{"id":678,"date":"2024-01-09T21:35:06","date_gmt":"2024-01-09T21:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/?p=678"},"modified":"2024-01-09T21:35:06","modified_gmt":"2024-01-09T21:35:06","slug":"the-festival-once-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/?p=678","title":{"rendered":"The Festival, Once Again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The last G\u00f6teborg Film Festival I did was in 2016, which is starting to feel like a long time ago. Almost 8, to be precise. It was all good fun, I did it, now I&#8217;m over it. Right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Firstly, I read the news. When it&#8217;s happening I follow it. I catch the opening night news, I read about the films being picked, I know about the prize winners. I am aware of it, and I miss it. I also drive past the cinema every now and then and can&#8217;t help but look at the big panorama windows hinting at the upper foyer and the view inside, the neon sign, the entrance, all of it. God I miss it. Gets me to think about what the booth looks like today, which I really don&#8217;t want to think about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Secondly, I dream. With the festival getting closer I always have at least one dream about me getting to the cinema booth about to run a show, usually the first one, and things going wrong. A film missing, people bothering me when I&#8217;m about to start the show, projectors missing, the booth having been rebuilt with everything in the wrong place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s how I know it&#8217;s time. I&#8217;ve had these pretty much since I first started working for the festival, which is closer to 40 years now. You can probably guess some of the variations. It&#8217;s always something changing and me trying to fix it but other things failing, instantly. It&#8217;s a typically reactionary dream, a performance thing, me going in prepared for the festival but something failing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I had one of these last night. It was an intricate one, with someone having rebuilt the cinema and me trying to cope. Par for the course. I&#8217;m not surprised. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I also drove past the theatre recently, noticing that the lamps lighting up the foyer are back. I thought those had been lost; the last year I worked the festival, they had been replaced with embedded lighting in the foyer ceiling, meaning those awful halogen things that may be useful in conference settings but disgrace everything else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And right now I miss the work and my theatre, and I don&#8217;t know what to do about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The last G\u00f6teborg Film Festival I did was in 2016, which is starting to feel like a long time ago. Almost 8, to be precise. It was all good fun, I did it, now I&#8217;m over it. Right? No. Firstly, I read the news. When it&#8217;s happening I follow it. I catch the opening night [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,45],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":679,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678\/revisions\/679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}