Why it Matters: The Isle of Wight Film Festival

If you’re planning your arts festival diary for this summer, read on. Long-standing Walworth resident, Bruce Webb is a film-maker who splits his south London life with the Isle of Wight – where he organises a very special event…

I’m a film maker, and have travelled from Seoul to Chicago following my films about on their small promotional tours – but the only way I could do that was by cheap or free accommodation and flights. With average ticket prices in the West End at around £12-15 (when the UK average is around £5) you would be forgiven for seeing a cinema outing as an elitist occupation. And audiences want a guaranteed hit if they are going to spend the money – which leaves art house cinema at a real disadvantage. It wouldn’t work in theatre if fringe was the same price as the West End, but for some reason the film business decides to price everything the same no matter the budget: my last feature film (see below) was showing in the Empire Leicester Square against Tron – my film cost £160,000, probably one of the taxi bills for one actor on the Disney blockbuster. I didn’t really see it as a level playing field.

So with that in mind, in 2007, I started The Isle of Wight Film Festival (IOWFF). It began as a local derby for film makers’ parochial offerings. Over the years since, the event has taken on many different forms, but last year its roots were firmly established in Ventnor, during the busy summer period. And now, from the 14-17 August 2013, a little bit of cinema history will occur in this quiet backwater of Great Britain – as IOWFF becomes the first UK film festival to offer camping.

I stopped going to Glastonbury when the ATM machines went in, and big brands started renting pitches (I’ve been told Pizza Express pay tens of thousands for pitches at Bestival). It seemed that almost any festival you went to would have the same food, the same DJs, the same acts and all in a field generally covered in litter and the general detritus of human excess. When they wouldn’t let me bring my own beer into a field at one festival and forced me to buy some terrible warm lager for a fiver I realised something was badly wrong (no one takes away my real ale without me reacting strongly).

The IOWFF programme amounts to 50 hours of screen time and the festival has become a truly international affair – with films and filmmakers coming from Singapore, the USA, and all over Europe. But our festival is fair priced at £5 a ticket (or free for accredited film makers), with its campsite set up at the local rugby club (or you can hire a Vintage Vacations tepee or Airstream if you prefer a little more comfort).

The IOWFF happens alongside the ever-growing Ventnor Fringe, which features comedy, music and theatre – in fact anything you can do on a stage. The Fringe turns the whole town into a festival site, with houses, shops and municipal buildings becoming venues: the sewage pumping station becomes the Observatory Bar, bus stops transform into jazz stages and the IOWFF has its pop-up cinema in the old church – now named the Sacred Cinema. This year we are also adding the Cutting Room Café to the crypt, where film-makers and audiences alike can kick back and talk about the magic of cinema and tell stories about the stories they have seen.

Last year the festival was summed up by a Polish film maker who had made his way across Europe to show his short film. He had noticed the blue plaques dotted around town – Marx, Dickens, Tennyson. He wistfully turned to me on the last night of the festival and said: “I never understood British Romanticism until I woke up this morning, looked at the sunlight on the sea and the hills behind me, and then spotted the ‘Keats lived here’ plaque on my hotel. Now I completely get it.”

During the Peninsular Wars, Brits couldn’t go anywhere else on holiday so places like the Lake District and the Isle of Wight became hotbeds of art, culture and creativity – and with affordable events such as the IOWFF and VFringe I can see this happening again.

I like to think we’ve truly levelled the playing field.