I can already feel the rush in the air. There is still a month to go before we start but the hype is already here. The people are moving all the time, the telephone is ringing and boxes seem to be piling up all over the office. I’m not always sure who all the people around me are. Everyday I see new faces and hear new stories. It’s a little hard to follow everything when you have so many people working on so many different things.

Until now, whenever I visited a film festival I usually knew very little about it. I might have checked the internet in order to see what films are playing or to figure out which films might be interesting to watch. But I usually never paid much attention to anything else. I didn’t know about all the press conferences, about designing the posters or about the efforts to reach so many different kinds of people. Coming to think about it, didn’t know much about almost anything, actually. Well, this is going to change.

One example for my naivety: I was always sure that it is decided months in advance which films are going to be shown in the Rotterdam film festival. A few days ago I found out that usually the complete list of films that are to be shown is only known about a week or two before the beginning of the festival. But I guess that’s always the case.  We think we know how things work…but we don’t really.

We all know film festivals. We all know about the movies. But we don’t know how a film festival is created. I thought I did, but then I started working for one. WOW. What a big organization. It takes months, many people and hard work to put it all together. After all… we need to make sure that more than 350,000 visitors will have the best experience possible.  I had no idea that there is a group of people whose job is to sit and watch movies all day long (and later decide which movies are going to show in the festival). Sounds like fun, ha?! And the program. It’s so diverse. Cinema of the Future, Cinema of the World, Cinema Regained, Short: As Long as It Takes and Exploding Cinema are just a few sections of the IFFR. And I didn’t even start talking about all the lectures, presentations and debates that have to be organized.

OK, I will stop now. I’m just a little overwhelmed with everything that is happening around here. Well, I’ll keep you updated about how things are going.

I’m excited. It looks like it’s going to be fun J