Just Great Movies - and more

The Traverse City Film Festival (TCFF) this summer was an amazing film-goer experience creatively, intellectually, emotionally. This weekend, as I read through the list of films that won awards at the festival, my appreciation deepened as I realized that my husband and I had seen only a small subset of all the films exhibited. Despite what I felt as a relatively aggressive film-viewing schedule (for someone not in the industry), we had obviously seen a very small pool of the total films, and almost none of those presented with awards. Of the eleven films we saw, only one was average; the remaining ten were each, in its own way, extraordinary and deeply provocative. I have a profound appreciation right now for the many intensely committed, insightful and outrageously imaginative people around the world who make these small films, many of which only find an audience through small film festivals such as TCFF. I need to keep this in mind as pundits criticize the thin gruel that is the fare of the multiplex cinema industry: let's just not call it 'the film industry' but rather 'the corporate multinational film industry.' There is an entire world of film outside the realm of comic book sources, silly chick flicks and crude adolescent male comedy -- all of which patronize and minimize the audience. Most of us just have limited access to this other unenfranchised world. Hence, we are witnessing a rapid rise of small film festivals that are meeting in a limited way a demand that the corporate film industry is unwilling to supply.

If your only film festival experience is from reading accounts in newspapers about Cannes or Sundance, it's important to note a critical difference between those festivals dominated by corporations and the small festivals such as TCFF. Those high-profile festivals are all about big: big names, big cash, big deals, lavish swag and parties. The only things big at TCFF are ideas, choice of films, passion -- you know, all of those things that aren't easily commercialized. Although TCFF does have sponsors who help fund the festival, most if not all of them are small local businesses. Looking at the event as an operation (which, sadly, I cannot prevent myself from doing), its most significant engine is volunteerism. The people responsible for running the festival take leaves of absence from their real jobs and volunteer their time and skills. All of the operations staff are volunteer -- and the size of this temporary work force is staggering. But what is truly amazing is how well they did their jobs, and how committed each of them was to make the experience delightful for every film-goer . Just the logistics of putting together this temporary organization (creating the org charts, hiring, shift scheduling, communication, training, managing resources, problem-solving) is mind-boggling; but additionally they are able to create a culture and mission and enroll every volunteer in it, so that the festival can rely on every part-time volunteer to communicate these behaviorally in every customer interaction. That's not only amazing, it's inspiring.

Think about what it takes in your organization to align hundreds of employees culturally and operationally. Now consider the environment in which this alignment takes place: there's a corporate office, with full time, permanent management. There's company e-mail for communications. The company uses newsletters and meetings held at the employees' workplace, on the employees' work time, to communicate significant messages. The company invests in infrastructure that is permanent and maintained every day of the year. The company has 52 weeks every year to respond to issues and correct them.

The festival does have some advantages not enjoyed by most organizations. The festival only has to get it right for one week - the commitment of its volunteers is passionate but very short-lived, and people can put up with just about anything if they know it will end soon (as I'm reminded with the latest crop of Woodstock anniversary accounts - if it lasted much longer than three days, it might have been disastrous). And, as with the small subset of the films that I saw, similarly I encountered a relatively small number of volunteers, and have no insight into whatever problems the festival organizers and managers handled during the week. But the point is that to this customer, it appeared to be all good, and in my experience this only happens when an organization is getting most things right.

Looking from the outside in, I can only say that I have no idea how this worked operationally. I wish I did. I'm simply inspired.