The Transformation of Digital Media and Movie Watching Experience in the Time of Corona
With the rapid spread of COVID-19 virus, cancellation of film festivals, like many other events that bring crowds together, is being considered. While some festivals already canceled their programs, others are looking for ways to organize festivals on online platforms, which brings, how the movie watching experience is affected by the transformation in the digital media, and whether the film festivals can be organized online or not, into question again.
It’s been a while our TV and movie watching styles started to change since platforms such as Netflix came into our lives. Yet, movie watching experience continues to be a collective and magical experience by physically getting together in a movie theater from the very start. Additionally, in film festivals, movie makers, movie watchers, movie critiques come together and feel a different dimension of a collective experience. Can online film festivals substitute for the traditional ones? Will watching movies on online platforms take over watching movies in movie theaters?
Asst. Prof. Derya Özkan, Head of IUE Department of Cinema and Digital Media, stated the following about the digitalization of movie watching experience and film festivals: “As Cannes Film Festival decided to postpone the event planned to take place in May, Tribeca Film Festival announced that they would hold the festival program partially online in April under the slogan of “Tribeca together, apart”. Two short films of Turkish director Ceylan Özgün Özçelik have been screened at Ann Arbor experimental film festival on online platform on 28 March. The International Filmmor Women's Film Festival, which had been organized since 2003 in 26 cities of Turkey, offers screening of one movie from the 2020 festival program every day at 16.00 for 24 hours.”
Özkan also stated that many independent directors in Turkey and across the globe would offer free access to their movies on online platforms for some time during this period. “One of these directors is Emre Yeksan, Lecturer from Department of Cinema and Digital Media. Yeksan broadcasted his first feature-length film, Körfez (The Gulf) online for free during this time when we all spend time at home more due to Corona virus outbreak. Yeksan’s movie premiered at Venice Film Festival in 2017. Yeksan said, ‘In the movie Körfez, we tried to view the world in a mood similar to the one we are in now. We wanted to share this movie hoping that it may put a smile on your faces in this suffocating atmosphere,” stated Özkan. In the movie shut in Izmir, the sudden and unexpected stink in the gulf drives a lot of people out of town. After a failed marriage about which he doesn’t want to speak, a young man, returns from Istanbul to his birthplace, Izmir. He roams aimlessly through the city and witnesses the dystopian transformation of the city. The ISTOS production film can be watched at the link below:
https://vimeo.com/281059048
These extraordinary days we are going through remind us how much this digital watching is in our lives already and about the online event possibilities. It made us think about the future. Will the number of online movies increase from now on? And if it does, are we going to lose the magic of watching movies in a movie theatre, or are we going to find other things to replace that? Özkan stated that transformation was inevitable, but it was possible to extend it overtime.
