After the True/False 2015 film festival came to a close, KBIA’s Jason Hoffman spoke with one of the brains behind the operation, David Wilson.
The twelfth annual True/False film festival has wrapped up after a beautiful weekend in Columbia featuring art, music and of course films. Joining us now is one of the co-conspirators of the True?false Festival, David Wilson. David, thanks for joining me.
Hey, Thanks for having me.
Now that the festival is all over, how’d True/False 2015 go?
It went great, it was a really amazing year. The quality of films was very high, people were happy because of the weather. I think we saw great art and music and film all swirling together in the streets of downtown Columbia.
Do you have an estimate about how many people traveled in from out of town for the festival this year?
You know, I have a rough estimate, we do some polling and I'll have some more details later, but we guess that about 40-50% of our audience is from outside central Missouri.
How many tickets were sold for the festival this year?
45,600
And in your eyes, what do you think the biggest change has been in the 12 years that the festival has been going on?
You know, it's really just grown so much and it's come into its own as a real community event. The word we use and the word i hear from people over and over is that it's handmade. Everything about True/False exists because someone in Columbia, somebody who works for the festival really took it on, really paid attention to all the details. We just want to throw a great party and invite all of our friends, but increasingly we see this as a true community effort.
Just the past few months there have been many new businesses that have opened downtown with Craft Beer Cellar and Harold's Donuts and then this weekend Seoul Taco and Strange Donuts opened next to the box office. What does the support of those new businesses and the downtown business district as a whole mean to True/False?
It's huge. We really could not do this fest without the support of many businesses, many sponsors and many individuals. We had 967 volunteers work at True/False this weekend and between them and our close to 100 different sponsors we made it happen. It really takes a whole lot of people to pull this off.
Did you personally get to explore and enjoy the festival this weekend or were you too busy working the logistical side?
I try to find moments for myself, I got to watch a live documentary called the Measure of All Things on Saturday morning which made me really happy and last night I took a little bit of time to watch episode five of The Jinx which was pretty exciting too.
Jesse Hall wasn't open this year and that is a big theater that you guys had used in the past. Were there any logistical issues through that or just any issues that arose this weekend at all?
Tons. We started planning for not having Jesse Hall two years ago and it was a big deal. It involved spreading out on campus, involved building out three new venues, all of which were pretty tough build outs. We strive to have world class projection and presentation and we do that in venues that, other than RagTag, aren't movie venues. A lot of work and planning goes into all of that as well as all of the logistics of getting people around the venues, staffing, so it was a challenging year in that way but I'm really happy with the result.
I’m sure you want to take some time to decompress from this weekend but what does the future hold for True/False 2016?
Oh, we start planning 2016 almost immediately and we're gonna have Jesse Hall back and I feel like it has the strong potential to be another banner year for True/False.
Great. Thanks for taking the time for sitting down with us and congrats on another successful festival.
My pleasure, and thank you.
