TC Film Fest drops summer event

May 3—TRAVERSE CITY — After 16 years, Traverse City Film Festival is moving on from the era of a five-day event and shifting focus, founder and filmmaker Michael Moore said.

A successful 2022 festival that broke even for the first time in its history put the nonprofit in a good position to reconsider its next direction, Moore said Tuesday.

While the format refined since 2006 is done, he stressed it's not the film festival's final act.

Rather, the organization wants to move away from the days-long film buff's dream to a year-round "festival" focused on keeping its two theaters, the State and Bijou, alive and thriving, Moore said.

"When you have an act of God, when you have a pandemic, when you have anything that happens, and this is true for all of us even in our personal lives, you've got to be able to pivot and pivot toward the light," he said.

Focusing on the State and Bijou while shifting to a year-round effort means bringing in some of the oddball, indie, arthouse and international films the festival brought to venues throughout Traverse City, Moore said. The nonprofit will ask festival sponsors to underwrite those showings.

Big-studio blockbusters are still welcome, so long as they pass the criteria that dates to the film festival's founding: don't show crappy movies, Moore said. To wit, Guardians of the Galaxy's third installment is coming to the State — he called it "one of the funniest films I've seen in the last year."

"We're going to have the best of the best, and sometimes it'll be a big Hollywood movie and sometimes it won't be," he said.

It's a disappointing announcement for Traverse City Tourism CEO Trevor Tkach, he said. The film festival has become a tradition for the city and it's sad to see events of its caliber opt to go in a different direction.

"We know that the film festival has a big economic impact on the community when it was active," he said. "We know (this decision) will overwhelmingly have a negative impact.

"This is a painful reality for a lot of us in a lot of different ways."

While Tkach said the move will affect a lot of people who love arts and the cinema, it'll also create a chance to do something new centered on film, possibly at a different time of year.

That "something new" could be a reimagined event from TCFF, one more sustainable than the past format, Moore said. The nonprofit would like to explore that possibility, but is in no hurry to outline what that might be.

The move away from the festival format comes as the film industry moves into even murkier times, Moore noted. Regal Cinemas, the nation's largest movie theater chain, filed for bankruptcy in September 2022, and started the year by closing 39 locations, according to Variety.

And the Writers Guild of America strike means some productions are going on hold just a few years after the pandemic forced all filmmaking to pause.

Viewers' increasing preference for streaming services, bolstered by the fact that such offerings are improving in quality, only brings the need to pivot into sharper relief, Moore said.

Moore said it costs $2 million to put on the festival, $200,000 of which goes into offering free movies at the Open Space. While 2022 was a good year, going into debt again was out of the question.

Typically the end of July, the Tuesday-Sunday festival would screen about 200 films. Last year's screened 50 on six screens, and sold about 15,000 presale tickets.

For Rich Brauer, a Traverse City filmmaker and one who was involved with the festival from its start, the move away from the event was a logical one.

"Obviously, I love to have the opportunity to have a festival in town, but you know really, after the COVID thing, people are just not so inclined to crowd into theaters like they used to," he said. "Until that gets healed, I don't think there's any point in pushing the envelope."

Regrowing that moviegoing crowd is just what the nonprofit wants to focus on next, Moore said. The crowds are coming back, but still not to the extent that they did before the pandemic.

Brauer also liked the idea of offering the kind of flicks that usually only get screened at a festival. While Moore said he hoped those films could draw people to town for the weekend, Brauer said he wondered if screening them more regularly would generate the same buzz and bring the same crowds.

"But it certainly is a benefit to this community to have the ability to have films that you wouldn't otherwise get to see," he said.

For that to work, though, people have to actually go see them, Brauer said. That means they need to realize that it's OK to go to the theater, and appreciate and support their local movie venues.

Moore had his own sales pitch, including cheap ticket prices, a secret popcorn recipe and what's become the cheapest form of mass entertainment around.

Film Fest received a $933,000 Shuttered Venue Operators Grant in 2022 that allowed upgrades to ventilation and air-circulation systems at both theaters, and could be used for rent, utilities and other expenses, but could specifically not be used to pay off debts.

The organization's financial footing was in question before the pandemic after multiple years in the red, a high-dollar payment dispute with its former lighting and sound contractor, and infrastructure problems like flooding and boiler issues in the State Theatre.

The Film Fest also underwent a number of leadership changes after longtime director Deb Lake left in 2017. Questions also arose about the organization's lease with Traverse City this past December as the 172-seat Bijou had not been open 200 days a year as per the agreement.

Record-Eagle reporter Mark Urban and News Editor Allison Batdorff contributed to this article.