No 2010 CineFest; what about the Film Festival?

Word on the street is that there will be no Cinefest (the spring film festival) this year.

The spring film festival used to be the only film festival: the [insert integer here] Philadelphia Film Festival, run by the Philadelphia Film Society. But that organization was split by creative and business differences in the past few years. One group, the Philadelphia Cinema Alliance, kept the spring festival and renamed it CineFest; and they continued the summer LGBT festival and renamed it QFest. The Philadelphia Film Society moved their festival to some largely irrelevant post-Toronto date in the fall.

This year the Cinema Alliance has encountered some serious funding problems, so no spring CineFest. Likely, the creative and business differences that divided the organization conquered it, too: the Cinema Alliance says they can't find sponsors. Maybe a critical mass of sponsors have fled to -- stayed with? -- the Film Society.

I'm sad to lose the spring festival, and not just because it's usually a full-contact sport for me. It's a weather thing as well. In this climate, there should be more to do in April than to eat ham or bitter herbs and pray for winter to end. I even call it "film festival weather": a cold night followed by a surprisingly warm, humid day, where the sun is shining one moment and then a rain squall blows through. By the time you're done standing in line to take your seat in the cinema, the weather has changed three times and you've lost your umbrella to the storm and you've lost your festival program to the poor fellow next to you who didn't have an umbrella at all when the rain started.

It's simply not the same in the fall. You don't get the same equinoctial storms, and you don't get the same sense of relief from winter cabin fever.