“Our story begins with intrepid explorer Nickolas Boom. After discovering a vein of gold in the hills, he founded a small port town that would take his name and be known worldwide as Boomtown, home of the now legendary Boomtown Fair. At first, it was simply an annual gathering of this small community to celebrate the good fortune of another year. Mr. Boom would prepare a fabulous feast, with music and dancing well into the night…”
This is not the plot of a movie but of a music festival.
The tale began in 2009 when the Boomtown Fair consisted of several circus tents and stages. Over the years, the town has expanded and transformed, telling another piece of its story each year until 2019. With Covid, all British summer festival activity, a deep-rooted tradition, came to a halt until 2022, when Boomtown also reopened to tell a new story, merging artificial intelligence, steampunk, politics, social engagement and, above all, music and a desire for community.
We’ve been there this year, discovering that those circus tents have become a real town, spanning a vast area a few miles from Winchester, just over an hour by train from London in the Hampshire region. It takes an hour to walk across Boomtown, passing through the audience encampments, its nine precincts with the beautiful sets and all the behind-the-scenes stuff of a perfect machine. This information gives the measure of what we are talking about.
Spending 48 hours in Boomtown is literally like going to another planet. Endless lineup, over a hundred artists between stages, marquees and small rooms where, for eighteen hours a day, DJ sets go on, making 30 to 30,000 people dance, depending on the size of the venue. Five days, in which the citizens of Boomtown, officially 66,000 people (actually many more, because the number considers the reception that the event can accommodate daily), chose to strip off, in every sense, anxieties, prejudices, fears, conventions, inhibitions and everything else that binds to hypocritical contemporary society.
It is a hymn to freedom
Which is almost necessary while living in these dark days. However, it is also an event constructed with precision and intelligence. Indeed, most music festivals are gold mines for those who organize them and those who participate in them, from artists, musical and otherwise, to those who invest a considerable amount of money to have a commercial space in them. Over 100 food stalls at this year’s Boomtown worked from early morning to late night. A calculated risk that paid off.
In short, it is an operation that perfectly blends culture, entertainment and capital. Film festival operators can learn a great deal from events such as Boomtown. The fall festival season is about to start. Venice, Toronto, Telluride, San Sebastian, Zurich, London, Rome, Vienna, Turin, New York, and on and on, all competing for films and talents that will allow them to hit the press and fill the theatres. An ever-changing succession of appointments that are as pleasant as standardized, magnificent for the public, and necessary for the insiders, starting with the press, critics and colourists who live in an eternal “Groundhog Year” punctuated by the dates of unmissable festivals.
Instead, wandering through the squares and alleys of Boomtown, the mind began to travel, imagining a different film festival that is both storytelling and experience. And that, not insignificantly, could be self-sustaining and even grow with turnover. Let’s see what it would take to create something never seen before.
THE FIELD OF DREAMS
Do you remember Woody Allen’s father in Love and Death bequeathing his son a precious piece of land?
Well, it needs to be a little bigger. And it needs to be close to a town with a train station and suitable tourist accommodation. The festival area doesn’t have to be several square kilometres. Still, it must contain the event and camping areas, parking for the audience and the production team, trucks, generators, and staff housing. It is not enough to bring a few RVs and prefabs. You need chemical toilets; you need to create a water system and, in some areas, sewage. It’s much work and a massive investment, done once, though, because if the site stays the same over the years, everything is already in place.
THE CITY
One of the most exciting things about Boomtown is the architectural and sound engineering work done on the mammoth stage set for the event. No stage overpowered the other; while a Drum and Base DJ set is playing in the central area, with 50,000 people dancing, at the same time, there are three other concerts on different main stages, and each can be heard perfectly, without any interference. This is possible thanks to the perfect structure design completely built with sound-absorbing materials. It can be done even by having three outdoor screens operating simultaneously. In addition, Boomtown features dozens of rooms and small rooms where artists and DJs play for more or less a few intimates, easily convertible into small movie theatres.
THE LINEUP
A common feature of all British music festivals is that they favour artists from the Kingdom. For two reasons: they have a following audience. And they cost less in terms of travel and hospitality. It is better to find them within driving distance so they can come, play and go home. Then, of course, you need the big names. This year, there were Peaches, Cypress Hill and, as originally planned, Prodigy. The latter forfeited due to a back problem suffered by the frontman, but as heavy as the absence was, the blow was brilliantly absorbed by the organization, which promptly changed the lineup.
The matter is more straightforward for a film festival because screening films is technically much less complicated than organizing a concert. And bringing in a director or actor has different issues to deal with. As with everyone, having the star or the headliner is needed. But that’s a problem: even in the standard conception of a traditional festival, the dynamic doesn’t change.
COSTS. AND BENEFITS
Very high in both cases. Most Italian festivals work with budgets within 200,000 euros. It needs a million pounds to start an event similar to Boomtown, which is tight. Not least because you have to build the halls and bring in as many audiovisual systems as there are screening spaces, you can’t count on a friendly and fully equipped cinema or auditorium. But in the face of huge costs, the flip side is the possibility of significant revenue. From food and beverage booths, film memorabilia, companies in the industry that want to make a name for themselves, and specialized publishing houses.
An actual film city that existed years ago, and also in a well-known place: the Venice Film Festival. The garden area adjacent to the Palazzo del Cinema was, in fact, a movie village much loved by the audience. When the excavation, later covered over, was started to construct the never-born new Palazzo del Cinema, everything was cancelled and never returned.
Another example of a festival spread in this way was Bologna’s Biografilm Festival before Covid, with the exploitation of Cavaticcio Park, adjacent to Cinema Lumiere, where screenings were held, as a concert and food area stuffed with thousands of people every night. In short, it’s not such an enormous folly.
And speaking of budget, the Cannes Film Festival costs 20 million euros. The Venice Film Festival is around 13, between public contributions (Fondazione La Biennale collects about 27 million euros from the state yearly to carry out its many beautiful activities) and private sponsors. Finding the money is easier than it seems.
THE INDUCT
The festival economy is based on an unassailable dogma: roots in the territory. That means a city and its related administration. A film festival brings prestige, attracts state, regional and private funds, and generates inducement for the community. The prime example is the Venice Lido, where rental prices fly for the ten days of the festival, even a thousand euros for a bed (not room: sleeping place). To the delight of the natives, restaurants, bars, and grocery stores are always full since we are talking about an exodus of over 12,000 people, considering only the accredited (2022 figures). It’s a colossal business which could be Self-Contained. Moving to a land where everything is managed directly by the event organizer would bring in significant revenues that would quickly go to cover costs.
AUDIENCE: WHERE, HOW AND HOW MUCH. AND FESTIVAL REVENUES.
The audience goes camping, as many cultural accreditors still do in Venice and Cannes. Or, if you arrive by car, you can always find lodging in the areas surrounding the festival. In the case of Boomtown in Winchester, which is ten minutes away and has an excellent hotel reception, since it is a tourist town, thanks to the beautiful 11th-century Gothic cathedral and the beauty of the Hampshire countryside and hills, full of B&Bs, bungalows, cottages and accommodations of various kinds. Then again, depending on your point of view, we are at the beginning (or end) of the South Downs, one of England’s longest routes for travellers on foot, which runs from Winchester to Eastbourne on the east coast, a comfortable hundred-mile walk. That’s why there are so many walkers’ shelters. And now, let’s talk about the tickets.
The ticket entrance for five days in Boomtown costs, at its peak, £295. About 350 euros. Well spent, I assure you. Let’s do the math. Multiplied by 66,000, that makes 23 million euros and change. To which can be added sponsors, income from booth rental and percentage of booth income, the rental of the luxury tents for the Glamping, and many other incidental things of greater or lesser importance. In short, it’s a bunch of money. Accreditation for the Venice Film Festival costs 95 euros this year. That, if multiplied by 12,000, would make €1,140,000.
IT’S THE PRESS, BABY
But can we let journalists and critics stay in tents? Hardly, although that’s what I did in Boomtown, and I had a great time. But not everyone can be rock n roll. That’s why proximity to a town is necessary, with a shuttle service running for much of the day. It happens at Giffoni, where the press is hosted in Salerno and then picked up by festival buses and taken to the village where the festival occurs. Nothing strange, then. The important thing is that once journalists arrive, they can have a comfortable press room and designated places for interviews with directors and actors.
THE TALENTS
The actors’ strike could uncover Pandora’s Box. It might turn out that the most important thing about a film festival is the movies! And maybe the directors. And that the glamour of a red carpet doesn’t interest all cinephiles. And perhaps not even the talents themselves, who are welcome but without wheezing.
Moreover, this happens at Glastonbury, Coachella, and Burning Man. Being there is cool, even if your name is Cara Delevigne, Kate Hudson, Vanessa Hudgens, or Lewis Hamilton, to throw out a few names. The real star, for once, would be the audience.
IN CONCLUSION
The bottom line is that in the coming weeks and months, we will go from one film festival to another like balls in a pinball machine, and everything you have read is just a crazy and unrealizable project. But it is also a way of rethinking a cultural object that has been getting stale for some time already. Film festivals need a general makeover, which is not happening because those who promote cinema as cultural workers have one characteristic that is hard to get around: being habitual. While it is true that it is necessary to adhere to a standard that saves money and optimizes resources, every year in Austin, Texas, there goes on an extraordinary spectacle that is South by Southwest, or SXSW as the good ones say, a perfect fusion of music, film, theatre, art and meetings.
The festival of the future should be like that, and a little bit like Boomtown. It is a little bit like some other way because the essence of a cultural event is creativity, including creating the best packaging to present film, music, and art to the broadest and most engaged audience possible.