It’s half past nine on the morning of the 1st of April. Tickets for the Bafici (Buenos Aires independent film festival) are going on sale this morning and as I write these words the festival’s website still has no details of the programme or of what film is to be shown in what cinema. This latter detail is of some importance as there is no central ticket office. I can’t discount the possibility that they might have pasted up a paper version of the programme in one or more of the venues but to be sure I’d have to go there in person and have a look. Doing this would present me with considerable difficulties on a weekday morning as I have a living to make and don’t have servants I could send on my behalf.
The word “festival” implies a certain minimal degree of organisation and a desire to communicate relevant information to the general public in time for them to be able to make use of it that is entirely absent in the case of the Bafici. If you are a student, a critic, privately wealthy or some other kind of insider the festival must be the greatest thing ever. If you are a normal person who likes films but don’t have inside knowledge or connections then you are in serious difficulties as you are going to have to spend an inordinate amount of time obtaining information that should be easily available and then waste even more traipsing around the city buying the tickets from the individual venues. Yes I know, tickets for some venues can be bought on the phone with a credit card but that doesn’t weaken my overall point as the only reason that is possible is that some of the venues are multiplexes that provide this service anyway. It’s nothing to do with the festival.
And the great mystery of this is that it’s the same year in year out. It was exactly the same under the governments of Ibarra and Telerman as it is now under Macri, the suppposed barbarian. A major cultural event is organized with a notable contempt for the necessities of the general public and, because the general public takes what’s dished out to it with bovine resignation, when it’s over everyone congratulates themselves and says how wonderful it all was and what a very cultural city Buenos Aires is.
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