Number of film festivals down 20 per cent last year. Amsterdam still leading with 47 film festivals.

Where can you indulge as a film lover in the Netherlands? With 54 festival editions in 2017, North Holland appears to be the province where you can enjoy film festivals most often. Amsterdam takes the crown with a whopping 47 film festival editions, according to a study by the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA).

Lecturer Harry van Vliet of the Crossmedia lectorate at the HvA's Faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industry, mapped film festivals, among other things, for his Festival Atlas 2017. South Holland, for instance, with 39 festival editions, 22 of them in Rotterdam, also turns out to be a good place to immerse yourself in the film world. North and South Holland together account for 62 per cent of total offerings; Amsterdam and Rotterdam for 46 per cent.

Decline

Still, there were significantly fewer film festivals than a year earlier. In 2016, there were still 187 festival editions, while in 2017 the number of editions had dropped to 151; a decrease of almost 20 per cent. This drop occurred mainly in the months of April and May and involved a nationwide decline.

It is not a remarkable fact that festivals come and go. In 2017, 26 festivals from 2016 no longer had editions for various reasons. By contrast, 10 new festivals were added to the line-up last year, including the Fashionclash Fashion Film Festival in Maastricht and two festivals in Amsterdam: the New Renaissance Film Festival and the Ammehoela Film Festival. About a third (30 per cent) of the number of film festivals in 2017 existed for longer than 10 years.

Notable film awards

The film festival market has a veritable shower of awards: 408 film awards were presented in 2017. Of these, 18% were audience prizes and 82% jury prizes. Besides usual categories like 'best film' or 'best documentary', there were also notable prizes to be won: from the 'Sylvia Kristel Award' and 'Best Animated VR' to prizes for the 'Best Funny & Trippy Toons', the 'Immersive Non-Fiction Award' and the 'Award for Emotional Impact'. Most of the awards were - not surprisingly - presented in North Holland.

Gold of Old on social media

Contrary to expectations, the 'older' film festivals use more social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter than the younger film festivals. International Film Festival Rotterdam has most Facebook Likes and YouTube views of all Dutch film festivals, Banff Mountain Film Festival has the most Twitter followers.

It further reveals that more than half of the film festivals (53%) show 'only' 20 films or less; and that a third of the film festivals also have fringe programming with components such as panel discussions, workshops and lectures.

Knowledge source from and for Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

The film festival market is part of the annual research by the HvA's Crosssmedia lectureship into the Dutch festival landscape, resulting in the Festival Atlas. This includes the size and characteristics of the festival landscape both nationally and by province, including festival programming and social media use.

According to lecturer Harry van Vliet, festival research is important as a source of knowledge for all parties in the Netherlands involved in the festival market. "Within the HvA, we deploy the Festival Atlas in the Festivals minor, among other things. The data are interesting for students engaged in event management or event marketing. But also for leisure, hospitality, crossmedia, marketing or (commercial) economics students, for example. For professionals in the event or festival sector, the research results can serve as a source for making considerations around, for example, festival planning and festival funding. You also see that organisations such as the Film Fund and the Mondriaan Fund use our data in their own reports on the film and arts sector."