Going behind the scenes

As Executive Director, Cees van 't Hullenaar took the initiative of thinking early on about different scenarios for organizing a festival in 2020. “These three scenarios were at the heart of my work throughout the year,” he says. “Together with all the teams, we looked at alternative scenarios early in 2020. What would the financial consequences be? How would the programming be affected? How would we work together with festival locations and all our other partners? Each scenario concerned every aspect of the festival as we know it. Subsequently, we worked within three possible options for the coming edition: going fully online, presenting a hybrid edition, or remaining as a physical event. “Planning for a hybrid edition soon became a necessity, and we worked with the Netherlands Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and Cinekid to jointly develop an online platform: software that could combine the functionalities of existing tools such as Zoom, Facebook Live, traditional video broadcasting, and our film database into a seamless viewer experience. All kinds of festival events such as film screenings with Q&As, filmmaker talks, and industry discussions had to be accounted for. “Another important aspect of the past year is that we wanted to develop from a festival to an institute—one that undertakes all kinds of activities throughout the year, expands nationally and internationally, and resonates with a diverse audience. “From the perspective of the Marketing and Communications team, we looked at how we could disseminate IDFA as an institute in 2020 and ensure that the program was brought to the attention of as large an audience as possible. This was already happening on social media, but last year the website itself was the stage, which is why marketing and communications mainly took place online.