Does it really seem that the issues of independent cinema are no longer relevant and are already in the past? Is filmmaking turning into the destiny of balding veterans? Information and media trends are changing very fast in the world. Teenagers hardly use Facebook or Twitter anymore. Instagram is getting older, too. The same thing is likely to happen to TikTok soon.
What’s the situation with short filmmakers? Is this passion fading in the third decade of the 21st century? Is making short films to show it at festivals or in the cinema out of fashion? Much of the energy has been taken up by social media. Bloggers purposely make short videos for Tiktok, YouTube, and Instagram. In doing so, they don’t think about film festivals at all. Such authors don’t even consider their works as films or cinema.
STATISTICS AND FACTS
To calculate the average age of a filmmaker, we turned to statistics. We took as a basis the dates of birth of directors who submitted films to our festival from 2017 to 2021, i.e. in five years. This period, of course, seems a little short for generalization. Since we found a steady trend of “aging”, however, we decided to publish the results.
We had data on about ten thousand submitters. We divided this data into paid and free film festival entries. Filmmakers who paid the entry fee were several years older. And the age difference between them steadily decreased due to the aging of the free filmmakers. Perhaps this suggests that younger filmmakers gained the opportunity to pay for their participation in film festivals.
The chart shows that the average age of filmmakers is over the mid-thirties. Between 2017 and 2021, the average film festival submitter became five years older. At this rate, in ten years a filmmaker will reach 45, and after 15 years he will celebrate his fiftieth birthday.
CHANGE IS ALL AROUND US
Does this mean that the short film subculture will disappear in the second half of the 21st century? The landscape of this subculture changes significantly every ten years or so. Initially, it was varied due to the advent of the Super 8, and the further transition from tape to a cheaper video format. This changed in the 2000s with the development of the Internet and the emergence of festival platforms. Now, more than ever, the transformation is taking place through the rapid development of expressive forms in social media, as well as the rise of streaming platforms.
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