{"id":461,"date":"2014-09-02T12:06:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-02T16:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2014\/09\/02\/cultural-fragmentation-begets-bizarre-niche-film-festivals\/"},"modified":"2014-09-02T12:06:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T16:06:00","slug":"cultural-fragmentation-begets-bizarre-niche-film-festivals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2014\/09\/02\/cultural-fragmentation-begets-bizarre-niche-film-festivals\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural fragmentation begets bizarre niche film festivals"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/08\/30\/movies\/mockfest-food-film-fest-and-other-niche-programs.html\" style=\"margin-left: 1em;margin-right: 1em\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-YP-PRMG_Sjk\/VAXqL0pbv1I\/AAAAAAAABRQ\/il81GXyzADU\/s1600\/c700x420.jpg\" height=\"240\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>If you pay attention to film news, you may have noticed a brouhaha this weekend over the Telluride Film Festival, one of the first stops on the road to Oscar contention and a recurring favorite for independent filmmakers. But back in May, you might have missed out on Blobfest, a festival that only screens movies similar to <i>The Blob<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>As told in a recent profile from <i>The New York Times<\/i>, Blobfest is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/08\/30\/movies\/mockfest-food-film-fest-and-other-niche-programs.html\">one of the many niche film festivals<\/a> springing up around the world. The <i>Times<\/i> has assembled an impressive list of these weird and unusual events, ranging from the Feline Film Festival (<a href=\"http:\/\/aulibmedia.blogspot.com\/2012\/08\/two-film-festivals-with-very-different.html\">which has come a long way since its first year<\/a>) to mockumentary haven Mockfest. This is probably a result of the Long Tail-ization of interests and the ability for small audiences to thrive in the digital age, but it still gives critics like Peter Bogdanovich &#8220;a headache  just trying to think of possibilities.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>We saw some of this locally too; among all the various outdoor film festivals this summer, many had very specific themes, such as &#8220;flight&#8221; or &#8220;work.&#8221; Plus, the annual festival held by the cinema-focused University College group always rallies around a specific, unusual topic. Frankly, it&#8217;s fun to run with these somewhat silly and specific premises, especially when they can have positive effects (as the <i>Times<\/i> mentions for the Anxiety Arts Festival). Maybe we too will have a chapter of the Feline Film Festival one day.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you pay attention to film news, you may have noticed a brouhaha this weekend over the Telluride Film Festival, one of the first stops on the road to Oscar contention and a recurring favorite for independent filmmakers. But back in May, you might have missed out on Blobfest, a festival that only screens movies [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[128,212],"class_list":["post-461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-film-festival","tag-links-of-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}