actor Somchai Kemglad lent the festival an aura of red-carpet glamor.

There was an ice sculpture, chopped out of a square block on the spot, and sushi bar. In short, the Phuket Film Festival was fun.

The festival took a break last year to allow organizers to regroup and set the fest for a more opportune time of year, shifting from October to June, in hopes of luring Hollywood figures who come to Phuket to chill out after the Cannes fest anyway.

Adrien Brody was confirmed, as was Good Will Hunting director Gus Van Sant, a wild man who was keen to come to Phuket and go surfing, and maybe turn up a the festival when his latest movie Milk was showing.

There was to be a passel of Taiwanese actors and directors, and dozens of other film-fest guests. More fun, better movies and bigger stars were promised.

But it was not to be.

But hey, there’s always next year.

WiseKwai