What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/1275002
AUGUST 2-8, 2020 WHAT'S UP! 9 COVER STORY "It's a different experience for the filmmaker and for the audiences, but I think ultimately, extremely easy to just gain access like you would through any other streaming site," Guerrero explains. The content — films, panels, Q&As, happy hour hangouts and more — will be available online for ticketholders for the duration of the festival. So even if an audience member misses a live Q&A hosted through Instagram Live after a live film viewing, that content will still be accessible later. "It's those connective tissues with our audience and with our speakers that are still really exciting in that space," she enthuses. "The discussions that we do have on the ground at the festival, they're still just as valid and just as important in the virtual space." Traditionally, the festival comprises a blend of events free to the public and individually ticketed or passholder events where celebrity sightings and filmmaker discussions can take place. Shifting primarily to the virtual has minimized the ability to include those free events. But, Guerrero reveals, the change may actually allow for wider and more varied participation from those in the industry, as hopping on a computer for a 45-minute discussion or happy hour can be much more feasible in one's schedule than flying in to Bentonville for a few days. "We're working on different ways that you still feel that you have an intimate experience, maybe even more so than just walking down the street, pointing and taking a photo," Elkins explains. "Yes, it's exciting to walk down the street on the square; it's exciting to get the stuff; it's exciting to have a fair in the background, if you will, and all of that. But I get excited because there might be an opportunity to be just one of 100 people sitting down, and I could raise my hand and ask a question to someone specifically that I either admire or I look up to or I have an interest in what they're doing or I relate to them, and I now have that opportunity to maybe even ask more — my face could be right on that screen with theirs, versus in a large group setting. That's our hope." BFF co-founder and Academy Award-winning actor Geena Davis established the Bentonville Film Festival as a vehicle to celebrate and champion minority voices on screen and behind the camera after seeing her daughter's exposure to male-dominated programming. "That's organic. That's real. Not manufactured," says John Wildman, the festival's PR spokesman. "And that's why those of us who work with the festival, and work with her, do so very much with the idea of furthering that mission than just doing a job. We believe in her, and we believe in what the film festival is trying to do to promote inclusion and diversity." (Courtesy Photo)