Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story.

Another great festival squared away and if there’s one piece of advice for organizers to heed is that whatever the training regimen that MIFF volunteers are put through please don’t change a thing.

Duly acknowledged at the beginning of many sessions for their invaluable contribution to the festival, this year’s battalion outdid themselves aiding this hapless journalist.

Ever courteous and informed, one member helped cancel a booking at very short notice; another scanned the crowd at the Capitol to hand-deliver a program; another mistook some idle wandering in the Forum foyer for infirmity and did a welfare check.

These are but three examples of the high service standard experienced throughout the schedule. Outstanding stuff.

Less impressive – and somewhat disheartening – was the number of film goers who lit up their devices during screenings, this despite the overly polite pre-show announcements not to do so. Come on, people. Either you’re a lover of cinema or you ain’t.

In a move to engage with the miracle of modern technology, post-show Q&A sessions were conducted using a you-beaut online format.

This replaces the old-school format of people asking questions from their seats into a hastily procured microphone offered by the outstretched arm of a volunteer.

With this new method people with questions for assembled talent would submit them on their devices which would then join a list of questions that the MIFF host works from.

It sounds more efficient and definitely more modern, but it’s a dubious innvation as it allows a degree of selection and, potentially, bias.

You can clearly see what questions have been submitted and how some are chosen while others can be skipped, even deleted.

Such on-the-spot filtering no doubt saves time and avoids redundancy but it also robs Q&A sessions of immediacy and the live-wire unpredictability of direct questioning.

Let’s say hypothetically – and this is just a hypothetical, mind – that you’ve just watched something that is absolutely awful and you want to ask the producers what audience, if any, the film is intended for.

It’s hypothetically possible that such a question might be deemed by the host to be too critical and, thus, is not posed.

This would neatly side-step any danger of embarrassment and not disrupt the positive party vibe of the assembled crowd, which might – hypothetically – be composed largely of cast and crew who have been cheering the film on at every turn.

Yet, surely, it’s better for someone to ask of the filmmakers “Hey, your movie sucks. Who on Earth is it meant for?” than to have the question nixed by a host merely because it’s impolite.

Where’s the fun in that?

Good films there was no time to review include: Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story; Julia Keeps Quiet; The Concierge; My First Film.

Here’s to 2025.