The Toronto Jewish Film Festival confronts the pandemic
20 May 2020
The timing of the COVID-19 crisis could not have been worse for the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, one of the largest in North America. Faced with the impossibility of delivering their scheduled theatrical festival in the middle of a lockdown, they decided to present some films in an online festival in May and others in a separate, October event. The decisions that the pandemic has forced on them will transform their festival but will also be faced by others. What they have learned and will achieve will have profound implications for the future of all film festivals. Jewish Film Review’s David Shem-Tov sat in on a Zoom meeting with key team members to learn about their remarkable effort.
Online in May and October?
An online festival cannot replicate exactly the experience of a theatrical festival, explains Debbie Werner, TJFF’s Executive Director. “On the other hand, at a time when the world is in crisis, we are actually able to move relatively quickly to offer something that still provides a sense of community, of engagement, of interaction. Still bring the arts into peoples’ lives: Jewish culture, Jewish education, Jewish history. We are trying to be agile and nimble, to respond to what’s happening and still be able to deliver a programme on our advertised dates.”
At the same time she recognises that an online festival is a completely different model and that they should tread carefully. “We took on what we felt we could responsibly manage to launch and understand how this works for us as an organisation and [for our] viewers. And we will be able to tweak and perfect [it] moving forwards.”
“Whether this is going to be a theatre festival, an online festival or a mix of both in the fall is yet to be seen.”
“One of the reasons that we split [the lineup] is in the hope of doing a theatre festival in October,” adds Stuart Hands, Director of Programming. “We know that for a lot of our loyal members, coming together as a community is [an] important part of the festival experience.” Unfortunately, it is far from certain that the Fall festival will be in theatres. “Whether this is going to be a theatre festival, an online festival or a mix of both in the fall is yet to be seen,” concludes Werner.
At any rate, not all rights holders agreed for their films to be presented in an online festival. “There were a few films I pitched and they said that they didn’t want to do online and they wanted to wait till we do a theatre festival,” explains Hands. In 2019 the TJFF ran 83 titles. In May they will present 39 titles. He expects they will run a similar number in the Fall. This gives them flexibility to keep scouting. Some of the films that they have booked for the May theatrical festival aren’t going to be available for an October online festival. “Either they are going to be released beforehand on some other online platform or they don’t want to do the online.”
A unique festival format.
The May festival will be open to residents of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) only. Although technical geo-blocking on any platform might only limit access to IP-addresses on a provincial level, TJFF will only accept payments by customers in the GTA. (Werner has already had to issue refunds to unqualified purchasers.) There is a defined programming schedule with individual titles available for streaming only during a specified 24 hour window. “Festivals have a certain energy that goes along with them,” explains Werner. “We are doing what we can think of to replicate the energy and the excitement of a festival. So we are not dumping all of our films on the platform at once. We are still creating a schedule for the films and for live interactive Q&As as well: just to try to approximate, as much as we can, that feeling of going to a festival.”
Keren Ben Rafael’s The End of Love, will be opening the TJFF May Festival.
Most rights holders accepted the online move.
Hands pitched the format in an email to rights holders in early March. The platform chosen, CineSend Virtual Festival, has stronger anti-piracy features than other platforms. Hands feels that helped sway some of them. “They were like ‘OK, it seems like you thought this through,’” he reports. “There wasn’t much in terms of back and forth because we had everything very clearly laid out in terms of what we wanted.” The licensing fees were negotiated before COVID-19 for the originally planned theatrical festival and were unchanged for the online format.
Selecting the right platform.
Although CineSend Virtual Festival ended up as their chosen platform, Operations Director Jérémie Abessira researched other options including Eventive Virtual Festival, Festival Scope. Cinando and Vimeo. “None of the other platforms were a good match for us,” he says. Vimeo has a policy of shared revenue with rights holders. Some festivals in the US prefer this model as there are no upfront costs. A few distributors in Israel already work with Vimeo on that basis. Still, it was not right for TJFF. Only 17%-20% of the foundation’s income comes from direct box office sales. Some 50%-60% comes from donors who, as passholders, have access to all the films in the festival. For that reason, a fixed licensing fee is easier to work with. The Eventive Virtual Festival platform was launched after discussions commenced with CineSend. Even then, Eventive was not deemed appropriate as it is primarily a ticketing platform. TJFF already have a strong relationship with their own ticketing solutions provider and didn’t want to change.
TJFF’s has a schedule of Festival Zoom Q&As.
Before launching their streaming platform, Toronto-based CineSend was primarily a print traffic company. For the last few years, TJFF used their service to enable rights holders to upload films for their festivals. They already had discussion in the past about potentially creating a streaming platform together so it became logical to go back to them. Abessira was reassured by the fact that CineSend’s platform was recently used to deliver online the 2020 Cleveland International Film Festival, one of the largest in North America.
The cost structure of the CineSend platform includes a setup and implementation fee. This is common to all of their competitors. CineSend then charges for the number of films being uploaded. There is also a fee for developing the streaming apps which festival customers use to watch the films on their televisions. TJFF chose Apple TV and Roku as they are the market leaders in Canada. Finally there is a cost for the bandwidth usage during the festival. It is incurred each time someone streams a film.
“Before, if you came to the theatre with your partner or with your children, that’s two to four tickets. Now we are looking at one household ticket.”
The challenges of an online festival.
“Definitely everyone has pulled back a little, whether its donors or sponsors or ticket buyers,” says Werner. In terms of ticket sales, “before, if you came to the theatre with your partner or with your children, that’s two to four tickets. Now we are looking at one household ticket. So it’s a completely different revenue model. Before, when we sold passes, you had to pick specific tickets. And we could gauge how films were doing. Now we are offering an all access pass which is fantastic and has been very popular but we don’t know what people will watch as a result of that.” In the past, many screenings sold out. “It can be more of a spontaneous decision when you don’t have to worry about an actual seat in the theatre when you are pretty sure you can get a seat on your couch.”
Nevertheless, in order to keep the free programming affordable for them to deliver, TJFF caps the number of views as their bandwidth costs rise with every one. Moreover, as in theatrical festivals, “some filmmakers are also concerned about the number of 'seats' being sold, especially for those titles that will have a theatrical/streaming platform release in our area,” she says.
TJFF programmers appear in Programmers’ Picks videos to promote their favourite titles.
The opportunities of an online festival.
One advantage of an online festival over a physical one is the flexibility. “You can modify and change things every single day up until it starts,” says Abessira. “So that gives opportunities for improvement. We are now two weeks away from the festival and we still every day [are] trying to see what we can improve. These things we cannot do with a physical festival. Kind of when things are set, things are set.”
“On the other hand, though, that’s a mixed blessing,” responds Helen Zukerman, founder and Artistic Director. “You can go on and on and on and there can be no end to what you are changing, what you are tweaking. So at some point you have to say ‘OK, we are going’ and you go. You close your eyes and you sort of jump off the cliff because you can go on forever.”
Going forward, the new format may bring other benefits. There may be new audiences that they haven’t reached before, she says. “Younger viewers that we are missing and also allow us to expand to the rest of Ontario because there are some small towns outside of Toronto that do not get any of this Jewish content.”
“If we negotiated with our distributors to keep the geo-blocking at the national level, we would be shutting down the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival.”
They see limits to their expansion, though. ”If we negotiated with our distributors to keep the geo-blocking at the national level, we would be shutting down the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival,” says Werner. “We would be destroying the Windsor Jewish Film Festival. That’s how they have that sense of community. I think that as a non-profit arts organisation working in the world of other arts organisations, we should be aware and supportive of each other.” Zukerman agrees, “There is room for everybody. And we want to be part of the everybody.”
Change is inevitable.
Whatever happens, things are not going to be the same. “I think the industry is changing from the from the beginning of March in terms of their view of the online and I think there is a lot of change of views from distributors and filmmakers over the past two months and I think it’s going to change over the next few months as well,” says Hands.
Abessira believes they wouldn’t have been able to do the online festival if it was not for the pandemic. “Distributors might not have responded the way they did… I think it’s going to set a a little bit of a trend moving forward on how distributors will react when we talk about streaming because they will be used to it already. So it might be a change that will affect the industry as a whole and not just during COVID.”
“Even if they open theatres tomorrow, nobody is going to go and sit with 300 people.”
“If a vaccine comes about in a year’s time, people may be more willing to go into a theatre and sit with a group,” adds Zukerman. “Even if they open theatres tomorrow, nobody is going to go and sit with 300 people. So it depends [on] what happens in the next year. It may swing back and people [will] go to the theatre but it will never be completely that. There will be some online and there will be some theatre goers. It’s kind of interesting to watch what unfolds.”
J-Flix, TJFF’s free streaming service.
The May festival is not the first streaming venture of the TJFF. J-Flix is a streaming platform showing festival favourites from previous festivals. “We had a conference room with 1,500 titles on the shelf,” says Zukerman. “Titles that filmmakers maxed out their Visa cards to make. They do the run a year or two at festivals and then they sit on a shelf and no-one sees them.” To celebrate their 25th anniversary TJFF decided that rather than spending money on a bigger event, they should set up J-Flix. Streaming is free and accessible from anywhere in Canada. Films are added every week, often to coincide with events that happen throughout the year. ”When it’s Black history month we will have a connected film, when it’s gay pride, etc.,” says Abessira
“Some filmmakers don’t ask for any money. Some ask for a modest amount of money. We don’t pay outrageous fees,” says Zukerman. “Most are very happy to have their work seen again,” adds Werner. “It’s an expense that the festival bears. That’s part of what our fundraising dollars go towards supporting, J-Flix.”
“Emerging filmmakers, new filmmakers, they don’t get deals on Netflix. There has to be a place for them to get exposure for their work and we can offer that.”
Other online competitors.
TJFF does not feel threatened by streaming giants such as Netflix and Amazon. “Emerging filmmakers, new filmmakers, they don’t get deals on Netflix. There has to be a place for them to get exposure for their work and we can offer that,” says Werner. On Netflix and Amazon, you will see the major releases, she believes. “You don’t see the labours of love that independent smaller budgeted filmmakers make. They are important pieces of art and they are part of our history and our culture and these films only get seen on at the festival level.” Abessira agrees, “Of the 100 film we have on J-Flix, I don’t think you will find 15 even if you combine Amazon and Netflix.”
Programming.
Hands works with Abessira, Zukerman and five other programmers to go through the films. This year they started accepting submissions via Film Freeway and were unprepared for the volume this has generated. That is why they have taken on a number of volunteers.
Barak Heymann’s Comrade Dov. In Canada, most Israeli films are released through TJFF.
Connecting with the audience.
“We have a lot of interaction with our audience through surveys [and] through contact with them,” says Werner. “We are a very small team that put this festival on and we play every role. I always think we are the Fawlty Towers of film festivals. The same person that’s planning the programme, putting together the website, that’s selling you your ticket, that’s handing you your ticket, seeing you into the theatre. We are out there and so we are very connected. We also work with a number of lay committees, advisory committees that we get input back from as well.”
“In the last week there was not a day when I was not talking to one audience member,” adds Abessira.
“We also usually play most of the films at a ‘usual’ festival twice,” says Zukerman. “So the first screening you have the first people go and call their 500 most intimate friends and say ‘I just saw the best film’ and then your sales for the second screening can tell. Our audiences are the best people to promote our films.”
While their CRM solution captures the transaction data on an individual customer level, they do not have the resources to mine that data. “We are not Facebook so I am never going to go and dig and understand who is doing what and serve them what they want based on what they watched two years ago,” chuckles Abessira. “We would if we had a lot more people and engineers.“ What is more important is to keep track of donors as it is they who are responsible for the majority of the income.
“We are in the customer service business. We are not in the movie business,” concludes Zukerman. “And we have to keep our customers happy and understand them and ask them for feedback. Our audience feel very committed to us and that’s because we try to put them first. If we cannot satisfy our customers, we shouldn’t be doing what we are doing.”