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| Opportunities & Exposures: Culture |
Founding a Festival
Jill Burkhart
01/01/2006
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Ten years ago, my brother Jonathan came to me with the idea of starting a film
festival on Nantucket. We were both involved in film: Jonathan as a cameraman
and I as an actress. First I considered the positives. We had grown up on
Nantucket, so we would not be thought of as outsiders. We knew the venues for
screenings, panels and parties. The island of Nantucket seemed ideal for this
venture. The town is rich with atmosphere and history. All the locations are
within walking distance, and if attendees get tired of movies, they can go to
the beach. My gut said we had all the pieces of the puzzle; it was just a matter
of fitting them together.
A film production company gave us free office space
to serve as our home base. But between us we’d attended one film festival. We
had to learn what a 501(c)3 was and form one. We had to learn fund-raising,
programming, event planning, publishing and printing.
Through friends in New
York and Nantucket, we assembled a board of entertainment professionals with
second homes on the island: John Johnson and his father, Seward Johnson; Ben
Stiller; Ed Sherin (executive producer of Law & Order); Mark Greenberg,
(senior vice president at Showtime); and Suzanne Wright, wife of NBC Universal
chairman Bob Wright. I became artistic director, responsible for films, panels
and programming, and Jonathan became executive director, running the business
side.
We hired an experienced development director from a theater company to
raise funds and find corporate sponsors (paying her a percentage of what she
raised). Her and our board’s connections helped us attract NBC and Vanity Fair,
which helped us land companies. With the help of our board, we were also able to
raise funds from foundations and individuals.
That first festival in 1996 was
exhilarating. Getting people to Nantucket was difficult, and the fog made travel
more challenging. Planes, and our guests, were delayed or rerouted to Boston.
Yet we attracted the likes of Winona Ryder, Billy Baldwin, Robert Sean Leonard
and Ben Stiller. Nantucket embraced us, and continues to do so. In 2005, the
festival attracted about 10,000 people.
From the outset, our focus has been
on the screenwriter; that continues to give NFF its direction and shape. In a
world with hundreds of festivals competing for sponsorship dollars, films,
talent and press, remaining true to our mission separates us from the pack. The
funkiness of those early festivals has given way to more professionalism as we
attract bigger names and larger sponsors that demand attention to detail. Making
this transition—we’re still in the thick of it—has been challenging.
Affluent Influx
I am now executive director. (My brother left to become a
full-fledged producer.) Our staff is bigger, with a core group of eight working
all year, ballooning to more than 40 on the island in June with some 200
volunteers. Our current budget hovers at about $700,000 in cash—about $1.7
million counting in-kind. This year Steve Martin received NFF’s NBC Universal
Screenwriter’s tribute, and Showtime hosted a screenplay reading.
As the
festival has grown and changed, so has Nantucket. It has become a high-end
destination. The demographic here is not lost on our sponsors and donors; this
has made it somewhat easier to attract corporate support. But it has increased
the amount of money we have to spend producing the festival. The cost of living
on Nantucket year-round has risen dramatically, and that trickles down to us.
Nantucket is accessible only by plane or boat, and we have seen plane, hotel and
food prices steadily climb. We spend thousands just trying to house our
staff.
The historical spaces we use for screenings and events are old and
small. This lends the festival its intimate character, but also limits the
number of tickets we can sell, which affects our income. We rely heavily on
barter deals with local merchants and lodging from local residents. But many
locals who are trying to make a living can no longer afford to trade with us.
Real estate is so valuable that we are competing with other events and
businesses for space. We have yet to wholly profit from the opportunities this
demographic presents, but we plan to reach out to more of these people and
introduce them to our event and mission. We think it’s vital that these new
residents establish ties with and give back to the island.
 | Jill Burkhart is cofounder and executive director of the Nantucket Film
Festival. |
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