The Ottawa Canadian Film Festival (OCanFilmFest) has adapted its programming to COVID-19 shutdowns with the launch of its virtual series Shorts at Home.
The project — featuring five short films curated from previous OCanFilmFests — will release its second volume on June 12, beginning at 6 p.m (Eastern Time). The films are available for 24 hours to watch for free on Vimeo’s Video on Demand platform.
According to Blair Campbell, co-founder of OCanFilmFest, the project’s purpose was to get people used to the idea of watching a film festival at home and serve as a bridge in preparation for OCan’s 2020 festival, which will be held exclusively online this year due to the pandemic.
The project also provided OCanFilmFest an opportunity to learn how to create virtual opportunities for viewership.
“We’re getting to experiment and try a lot of new things,” Campbell said. “It’s exciting because we’re discovering what does and doesn’t work.”
Shorts at Home aims to provide Canadian filmmakers a forum for their work and provides the public more opportunities to see Canadian content.
“It’s a tough gig to be a short filmmaker in Canada,” Campbell said. “There are not necessarily a lot of commercial opportunities and not many festivals like ours which focus on sharing Canadian content exclusively.”
Shorts at Home: Volume 1 was launched on May 15 with much success, according to Campbell. The response motivated OCanFilmFest to consider a hybrid festival structure for the future, one in which a virtual space would exist parallel to a physical cinema experience.
“The impact of what we do to help artists is increased by every opportunity we create to allow their works to be seen,” Campbell added. “The idea is that the online festival overcomes the geographical limitation as well as the set date and time of the physical festival.”
Sean Legg, a fourth-year Carleton film studies student and volunteer with OCanFilmFest, said developing a regular virtual screening experience would be a step in the right direction for the organization.
“By bringing the content online it will become so easily accessible,” Legg said. “Bringing it to more people, even outside of Ottawa, and ultimately finding a larger audience.”
For Canadian filmmaker Valerie Barnhart, Shorts at Home is an opportunity to get eyes on her film Girl in the Hallway. According to Barnhart, the pandemic forced many independent filmmakers who were debuting their films this year to make difficult decisions about participating in online screenings. Without a physical forum, there are limited networking options.
“Right now it’s a lot about how to reach audiences and not a lot of thought is going towards how we can virtually connect filmmakers, producers and other key decision-makers that can move a project forward,” Barnhart said.
Despite these concerns, Barnhart remains optimistic about the rise in hybrid structures emerging from reputable film festivals.
She added that although she prefers the cinema experience, she recognizes many people now watch the majority of their movies online
“I really hope that post-pandemic this hybrid form will stay because I feel there has been far more access to arts and culture by making things available via streaming and I think it is really important people have access to explore their culture,” Barnhart added.
According to Campbell, the five films which will be released on demand for 24 hours are an excellent variety of short films.
“Our whole purpose was to get anyone out there to watch independent films,” Campbell said.“[Shorts at Home] will give you a little taste of the talent that is out there.”
Featured image from IMDb.
