ARTS & CULTURE
WE TALK TO OWEN BAKER, CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL MARKETING MANAGER, WHO HAS BEEN WORKING AT THE FESTIVAL FOR SIX YEARS
festival at all, there’s no red carpet and there’s nothing being bought or sold here. It’s very audience focused, so filmmakers who are themselves making their films for an audience tend to appreciate that. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE AUDIENCE? IS IT PRIMARILY CAMBRIDGE PEOPLE? It’s very much a Cambridge festival, and a large part of our audience is local. But we certainly have people coming from further afield, and certainly lots of people from London. One of the nice things about the timing of the festival is that we are immediately after the London Film Festival, so filmgoers who want to avoid the expense of London or want to make it to films they’ve missed in London – we offer them another chance just down the road! A significant proportion of our programming is films that are coming out of London or have chosen not to go to London, so they can come to Cambridge Film Festival instead. WHY WOULD YOU RECOMMEND THAT SOMEONE WHO IS INTERESTED IN FILMS CHOOSE TO COME TO CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL? Increasingly, festivals are becoming the only place to see interesting films. The platform for those films in normal cinema programming is becoming less
and less – and this is a trend not just in the UK, but across the whole of Europe. So the only opportunity to see films outside the mainstream is at a festival, and Cambridge is one of the best examples of that. And that’s why our festival is appealing to filmmakers, too – if you are an independent filmmaker or small distributor, festivals are often now an end in themselves, as there’s little opportunity for getting your film shown even in small cinema chains. So festivals like Cambridge are more important than ever. WHAT ARE YOU PERSONALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO MOST AT THIS YEAR’S FESTIVAL? I’m really proud of the fact that we’re bringing some award-winning films from around the world to Cambridge and, in some cases, to the UK for the first time. And on a personal level, I’m excited about the Camera Catalonia film strand. Before I worked for Cambridge Film Festival, it was what brought me to it as an audience member, and the films are always brilliant. The two things for me that are really cool about the festival are: you might get to see a really big film six or 12 months before your friends can see it at the cinema, which is great to boast about; and you get to see films that you just won’t have an opportunity to see other than at the festival, which is a great privilege.
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE SECRET OF CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL’S LONGEVITY?
I think it’s the unerring focus the team has when it comes to curating the festival. We have a small team who are all experts in very particular fields. For example, we have one of the country’s pre-eminent experts in restoration and rediscovered film, and we have an international expert who travels to festivals all over Europe and the rest of the world. So the festival has a very curated feel; every film that makes it in is one that is passionately argued for by someone who has seen it and loved it. In contrast to that, in terms of the way the festival comes across to the public, it has a really nice relaxed feel to it. So those two things together – the very serious, considered aspects of the film choices with the informality of the festival itself – is what I think makes Cambridge Film Festival special. DO YOU THINK THE INFORMAL ATMOSPHERE IS SOMETHING THAT FILMMAKERS VISITING THE FESTIVAL ALSO APPRECIATE? Very much so. One of the things we always say is that there’s a good chance visitors to the festival will bump into the filmmaker in the bar after the film. It’s very unpretentious and not an ‘industry’
“The very serious, considered aspects of the film choices with the informality of the festival is what I think makes the Cambridge Film Festival special”
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C A M B S E D I T I O N . C O . U K
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