Film festivals: Money tops the bill

Sponsors' brands are starting to have more impact on festival audiences than the movies do, says Kaleem Aftab

Film festivals have become sops to corporations. Income from sponsorships and endorsements dwarf box-office takings, and film festivals exhaust as much time and energy chasing big business as they do trying to discover that groovy gem from Georgia. Open up the 2005 London Film Festival (oops) catalogue and the first page of editorial showcases 44 logos of corporations and agencies that have contributed.

Film festivals have started to resemble corporate trade events, with companies desperately trying to ensure their brands get noticed by the typically young, savvy audience that attends. Although London is the only major festival that has gone as far as auctioning off its own name, first to Regus and now to The Times, it is far from being the worst culprit when it comes to marketing at festivals. The undisputed prize winner in that field is Sundance, otherwise known as "Brand-dance".

In his book Down And Dirty Pictures, which chronicles how in the past two decades, Sundance has become the pre-eminent North American venue for independent film acquisition, Peter Biskind asserts that as the festival grew in size and reputation, "the market was cannibalising the festival... and you couldn't walk three feet down Main Street without a goody bag being thrust into your hands". The corporate presence and marketing has started to overshadow the movies. All sorts of brands, from Microsoft to Levis to Motorola, are at Sundance with free merchandise and attempting to get photographed with celebrities.

The first major sign of frustration with marketing and branding at film festivals was displayed a decade ago when Slamdance was created as an "independent", non-commercialised alternative to Sundance in nearby Park City. Although Slamdance started with this major bugbear, it has also now succumbed to the corporate buck.

It's a similar story at other major festivals, and at the recent Venice Film Festival, the security checks on baggage and compulsory depositing of rucksacks ensured that it was easier to carry around the free shoulder bags given out by the festival organisers, bags that happened to be sponsored by Wella.

It is a problem that Times Bfi London Film Festival artistic director Sandra Hebron is mindful of. She says: "There is a school of thought that says that Sundance is being hijacked by its sponsors. It is an interesting discussion and I don't entirely agree with that, because the programming of Sundance is independent of the sponsors' interest.

"We often have discussion about whether a particular sponsor should be brought into the sponsorship portfolio, and there are sponsors that we turn down, even though their money would have been more than welcome."

But for brands that "fit", there is an increasing amount of carte blanche. The London Film Festival markets itself as a public film festival. This means it does not have a competitive section and so does not need to search out many world premieres to put in its selection. Instead, it concentrates on choosing the best films showing at other festivals and giving a first look to some much-anticipated upcoming titles. This policy sits well with sponsors and as a result they're happy to let the artistic director programme more or less what they want.

Hebron adds: "The reason why London began was to bring to the public films that they might not otherwise have an opportunity to see, whereas, with Venice and Cannes, the original impulse was as much about attracting visitors to their towns as it was about anything else."

At this year's Venice Film Festival, it was announced that next year there will be a new festival in Rome. It will be a competitive film festival and the stated intention is to rival Berlin, Cannes and Venice. Rome's announcement is all about giving corporations marketing opportunities.

Festival directors are hostages to fortune and we're not necessarily offered what's best in artistic terms but what works best for film marketing departments. Film marketing departments love London because it's the perfect opportunity to kickstart buzz for upcoming releases. The promise of stars at premieres is too good to turn down, and it's no surprise that largely American-financed films with big names dominate.

Deeper into the catalogue are some of the real gems without distribution that the London Film Festival was set up to showcase. But they are outmuscled in the programme and in prominence by the more sponsor-friendly Hollywood offerings.