All About the Feathers is a quirky Costa Rican comedy about a man's attachment to a rooster. It was made for US$100,000, partly through online crowd-funding. The majority of actors are inexperienced, and it's the young director's first feature film. Yet the film boasts "stellar performances" and "astute cinematography," said one review.All About the Feathers is the kind of film for which festivals were made. The T&T Film Festival–which screened almost 150 films from the Caribbean and other parts of the world–wraps up its ninth edition this week. Filmmakers and film aficionados gathered at Drink Lounge in Woodbrook at the end of the first week for a discussion on issues surrounding independent moviemaking and festivals.
Neto Villalobos, director of All About the Feathers, was part of a four-person panel that led the discussion."Festivals are really important for the films I make," he said. "[All About the Feathers] is a very independent and small movie. It's very difficult to show the movie outside festivals."The movie started making the rounds of film festivals a year ago in Toronto. It's since been seen in Cleveland, Sidney, Spain, Miami, San Francisco, Stockholm and many other places."When people watch the movie in a festival they ask for it in another festival," he said, describing how a movie can gather momentum. "It's blowing up and you don't have to do anything."
Sean Hodgkinson's A Story About Wendy was well received by audiences at the T&T Film Festival in 2012. This in turn led to a deal for it to air on CCN TV6, which led to sponsorship for a sequel. Whereas A Story About Wendy was a 30-minute short, A Story about Wendy 2 is an hour-long feature that premiered to a sold-out audience at this year's festival.Now Hodgkinson and his team are considering making yet another sequel or a series based on the movies."Our film festival gave us a platform to show the film to an audience," he said. "The reception was really good, and we were then able to raise funds via corporate Trinidad–which is very, very rare–to fund the sequel."It's important to give filmmakers a chance to launch so maybe they can move on from the film festival," he said.
British-Trinidadian music video director Kaz Ov� and US-based T&T animator Shaun Escayg are both fielding shorts at the festival. Ov�'s Dubois is a 30-minute film about the strange relationship between a British young woman visiting Trinidad and a mentally ill homeless man. Escayg's Noka: Keeper of Worlds is a 23-minute CGI/live action fantasy incorporating the folklore of T&T. Both filmmakers said festivals were one of the few chances short films get to see the big screen. They both said they viewed short films as "calling cards" that they hope would get connections that lead to bigger projects."The festival circuit is really, really important," said Ov�, who's trying to transition from mainly music videos to film."The idea is that your film gets out there and is seen by people within the industry, outside the industry, that people can be aware of your work."
Escayg warns that it's important to use festivals strategically.His previous short–the crime drama Fish, which aired at the 2012 festival–was very different from Noka, and he didn't try to get them into the same festivals."You have to do your research on festivals. Not all festivals like all films," he said."A lot of filmmakers get rejected and they go, 'Oh it's my film', and then you look at the winners of the past festivals and they're all romantic comedies–and you put in a crime drama."The filmmakers agreed that it was important for them that as many eyes as possible see their films. Festivals are often the only way films by unknown directors and filmmakers from small countries get to be seen by people around the world."We took Wendy to Africa. And I didn't know if this story from Trinidad would relate in Tanzania," said Hodgkinson."And they laughed when they were supposed to laugh; there were dramatic pauses where there was supposed to be. I was, like, 'OK. I think we know what we're doing'."
All About the Feathers showed for seven weeks in theatres in Costa Rica. More than 20,000 people came to see it. It was a successful run. But outside of Costa Rica, Villalobos was unsure how it would be received. "Watching the movie in festivals is really different. Because you don't know what the audience is going to think," he said."People in Stockholm or Africa or China or Trinidad–are they going to feel the same as people in Costa Rica watching a very Costa Rican story?""In the end," he concluded, "I think it's just about being human beings. Because it's all the same everywhere, the feelings."