Favorite Film Festival

[stethacantus]

Lets say you have the money and power to throw a film festival. But instead of booking the latest films, or having a retrospective of a great director, your festival is going to have nothing but your 25 all time favorite feature films. It does not matter if  your favorites are not exactly the greatest films ever made,  guilty pleasures are allowed in your festival.

If I were to throw such a festival, here are the films I would book, listed from #25 to #1 on my favorite list.

National Lampoon's Animal House ( 1978 )   
License to Kill ( 1989 )
Gamera: Guardian of the Universe ( 1995 )
Chungking Express ( 1994 )
The Avenging Eagle ( 1978 )
Streets of Fire ( 1984 )
The Savage Five  ( 1974 )
Blazing Saddles  ( 1974 )
Five Element Ninjas  ( 1982 )
Spring Breakers ( 2012 )
Monty Python's Life of Brian ( 1979 )
Summer Lovers ( 1982 )
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie  ( 2001 )
Monty Python and the Holy Grail ( 1975 )
Breaking Away ( 1979 )
A Fish Called Wanda ( 1988 )
The Thief of Bagdad ( 1924 )
Fantasia ( 1940 )
Jaws  ( 1975 )
Risky Business ( 1983 )
Marvel's The Avengers ( 2012 )
The Killer ( 1989 )
Mr Hulot's Holiday  ( 1953 )
Starlight Hotel ( 1987 )
Times Square ( 1980 )

[Johnny Unusual]

I guess I would like a film festival for great films not enough people have seen.  I mean, a lot of these aren't obscure per se, but I talk to way to many people who haven't seen them.

6:00 PM: Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
8:00 PM: The Wrong Guy
10:00 PM: Wages of Fear
12:00 AM: GATTACA
2:00 AM: Black Dynamite
4:00 AM: The Raid: Redemption
6:00 AM: Inglorious Bastards (the original film, not the Tarantino one)

8:00 AM: Babette's Feast
10:00 AM: Local Hero
12:00 PM: The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
2:00 PM: The Trouble With Harry
4:00 PM: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

[stethacantus]

The point of this thread was for you ( or anyone else ) to hold a film festival with your top 25 favorite films. If the movies you listed were indeed your all time favorite films, then good for you, you killed two birds with one stone. But if you are just going to have a festival with great movies you believe need more exposure, then you have missed the point completely. Pretty much every film festival programmer books what he feels are great movies not enough people have seen. Most of these would be new films looking for distributors, but they also screen an ample supply of obscure classics. I can sympathize with the programmer wanting good films to find new audiences, but have always found this a bit futile because the very people who go to these festivals are the same who have already seen those obscure movies. It is Johnny Multiplex who has never been to a festival or arthouse theater before who needs to see those obscure movies. And sadly, most of America is Johnny Multiplex. The truth is that more Americans will see "Hot Tub Time Machine 2" this week than will ever seen "My Dinner With Andre".

The only sure fire way to expose people to great obscure films is still inviting them to your house and forcing them to watch them. Sometimes that can be a success, and they will leave your house loving the film. But it can also end in disaster, with your friend barely paying attention to the screen, checking his e-mails during the best scenes, or worse, asking to leave or watch something else midway through the film. His close-mindedness ruining your own viewing experience. Something else to consider. If many of your favorite films fall into the "guilty pleasure" category, then screening them at a festival would expose them to an audience that would be too snobbish to have seen them on their own. But the challenge still stands. For you to spend your theoretical funds on a film festival that selfishly screens only your top 25 favorite films, with no feeling of obligation to screen anything else.

Of the films you listed at your festival, I have heard of all of them. Three I have seen before, GATTACA, Local Hero ( was attracted to this film via the Mark Knopfler score. The movie's theme would play regularly on WLIR. )  and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three ( assuming you are talking about the original 1974 version with Walter Matthau. Two remakes exist. ) I am already planning to someday see both Tintin and The Raid. It's all a matter of finding the time. Currently I only have time for three films a week. Four if Saturday Night Live is a repeat. And one of those film slots is taken up by riffed films, either one of the Rifftrax releases, or one of the latest MST3K releases. Two many good television shows on right now has taken it's toll on my free time.