WILLOUGHBY, Ohio — It may feel like another lifetime, but it was only a few years ago that the Cleveland International Film Festival was, as Associate Director Patrick Shepherd says, "bursting at the seams" at Tower City Cinemas. The roughly 250-seat auditoriums — with their rough 30-year-old seats — regularly were packed, especially during festival weekends.
In the years leading up to and including 2019, the annual celebration of cinema — produced by the Ohio City-based nonprofit of the same name — drew about 100,000, usually a little more.
Cue the deep-voiced narrator: And then something happened.
That something was, of course, the novel coronavirus pandemic. It wiped away not only what was to have been the festival's final year at the since-closed theater complex in downtown's Tower City Center, but also put off CIFF's move a few blocks away to Playhouse Square.
In 2020, the CIFF brain trust quickly shifted to a scaled-down all-virtual festival. A year later, with the virus still greatly affecting everyday life, the decision-makers opted to go with a second strictly online festival and, with some experience under their collective belt and folks now very familiar with staying inside and streaming content, beefing up the offerings.
Finally, with last year's 46th CIFF, an in-person component was held at the second-largest theater complex in the country, with a modest attendance figure of just over 28,000, according to Shepherd. It was followed by CIFF46 streams, which offered many of the films in the safety of one's home.
"We had some key stakeholders last year that just were not comfortable coming in person," Shepherd says during a recent phone interview. "They participated via the streaming platform, but the attendance certainly wasn't anywhere near what it was during the pandemic."
Now as CIFF47 arrives — it runs Wednesday through April 1 at Playhouse Square, followed by CIFF47 Streams April 2 through 9 — life looks as close to what Shepherd calls "The Before Times" as it ever has.
As for the in-person fest, venues including the huge KeyBank State Theatre and Connor Palace are set to play host to about 120 feature films, including myriad documentaries, and just shy of 200 shorts from 67 countries.
It will be the 25th festival for Shepherd, who grew up in Wellington and graduated from Wellington High School and has been a full-time CIFF man for more than two decades.
Just as it is for CiFF Executive Director Marcie Goodman, one of Shepherd's primary responsibilities is drumming up the funds needed to put on the festival, with, he says, about two-thirds of the $3 million budget coming from corporate sponsorships, foundation and government grants, individual donations and the like.
Despite the years without physical attendance and last year's significant drop from 2019, the organization is in relatively strong shape, he says.
"We have been steady, and I will say that the government stimulus dollars through the American Rescue Plan and the CARES Act really were critical to dollars coming in," he says.
And Shepherd doesn't expect it all to turn around overnight, pointing to studies that suggest arts organizations — and this is a world in which there is no major economic downturn — not returning to pre-pandemic financial conditions until 2025.
"We're seeing a lot of indicators nationally and locally that give us optimism about increased turnout this year," he says. "For example, we're seeing our peer festivals across the country not necessarily getting back to pre-pandemic levels of attendance but much stronger than the previous year."
Plus, he says, this year's Get Shorty, an event leading up to the festival built around short films, saw a jump from about 500 attendees to 900 in February.
You don't have to look too closely to find a friendly nudge to physically return to the festival with this year's CIFF theme: "LOOK CLOSER, Find Yourself at the 47th Cleveland International Film Festival." According to the CIFF website, it "invites audiences to seek out connections to diverse cultures and perspectives, while delving into CIFF47 films playing across screens at the iconic Playhouse Square."
As for some of what's in store for festival goers this year, it starts, of course, with Wednesday's opening-night film, "Butterfly in the Sky," a documentary about the almost-quarter-century run of the educational children's television show "Reading Rainbow," which starred LeVar Burton of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "Roots" fame.
"I think opening night's going to be big because rarely do we have a family film for the opening," Shepherd says. "We're going to have, I believe, the two co-producers of the original show and some film guests to engage the audience."
Opening night also includes a gala, with tickets set at 80 for CIFF members and $100 for nonmembers.
Other key events are the centerpiece screening, on March 28, of another documentary — "Being Mary Tyler Moore" — and the closing-night film on April 1. The latter is a Canadian movie, "I Like Movies," about a 17-year-old cinema aficionado with his sights set on a film career.
"Something unique to this year is that we are showcasing Ukrainian cinema in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine," Shepherd says. "And we're partnering with the Odesa International Film Festival. Of course, they can't have their festival right now in the middle of a war, so they are taking their films around the world, and the first United States stop for these films will be Cleveland."
CIFF is set to show eight Ukrainian films and a short-film collection and host some filmmakers from the Eastern European nation.
Last year, he says, such visitors were impressed by Playhouse Square, the "permanent and forever home" of CIFF, as Shepherd calls it more than once.
"You should see our filmmakers' eyes when they walk into these 100-year-old theaters, where, in some cases, silent movies were screened," he says.
Shepherd is asked what lessons were learned from year one at Playhouse Square that already are being applied in year two.
"We always have lists of what we'd like to do better the following year, and, actually, we think it's gonna take a few years to truly settle into Playhouse Square," he says. "A move is a big thing for a film festival. The last time we moved was 1991, when the festival was moved from Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights to Tower City. And there was a drop in attendance that year."
He called comparing Tower City to Playhouse Squares with "apples to oranges," in part because of the transition to fewer but larger spaces. That said, screenings typically come with audience caps, so screenings at the larger theaters may see only a fraction of the seats in use.
One advantage of the switch, he says, is the ability to keep the films within distinct rounds as opposed to the dramatic staggering that had become the norm at Tower City in the final years there. In other words, if you see a film in one round, you now will have time to catch any film in the following round.
And, again, this is the second hybrid CIFF, with the streaming component offering about 60% of the features and all the shorts, according to Shepherd. Those who still are avoiding in-person events can go that route, as can the cinema enthusiast trying to take in as much as possible.
"Now, if you're making your list of films that you want to see, you want to essay first, 'Does it screen once or twice at Playhouse Square?' And 'Does it stream?' That can help you prioritize what you're going to see and how you see it."
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47TH CLEVELAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
When: March 22-April 1
Where: Playhouse Square
Tickets: $16 for CIFF members and $18 for nonmembers
CIFF47 Streams: April 2-9
Info: ClevelandFilm.org
