And so the volley begins. When TLA Video and the Philadelphia Film Society had their acrimonious — and some would argue totally unnecessary — split last year, a loose bargain was ultimately arrived on: The TLA’s Cinefest would be held in the spring, and the Philadelphia Film Festival, which the PFS retained the rights to, would be held in the fall. PFS held up their end of the bargain for Philly cinema-lovers and held a smaller, but no less worthy, fest in the fall. But with the news that Cinefest 2010 has been unceremoniously cancelled, it looks like PFS could be doing double-duty and putting together a spring festival of its own. In a statement to PFS members and friends last night, J. Andrew Greenblatt, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Film Society, said:

When PFS made the decision in 2009 to move the annual Philadelphia Film Festival to the fall we did so with the understanding that film programming would continue in the spring as well, in the dates familiar to many Philadelphia film lovers. The cancellation of the CineFest leaves an unfortunate void in the spring. At this time, we are considering the possibility that PFS host an event during this time period and continue our tradition of bringing independent film to Philadelphia in the spring of 2010.

We’re not gonna lie: We like this. We like this a lot. As TLA has sadly tumbled around over the last year, the secret story has been the PFS, who’ve been quietly rebuilding and doing great work, only in smaller pieces than what was once the mammoth Philadelphia Film Festival. This suggests to us two things: One, that these guys love us a lot, and two, that they’re getting stronger every day. Godspeed, PFS.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 12:38 pm.