Testing time ahead for film festival

Yesterday's announcement by Maretta Dillon that she was resigning as programme director of the Dublin Film Festival is another blow for those of us who have watched with dismay the DFF's decline in recent years. From a position as an attractive, significant part of the city's cultural calendar, the festival is now an increasingly peripheral, visibly less popular event.

It's a telling indicator of its troubles that the festival board must now as a matter of urgency move to appoint its fourth programmer in four years. One wonders how attractive the job will be to anyone who has observed the board's relationship with Dillon, a highly experienced and competent programmer and administrator.

Dillon has declined to be more specific about the "issues surrounding sponsorship and a proposed marketing liaison executive" which led to her resignation, beyond observing that they had rendered unworkable the organisational structures and strategies of the festival. The former festival director Aine O'Halloran, has had responsibility for marketing and sponsorship since her resignation from the top job in 1998. Although O'Halloran had been designated "director" , the DFF then advertised for a "programming director" - the post which Dillon finally filled. In retrospect, it's clear that the change of title was not mere semantics, and that it led to the "irreconcilable differences" cited in Dillon's statement.

The board of the festival, under the chairmanship of Lewis Clohessy, chose not to support the policy of the programming director it had appointed less than a year before.

With Dillon's departure, the board will be forced to start looking immediately for a replacement. If nothing else, the festival's board of directors will be well aware of the immediate problems it faces in appointing someone to programme the DFF in 2000. Last spring, following the departure of Aine O'Halloran from the position after one year in the post, the DFF advertised the position - but did not appoint Dillon until late October, a highly unsatisfactory situation for the programming of a festival scheduled for April 1999. The Toronto Film Festival, which starts next week, is traditionally a key event for programming the DFF, but for the second year in a row there will be no programmer from Dublin in attendance.

The DFF board once again finds itself without a programmer at the most crucial time of the year. Moreover, whatever decision it reaches, next year's festival will inevitably be yet another "interim" event. This simply isn't good enough for the viewers who have remained loyal to the DFF over the last few years. It seems well past time to ask some very simple questions: what's wrong with the Dublin Film Festival? Who is to blame? How can it be revived?

The problems surrounding attendances, finances, venues and sponsorship which have plagued the DFF in recent years have been well charted in these pages, and the rapid turnover of programming directors is a clear indication of the unsatisfactory state of affairs. Some of those difficulties have been ascribed to factors outside the festival's control: changing patterns of cinema-going in the capital city, for example, or the inevitable problems of finding a major sponsor to replace ACC Bank. But the unacceptable turnover of key personnel, and the attendant lack of strategic clarity, are problems for which responsibility must be taken by the board of directors.

That there are tensions within the board is no secret - one member, Alan Robinson, resigned last week, stating that he "no longer felt confident that the company is being managed in the best interests of the Dublin Film Festival". Recent months have seen the resignations for personal reasons of two other longstanding members, solicitor James Hickey and film producer David Collins. The remaining board members will have to implement the root-and-branch reform with the DFF undoubtedly requires - or make way for others who will.