Bluelime Media - Interactive Solutions with a Twist

Blogging at the VIFF

The Vancouver International Film Festival has come and gone for about a month now. I wrote a post a few weeks ago about the blogs on the VIFF website. The way the website is set up makes it very hard to find any information about the films as each film has its own blog. I’ve been poking around their site and selecting films randomly and I finally found a few entries but nothing too exciting. As you can imagine, because their website is not user-friendly, there is no discussion to be found.

At the end of the festival, I was very excited to hear that the VIFF posted a survey online. I rushed home and immediately started filling it out. Unfortunately there wasn’t a single question about the website. I’m not sure if my age or my level of income will influence next year’s VIFF, but that seems to be the only thing they were interested in.

Now I’m not saying that the website sucks. Five years ago, when I went to my first festival, I cursed and swore when I went to their website. The navigation was a nightmare and I couldn’t purchase a ticket to save my life. The site still isn’t great. Navigation, functionality and design could be improved, but purchasing tickets now is much easier and understandable.

According to their website,

the purpose of the Film Festival is to encourage the understanding of other nations through the art of cinema, to encourage the understanding of other nations through the art of cinema, to foster the art of cinema, to facilitate the meeting in British Columbia of cinema professionals from around the world, and to stimulate the motion picture industry in British Columbia and Canada.

Having a blog to discuss these films would make sense. What better way to encourage discussion and to promote small films which are unlikely to get distributed otherwise.

I would recommend that the VIFF ditches the blog per film and simply set up one blog where all films are discussed. Create categories if you wish and invite bloggers from around the world to post entries and let the discussion begin. This will be much more beneficial to the small, low-budget movies who need to be promoted.

I made an attempt to discuss the film that I saw by posting notes on Facebook, but only my friends can see those entries. I thought I would make an exception today and discuss my favourite films this year. Don’t worry, this blog won’t focus on films from now on.

My favourite film this year was “The Green Chain” by Mark Leiren-Young. Why was it my favourite? It’s still in my mind after so many weeks. I still remember the actors facial expression, their reasoning and their arguments. The film demonstrated very well how the battle between environmentalist and loggers is dividing and destroying communities throughout British Columbia. The discussions are not only passionate and interesting, it’s also very well acted and a pleasure to watch. Interestingly, Mark-Leiren-Young has been blogging about his movie so you can share your thoughts with him.