ROB MURRAY: I’m speaking with Joanna Croston, Festival Director for the Banff Centre Mountain Film & Book Festival. The Film Fest is going virtual this year. What are some of the details?

JOANNA CROSTON: The program is actually quite similar to what we’d normally do over the course of nine days, but now people can just watch from home. We have 75 films to offer, those include feature films and really great short, mixed programs. We have speaker events, we have book events, we have our annual indigenous dialogue session as well. Plus, we’re going to try out a virtual beer tent.

RM: Do people have to watch a film at a certain time or is it more of an on demand kind of thing?

JC: At the beginning of those nine days there’ll be quite a bit of content that’s available right away and it will be available for the whole nine days. As we progress through the week we’re going to be adding unique content every day. If folks direct themselves to our website they can see how that schedule will work, but probably about 50% of the films and speaker content will be available from day one. Things like Radical Reels will be on the same day they would have traditionally been in the live event, but now you can watch Rad Reels for five days if you choose to.

RM: So this will be running October 31st – November 8th. I think another big difference is the festival pass which pretty much gets you into the whole thing rather than buying a per event type thing. Is that correct?

JC: It’s for the household, so we’re charging $125 for an early bird pass. That would normally cover a live event for two people all day on one of our festival weekends, but now it’s for nine days and it can be for the whole household. Uou can use up to three devices to view films, and it is true, you get access basically to the whole thing. There is some unique passholder content too that won’t be available for purchase. Once October 31st hits you can buy individual programs if you like and those will be priced between $10 and $20, depending on which program you’re looking at.

RM: I know another big part of the festival is the marketplace where people can check out gear. Are you going to be doing anything around that this year?

JC: Yeah, we sure are. Our sponsors are really keen to keep that part of the community spirit going, so we have a virtual mountain marketplace. There’ll be festival deals on there from sponsors and special festival merchandise and all those sorts of things. We’ve had a lot of questions about, will I be able to buy my Yeti cup this year? You definitely will be able to buy your Yeti cup. Fear not.

RM: As far as the content goes, do you a good lineup this year?

JC: We have a great lineup. I was sort of wondering how the global environment would play out with our film competition but we ended up getting a really great number of films. We had 377 films in competition and we’re going to show 75 of the best films from 15 different countries. So it feels like the filmmaking world hasn’t slowed down. I do wonder about next year, but this year we have a great program and I think people will be excited.

Filed under: Banff, Banff Centre, Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival