No matter how much of a film buff you consider yourself to be, you’ll struggle to compete with the team at the Calgary Underground Film Festival.
“We watch a lot of movies. I, at one point, was counting that I was at about 1000 movies a year,” said Brennan Tilley, operations manager and lead programmer at CUFF.
The Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF) started in 2003. While the festival won awards in various genre categories, at its core, CUFF has one primary goal for the films it programs: they must “defy conventions.”
“We’re really looking for something that … pushes some sort of boundary,” said Tilley. “While also being mindful that we’re putting together a package for an audience that hasn’t seen quite everything we’ve had, but enjoys seeing the type of stuff that excites us.”
Or, to put it more simply, the CUFF team is looking for “films that are fun to talk about around the proverbial water cooler,” according to Tilley.
The programming philosophy of “defying convention” has led some to believe that CUFF only shows “a bunch of transgressive, genre stuff.” In reality, the film choices reflect the programmers’ preferences and what they think the Calgary community will enjoy.
“All of our personal tastes shine through,” said CUFF co-founder and festival director Brenda Lieberman. “We’ve got cat lovers. We have film geeks. We’ve got people who target subcultures and niche communities and underrepresented groups, and we try to look for some films that find the nerd culture … [of] the city.”
Community Feel
Letting the programmers’ interests shine through leads to a diverse festival, but it’s keeping the audience in mind that keeps people coming back year after year.
“I do think that they’re looking for the curated, unique taste and [to see] films that they wouldn’t necessarily find otherwise,” said Lieberman. “Ultimately, I do believe that people love the community feel and the vibrancy of the festival.”
Film festivals have a reputation for catering solely to film buffs and being inaccessible to everyday filmgoers. But in Lieberman’s experience, that isn’t the case.
“We’ve got kids, we’ve got seniors, we’ve got engineers, we’ve got lawyers, we’ve got students,” she said. “There’s everything.”
If there’s a movie on the CUFF roster that you’re interested in seeing, but you can’t convince anyone to go along with you, there’s no reason you can’t go alone. In fact, CUFF encourages solo film viewing; the community will meet you there.
“We don’t really like to do two-for-one tickets where you feel like somebody needs to always have a buddy,” said Lieberman. “We want our audience to feel comfortable coming by themselves and feeling like they’re part of a community, whatever their circumstances.”
A Personal Touch
Staying on the cutting edge year after year is time-intensive. With programmers watching more movies in a year than many people could get through in a decade, lightening the load with technology may be tempting. But it comes with sacrifices.
“From a programming standpoint, somebody could check in a bunch of parameters and get an AI to figure out what we should show. But we’re all about trying to connect to our local community,” said Lieberman. “It’s important for our team to be at screenings, watching in the audience. And those are things that AI can’t be involved with.”
With the prevalence of streaming platforms, a human-curated experience not only offers a more personal one but also a more unique one.
“There’s some stuff that’s going to be different from what you’ve seen,” said Tilley. “In this age of the algorithm, Netflix can show you the same true crime documentary you watched last week, right? The computer knows you love it. Here it is again.”
Not every film shown at CUFF is going to be to everyone’s tastes, and that is by design. Major movie studios churn out formulaic films that are just good enough to sell tickets. And as long as the box office numbers stay high, they’ll keep doing it.
Whether you love or hate a movie at CUFF, you’ll know you saw it because a person — not an algorithm or marketing executive — cared enough to put it on the screen.
Catch the 23rd Calgary Underground Film Festival from April 16 to 26. Grab tickets at calgaryundergroundfilm.org.
