This past week I attended a number of screenings at the Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF). For as long as I have been here, I had never been to the festival and I didn’t know why. I started planning out the movies I wanted to see via their online schedule about a week before the festival started and was disappointed how many films on my list I would miss because of work and other obligations. Hopefully, some will show up in local art house theaters in the next few months. Still, I ended up seeing four films over the course of the last week and weekend. One of them I rushed which was fun even though they ended up adding another screening in response to the demand.

There was a huge crowd at every screening. I hope they did well. They lost their naming sponsor this year. When the president of the festival mentioned the loss of the sponsor I suddenly remembered that the reason I never attended the festival before was my impression has always been that the festival was comprised of insular elitist snobs who congratulated themselves on their taste. It think this was a result of the name- The Louis Vuitton Hawaiian International Film Festival. This year, there was no Louis Vuitton and I found my self anticipating the festival and wondering why I had never attended.

In my defense, I have a little baggage in this regard. When I was a student, I volunteered for a week at a film festival where the clientele was very much comprised of self-congratulatory elitist snobs. That was the demographic the festival literally catered to- one of the vendors sold brie, grapes and a baguette as a meal and the rest offered similar fare. Being a poor college student, I was going down the street to get pizza and burgers most of the time. That festival is no longer in existence. While its demise was a result of bigger problems than limiting their audience appeal, I am sure it didn’t help.

That said, I greatly appreciated that the audiences at HIFF were of a higher quality than I have experienced in most movies. Even though each screening was filled to near capacity, people generally watched in respectful silence (I’m looking at you, running commentary guy who was sitting two seats to the right of me yesterday.) No cell phones sounded despite the lack of the multiple appeals you generally see in movie theatres. The audiences seemed pretty representative of the usual movie audience demographics. If anything, it skewed younger than I anticipated so I might have expected more talking and cell phone use. I think the fact the shows were packed actually helped eliminate extraneous sound because people were so concerned about having their seat counted as available for rush seating, a small percentage seemed to buy concessions. (No brie, plenty of popcorn.) Or at least they kept the ice rattling to a minimum.

Also, as a friend remarked, attending the festival provided a greater guarantee that the movie would be of good quality. Presumably most people were there to watch something they can’t often see rather than be social.

Not everyone felt the movies were great, of course. One of the films I was interested in sold out so they added another screen to run concurrent with the first. I wasn’t aware of it at first, but the movie starred a local actor who has gone on to some success. I think that might have accounted for a large portion of the demand. When the actor introduced the film, she mentioned that it was definitely an art house film and that the director didn’t hand you the movie. There was an expectation that you might be angry or confused when the film ended.

That certainly seemed to be true at the end of the movie. As people filed out, some were already on their cell phones telling friends how much they hated the movie. I was a little disappointed that forewarned the movie might challenge them, they hadn’t given themselves the opportunity to even digest the experience or go next door to the Q&A and ask the actor what the heck was going on. I went on Twitter and there are a lot of negative tweets from that night too.

What I observed seems a testament to just how much pressure arts creators and presenters are under now to please people. People are not only rushing to judgment, they are rushing to tell their friends. That sort of word of mouth is sure to make it difficult for people who wish to be subtle or inspire thought with their work to do so and get the consideration and recognition they are due. If you want people to think, they aren’t likely to be dashing off tweets as they walk out of the theatre. Also, 140 characters may not be the best medium for praising your subtlety.