Tacoma Sister Cities Film Festival latest casualty of COVID-19 pandemic
The 2020 Tacoma Sister Cities (TSC) Film Festival was canceled May 27 after a lengthy postponement.
Originally set for late March, the festival was rescheduled to Aug. 28 to Sept. 1 but now will not be happening at all this year over concerns surrounding the coronavirus and COVID-19.
Clare Petrich, TSC Council chairwoman, said the move was not taken lightly.
“The recommendation from the film festival committee is that we will not honor what we thought would be an August date,” Petrich said. “Never, never canceled it. We’ve had 17 film festivals, and this was the first one.”
The festival would have shown nine films, all selected by committee to reflect each Sister City, over four days at The Blue Mouse in Tacoma.
The tentative plan now is to hold the festival in spring 2021, but that is contingent on whether theaters can reopen by then.
TSC treasurer Bruce Sadler said there wouldn’t be much of a monetary loss, and anyone who has already bought a ticket can get a refund.
Film festival chairwoman Mira Utz said the refunding process is already in motion.
“We just did it through Eventbrite,” Utz said. “I put in for a full refund for everyone that had purchased tickets, and so Eventbrite is supposed to handle all of that now.”
Utz had hoped the show could go on.
“Of course it’s disappointing. We are in disappointing times,” Utz said. “We held out hope that maybe we would still be able to do something this summer, but it’s just it is not looking like a real, feasible choice.”
Organizers considered holding the event in the fall or online but decided neither was feasible.
“We’re hoping to have this in the spring if science is able to get us a vaccine or some comfortability,” Sadler said.
“Sweat Rain” writer and director Hakim Belabbes had been scheduled to attend the festival and speak with attendees.
“I live by a motto that ‘better this than something worse,’ so I always try to look at the bright side of things if it’s not supposed to happen,” Belabbes said. “I think we can try to stay strong and that we are in total control, most of the time, about what happens. But I think this has been quite the reminder that without notice and from nowhere things may not go your way all the time.”
The plan for the spring is to keep the lineup mostly the same with some potential changes to be decided in the future if the need arises.
“The producers of the films, the companies that we worked with, were very happy to work with us to postpone it when we thought we would be able to open them in August,” Petrich said. “Now we will go back to them and see if they’ll be able to do the same thing for 2021.”
Utz is optimistic the event could be expanded.
“We have time to possibly add another film or two if we have interested committees,” Utz said. “We’re hoping to make the best of it when we do come back.”
This story was originally published May 31, 2020 at 12:00 AM.
