In 2023 I attended at least one film screening per week. It was the first time I managed to do so for the entire year, though I’ve only achieved it this year through averages instead of timeframes: during two weeks in late September and early October, I was too busy working on Shroomery to go to the movies.
But I did attend 62 screenings over 52 weeks. 46 were feature films, 16 were shorts showcases or festival screenings. 2 were previews of unreleased features made by friends! All but 4 of the shorts showcases or festival screenings featured my work or work by friends.
A “screening” would mean any public presentation of a feature films or block of shorts outside of home video or streaming, which included in this case a couple of test screenings of friends’ features and a few odd venues like short film showcases in bars. Honestly everything screened was actually sent through a projector onto a screen, so despite being prepared to argue on behalf of wonky presentations like a television in a library or something, everything was pretty much theatrical. I would not have counted online festivals.
I wanted to do this for a variety of reasons. The biggest reasons aren’t that deep: I had FOMO previous years about missing indie breakouts; and a friend told me about how she would go to the movies once a week, and I thought that would be a fun weekly ritual to do.
What pushed me from idea to action was the pandemic. I was afraid the pandemic would be the nail in the coffin for theatrical, public screenings of movies, and I wanted to do my part to pay box office and show up.
When cinemas started re-opening in late 2021 I was among the first to show up, masked and with proof of vaccination and all that, but in January 2022 I was laid off from my job after a very expensive holiday season and I had to cut costs for several months. I didn’t get back around to trying the one screening per week thing until near the end of 2022.
2023 brought another good reason to make the effort to attend screenings, in the form of the writers and actors strikes. For all the talk of residuals and film financing and Hollywood accounting and so forth, still the most direct way to pay for filmmaking is to attend screenings. Oftentimes independent films’ successes or failures relies entirely on whether the movie takes off in New York or LA, and since I live in New York City, that meant there was a possibility that my enthusiasm for a film could theoretically help it take off.
What made the initiative last, however, was just the importance of showing up, particularly for friends’ and colleagues’ work and for festivals. Supporting the venue was important, supporting the content was nice, but supporting people’s careers is really the core thing.
Affordability
Going to the cinemas is both time and money expensive. I work part time while I focus on writing and filmmaking, so I often had to check myself about persisting on this goal.
I had to be mindful of money. If the goal was to support the film, there was the issue of the ticket prices. If the goal was to support the venue, there’s the need to put in some bucks at concessions.1