festival – A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

A Damn Fine Espresso: October 2024

Oct 19, 2024Nov 23, 2024The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

On the podcast, we’ve talked about festivals before, both about specific festivals (such as Queersicht, the annual LGBTIAQ+ film festival held in Bern, Switzerland) and about the experience of going to cultural festivals of any kind. Autumn is festival season, and Alan and Sam talk about film festivals they’ve been to, from Switzerland’s festivals in Locarno and Zürich via San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain (which Sam recently visited) to the London Film Festival, where Alan regularly catches some of the more off-the-radar small films. What’s it like to attend these festivals? What is the experience like? How good are they for celebrity-spotting? And would they recommend the festivals to film fans, or are they reserved more for filmmakers and journalists?

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #61: Festival!

Oct 1, 2022Oct 1, 2022The Barista Collective3 Comments

Summer is over, as is our Summer of Directors – and this also means that the main festival period of 2022 has come to an end. The last few years, festivals have been greatly affected by the pandemic, and especially in 2020 and 2021 many of the big festivals were vastly reduced or didn’t happen at all. But this year they came back – and after our five big courses focusing on directors, from Jane Campion via Ida Lupino to Martin Scorsese, here’s a palate cleanser in which Alan, Julie and Matt talk about their own festival memories and experiences. Whether it’s the classic open-air music festivals of our youth, contemporary arts or local film festivals: what are our thoughts on the format? Do festivals change how we enjoy culture? What are our favourite memories? How essential are schedules and spreadsheets to the perfect festival experience… and just how damn middle-aged have we become while we weren’t watching?

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All the Stream’s a stage

May 14, 2020MattLeave a comment

These are bad times for theatres, theatregoers, companies and performers. Playhouses are closed, festivals are cancelled, productions are postponed to 2021 – provided that the venues and companies survive until then. While some countries have made money available for the arts, to cover loss of income, it’s clearly not on top of any list of priorities, and likely it isn’t even on most people’s radar. Certainly it doesn’t help that artists, actors, directors, musicians, writers, and so on, are rarely sitting on a big, comfortable pile of money for a rainy day, and they know as much as the essential workers that applause has never fed a hungry mouth or paid for the rent.