Director David Colagiovanni and his team prepared for the 48th annual Athens International Film and Video Festival (AIFVF) for months before the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to postpone the festival, which was scheduled for April 2020. Initially, Colagiovanni –– and others –– had no idea how long the lockdowns would last. He planned to host that year’s festival in October.

By the fall of 2020, COVID-19 restrictions still kept local businesses closed, and Ohio University students still attended classes primarily virtually as COVID-19 cases continued to rise in southeast Ohio and elsewhere. The Athena Cinema offered virtual screenings of several films unrelated to the festival throughout the pandemic restrictions, but organizers wanted to keep the feel of an in-person festival as much as possible, so they once again postponed the AFIFV.

“And I mean, that’s what we do here, it’s like, we have spent so much time trying to tell people, ‘Get out of your, you know, comfort zone, get out of your watching things on your phone, or your laptop and come have like this amazing experience in the dark with other people,’” said Alexandra Kamody, the director of the Athena Cinema. “And, you know, on the big screen, and it’s just a very, I find it to be a much more immersive experience than watching films at home.”

But being in front of the big screen in person wasn’t just something that staff at the Athena noted; patrons and students involved with AIFVF missed it, too.

“A lot of the film festivals did all online instead of just canceling. But I know [Colagiovanni] got feedback from filmmakers and other festival coordinators, kind of just asking about how that went. And it really didn’t seem like something that fit the spirit of the Athens festival,” said Terra White, a graduate student working on her Master’s in Film at Ohio University. “And so David, like, really wanted to do it in person. And I guess he probably had some backup plan for doing it online in case October fell through. But that was really the motivation, was kind of like maintaining the spirit of the festival, and having people together. And if we had done it online, maybe more people would have seen the films, I’m not so sure. But it would have, like, lost something about the togetherness of it.”

And so, organizers once again rescheduled the 48th iteration of the festival, this time for April 2021. However, though the government lifted many restrictions by the time April arrived, the organizers, the theater and the community were still not equipped to handle the influx of visitors and interpersonal interactions that the festival would require. The organizers rescheduled the festival one final time for October 2021.

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Though Ohioans know Athens for its university and its rolling hills, every year the city also hosts the Athens International Film and Video Festival (AIFVF), an independent operation that has run for nearly half a century. In recent history, the festival has screened at the Athena Cinema, a local arthouse theater in uptown Athens. AIFVF is international and showcases films from as far as Kenya to as close as Athens itself. In 2019, the festival included films from 41 countries.

The festival screens both feature films and shorts that range in topic and style, with the most recent iteration including films like an animated short about a philandering grandfather and a feature-length documentary about a transgender drag racer and car aficionado. AIFVF hosts a guest jury to dole out awards and cash prizes for documentary, experimental, narrative and animation films, which are announced on the last day of the festival. The festival also qualifies short films for the Academy Awards.

In 2021, its organizers pushed for an adventurous feat: screening two years’ worth of films during one ten-day festival in October, AIFVF’s longest festival in its 48-year history.

To put on a film festival, filmmakers and producers first create shorts and feature films, actors perform in those films and film crews work to pull off enticing or thrilling or engaging narratives. Undergraduate and graduate film students at Ohio University watch submitted films, others group selected films into categories and still others schedule feature films and blocks of shorts during the festival. Local artists and activists also watch submitted films. Student workers prepare, run and clean the Athena Cinema. Artists design and print posters and merchandise. Local hotels and businesses prepare for an influx of visitors.

“You know, each week when we kind of do our class, we’re usually assigned about 20 or so films and of that 20, three will kind of emerge from that bunch,” said Josh Vieth, a second-year Master’s candidate in the Film program at Ohio University. “So it’s a lot that we get submitted. I’m not sure the exact figure though. But, you know, like, dozens of submissions every single day, really.”

White also estimated that she watched 15 films each week in the class. She said that typically, 13 of the 15 are not good, and sometimes, films are later rejected because they don’t fit the feeling of the festival. 

In 2019, the festival received 2,200 submissions and screened 235. This year’s festival screened 500.

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At long last, in July, the Athena Cinema reopened with a mask –– and later vaccine –– requirement to protect patrons and staff. The last film festival in Athens was two years prior, and both the festival and the theater had undergone staff changes: students from several film courses as well as volunteers and local artists help screen submitted films and staff the festival each year, and several semesters had passed since the last festival. The Athena also has a smaller staff now than it did last year; its student staff shrunk from 40 workers to nearly 15 over the course of the pandemic to restore the “close-knit, involved” feeling that the staff once had, according to Kamody.

“Some of the students who participated, I’m thinking of, in particular, Samuel Stanton, who was in our MA program, and graduated in the fall, did three semesters of David’s class and never got to see one of the festivals go through. He actually did end up attending and seeing kind of his hard work item on screen, which was great,” said Vieth. “But a lot of hard work goes into watching all these and discussing them and finding what works and what doesn’t, and how they can go together in, like, a block.”

After months of preparation work, the Athens International Film Festival returned to the Athena Cinema with its 47th and 48th iterations from October 15-24, 2021.

Yet though nearly two years had passed since the initial submission of some films, the festival’s organizers were determined to share the films with students, the community and visitors from all over.

The work –– and the wait –– was worth it: The AIFVF brings a vibrance and a unique sense of life to uptown Athens each year, and this year was no exception.

“People really look forward to that film festival every year. And the vibe in the city when I’m walking around during the film festival, it’s really quite interesting to observe and kind of feel that, you go into Donkey Coffee, and there’s people chatting about, you know, the films they have seen.” said Athens Mayor Steve Patterson.

During the October festival last month, masked moviegoers buzzed about in the lobby of the Athena and sat in seats marked for social distancing. Students sat at a table outside of the theater, distributing free Ohio University student tickets and chatting with passersby. The lobby hummed with hushed discussions of the festival as a whole and its components. After two years of waiting, the theater felt alive.

If the festival’s organizers had simply opted to skip two years’ worth of films, the community and its visitors would have missed the enrichment that the festival brings.

What’s more, the festival brings a positive economic impact to the city: According to the 2012 Arts & Economic Prosperity IV, a survey organized by Americans for the Arts, those who attended arts and cultural events in Athens, Ohio, in 2011 spent an average of $25.75 apiece because they attended the event. In 2021, the Ohio University Inn & Conference Center mentioned that occupancy rates were a little bit higher than usual, citing both football games and Homecoming, and the Athens Central Hotel sold out for seven of the ten days of the festival, commenting that the hotel is newer. Mayor Patterson uses hotel occupancy to roughly gauge the impact of visitors on the area. Kamody also mentioned that guest filmmakers need hotel rooms each year. 

But Athens will not miss out on the film festival or its cultural and economic benefits next year.

The next iteration of the Athens International Film and Video Festival screens in April 2022 and returns AIFVF to its regular yearly schedule. White said that the shortened preparation time before the spring festival means more work for Colagiovanni, who could not be reached for an interview at the time of this writing and potentially a little bit more work for the graduate students involved in the festival. Several others involved in the planning and execution of the festival said that the diminished time between festivals –– only six months instead of the regular 12 –– simply allows students and staff to stay prepared and ready for the next festival.

“You know, I kind of, [Colagiovanni] talked about how long this festival felt, you know, just the three additional days after being used to a seven day festival, and I mentioned to him that the spring festival will certainly go by extremely fast for me being used to the ten-day festival now.” said Vieth.

Those looking forward to attending the spring festival in April can find more information, including schedule information when it is available, at athensfilmfest.org.

Originally written on November 12, 2021, for a journalism class at Ohio University.