Arts Not So Confidentially
posted by on June 28 at 17:02 PM
From departing SIFF communications director Gary Tucker:
This year’s festival did not quite reach the goals we’d been aiming for, so with a potential capital campaign looming in our future, a few sacrifices have to be made in order to end the year in the black. The full-time position of director of communications was new for SIFF this year, hence in the spirit of “last to arrive, first to leave…”.
This belies the sunny 6% box office increase we’d heard projected. Or does it? SIFF Cinema is at least 100 seats bigger than Broadway Performance Hall, the venue which it replaced (though BPH had 102 shows last year, compared to SIFF Cinemas’ 90 this year, if my quick math is right); so—assuming provisionally the other venues had the same number of shows—SIFF had something on the order of 7,000 more tickets available this year compared to last. You’d better hope revenue would increase.
SIFF Cinema’s new yearlong venue opens next week with the very tasty (and undoubtedly expensive) Noir City program.
Having the venues so spread apart kinda sucked. Bring it back to BPH, I say.
Given how jam packed the venues were, how long the lines were, I'm led to believe that they're just not managing their money well, at all. Failing to pull a profit from SIFF is ridiculous.
I don't know... felt to me like lines were less than previous years. I also know pass holders who didn't buy this year, and regulars who felt the catalog was lackluster.
Not smaller enough for a passerby to notice. I still had to wade past movie theaters packed with inconsiderate liberals who don't know how to form a single line.
That's still a lot of people and there's no reason SIFF can't turn a serious profit given that kind of turnout. The money's leaking somewhere, and I'm not saying anyone's surrepticiously taking anything, just that it could be managed better.
Everyone complaining that full theaters should mean that SIFF is rolling in cash missed every speech reminding audiences that ticket sales cover less than half of the costs of putting on a film festival.
As to Gomez's complaint about liberals not knowing how to form a single line: there is no "single line" at SIFF, there are usually supposed to be three (ticketholders, passholders, and rush).
Best of luck to Gary -- I wonder if he'll be back part time? Otherwise who's going to live up the challenge of topping his the sponsor roll call at next year's opening gala?
Man, that sucks. Any organization would be lucky to have Mr. Tucker. No one could possibly read that ridiculously long list of sponsors with as much panache. Here's hoping they put that redundant tradition to bed.
Comments Closed
In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).