Feeling a bit better yesterday I drove up to West Palm Beach to have lunch with a friend – a filmmaker – who was in town for the Palm Beach Film Festival. The festival, he said, was a complete bust; the theater that was supposed to host it had filed for bankruptcy and as a result the films were being shown online. This cut down on the number of viewers, obviously, but also the socializing and exchange of ideas. “We didn’t all come here to sit alone in our rooms and watch films on our laptops,” my friend explained. The new head of the festival, apparently, was acting quite oblivious to participants’ complaints.
I thought it would make an interesting story, but searching this morning I found no mention of the debacle – not even in the Palm Beach Post. Newspapers these days are as feeble as film festivals.
