Niagara Film Fest cancelled
Nearly three months after the passing of its founder Bill Marshall, the Niagara Integrated Film Festival has been cancelled for this year.
Marshall’s wife, festival president Sari Ruda, confirmed the event would not take place with a one sentence statement emailed to The Review Monday.
“With Bill’s passing, there won’t be a festival this year,” she wrote.
When asked if it was possible for the festival to eventually return, Ruda responded “anything is possible.”
The festival is normally held in June.
Marshall, who started the festival in 2014 after years of planning, died of cardiac arrest early New Year’s Day. He was 77.
Marshall was also co-founder of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 1976, now regarded as the second most important film festival in the world after Cannes.
Marshall drew plenty of comparisons when he announced the Niagara event in early 2014. “Nobody wanted the Toronto film festival, believe me,” he said. “I’m not surprised that people say (Niagara) won’t do anything. Yeah, just wait.”
It was also a challenge for Marshall, who wanted to prove Toronto’s success could be repeated.
“From an ego standpoint, you don’t want to be known as a onetrick pony,” he said after a media conference in May, 2014. “But I thought, if I’m going to do one, I want to make sure it’s a winner. Niagara seemed like a no-brainer to me. You’ve got the scenery, you’ve got some great food, you’ve got the wineries. You’ve just got to stick some movies in there…how can they go wrong?”
The festival used local restaurants, wineries and cinemas at the outset. Marshall stressed the festival had to establish itself before it could attract celebrities and world premieres.
After two modestly successful years, the festival adjusted its format last year to include more screenings in venues like the Seneca Queen Theatre in Niagara Falls and FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in St. Catharines, and fewer outdoor screenings at wineries.
But Seneca Queen Theatre manager Trevor Ritchie says the results were disappointing, as few moviegoers attended the festival screenings.
“They treated us well, but it wasn’t the best in attendance,” he says. “They probably took a bit of a loss on our end, the Niagara Falls location.”
Ritchie says the theatre has screened movies in conjunction with TIFF in the past, which were also poorly-attended.
“I don’t know if there’s a big, overwhelming artsy film market there,” he says. “It’s just a personal opinion. It didn’t do so well for us.”