BLUE COLLAR ART: An interview with F4 film festival founder/director J.C. Bouvier.
By: Warren
Curry
2/24/02
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BLUE COLLAR ART: An interview with F4 film festival founder/director J.C. Bouvier. By: Warren
Curry |
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Having graduated with a film degree from Fitchburg St. College (located in north central Massachusetts -- about an hour west of Boston), I'm all too familiar with the challenge of attempting to grow artistically in a, well, not so artistic environment. So imagine my surprise -- no, make that shock -- when I discovered that my alma mater was serving as the site of a real live film festival. In retrospect, I suppose the only thing that would've been more startling than the film festival itself, was if my former schoolmate, J.C. Bouvier, was somehow not involved with the F4 (which stands for Free Film Festival Fitchburg).
A veritable man-about-campus during his years at FSC, J.C. also graduated with a film degree and went on to do an internship for the Sundance Institute. This led to a relationship with the organization, which found him working at the Sundance Film Festival for three consecutive years. Eventually returning to and settling in Massachusetts, J.C. was then employed by the digital media company Media 100, where he worked his way through the sales department and onto product marketing. In addition, he read scripts for the New Century Writers screenplay competition, reported from the South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) in Austin, Texas for indieWIRE.com, assisted filmmaker friends with projects and, to top it all off, penned a few scripts and made some films of his own.
Currently, J.C. is narrowing his focus a bit and, with the help of partner Keith Gerrard, dedicating the vast majority of his time to the F4. The F4 festival aspires to shine light on the work of filmmakers bred in the realm of public education. His efforts thus far have created a buzz in the New England film world, not to mention landing a rather high profile opening night speaker in writer/director John Landis (Animal House, An American Werewolf In London). Being quite familiar with Mr. Bouvier's industrious attitude and creative vision, I would be most stunned if the first F4 festival was anything less than a smashing success.
The festival runs from March 7 to March 9. In closing, we would like to sincerely thank J.C. for his enthusiastic support of CinemaSpeak.com.
Was your experience at Sundance directly responsible for the birth of the F4 festival?
It definitely led me to believe that I could pull off the logistical side. After going through the process, in hindsight of course, I realized there's a hell of a lot more to do than one would imagine. I felt, having done a lot of the grunt work at Sundance, like driving prints around and shuttling back and forth between all sorts of administrative tasks, that I could pull it off. I was exposed to the quality of a decent film festival and what one should expect from a festival. I thought I could pull one off on a smaller scale here at Fitchburg.
Of course, the fact that you went to college in Fitchburg must be partially responsible for your decision to hold the festival in the city. Was there ever a temptation to find a more visible host city such as Boston?
Not really, because there's many other film festivals in Boston. The majority of my interest in Fitchburg was due to the venue that is there. The proximity of the screening locations in the venue is perfect to me. I think the college is great, because there are four theaters within five minutes of each other. That's always been a problem with other festivals I've been to; theaters are across town and you need a shuttle to get to the different screenings.
So the school has been very supportive?
After I got the ball rolling down the hill with the communications department -- I came in with a Powerpoint presentation and gave them the overview -- they were very jazzed. George Bohrer, who is the chair of the communications department, was very gung ho, but they were worried about the festival coinciding with other aspects of their calendar. We wound up having a sit down with Mary Chapin Durling in Cultural Development, and she was very supportive. I've pretty much delivered everything I promised, but I think they were expecting something more grand in terms of submissions and sponsorships.
When did you put the first "official" word out about F4?
I first had the idea sitting in my cubicle at Media 100 about a year and a half ago. I got an e-mail from Film Threat that said they were looking for festival listings for their Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide. I was sitting across from a friend, we started bantering back and forth and then I downloaded their form and filled it out like I was going to run a film festival. I sent it off to Chris Gore and he listed it. It was listed before it was real. I felt like if I listed it, I would suddenly have this impetus to have to follow through.
How extensive and expensive has your advertising been?
Our efforts have been mostly grass root
and they've been totally on-line. We went through the Yahoo listing
for film festivals, which has listings for about 600 festivals.
We then started e-mailing festival directors and letting them
know what we were up to. Most of them have been supportive. We
contacted all these newsletters -- Res Alert, Film Underground,
New England Film, Film Arts Foundation of San Francisco -- and
people have been listing our festival. I think where it started
to get a buzz was because it was truly free. We weren't asking
for submission fees; it's donation only. As far as expenses, we
spent about $300 on a Film Threat listing, where Chris said it
was going to get out to 100,000 people. He was pretty generous
in giving us a couple of listings and I think we're still up on
his site as a festival listing. That's all we've spent.
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