Alex M.
Yelp
This annual Festival has a well-deserved inferiority complex, one that in some instances it takes out on its primary demographic: mature Philadelphians. As noted by other reviewers, the problem is most extreme at the Ritz East Location, where various petty tyrants project their feelings of low status onto an easily targeted population. As an early-30-something person, I was not personally the target of the staff's ageism, but I witnessed multiple instances of it at the Ritz East in particular. It was disturbing to see the pain caused to many older *patrons* by this dehumanizing form of bias. As someone who has attended many film festivals in NYC and abroad, both showing films and serving on selection panels, I must say that (as others on Yelp have noted), this problem is only one of several that mark the festival as dysfunctional and, in my view, place it among the bottom three that I have experienced over the past 10 years. To focus on one egregious manifestation of this problem: the managerial and volunteer staff at the Ritz East are rude, extremely condescending toward patrons, and heedlessly incompetent. They seem to express their own feelings of inferiority by forcing *ticket-holding* patrons, including some with canes and walkers, to stand out in the whipping wind and freezing rain for 30 minutes, when there is ample room for them indoors. Like Stepford attendants in a memory clinic, the manager and volunteers seemed to take sadistic delight in repeatedly asking anyone approaching the theater, in a fake-chipper, extremely condescending voice, "Hello sir, do you have tickets for X Film? Are you a MEMBER, sir?" For anyone who PURCHASED A TICKET for as much as $12, if the response is "No, I've bought a ticket, but I'm not a member or badge holder," the creepy fake-happy Stepford response is then "Well, then, Sir, you're going to need to step to the rear of the ticker-holder line." Said end-of-line is in the freezing, pouring, rain and wind! As those in the line then rightly note, repeatedly, with increasing distress, that there is plenty of room to line up INdoors out of the rain, the Stepford staff ignore this point and proceed to try to gaslight the more vocal members by brightly, condescendingly asking, as if they fancy themselves healthcare attendants who must redirect and manage the attention of the "misbehaving" "old folks," "So, are you having fun? What films have you seen so far?" This is not helpful (to put it charitably), and if you're (PFS) putting people in contact with the public who have no more social or emotional intelligence than that, you should take a careful look at how you're running a "Festival." You are alienating, not gaining, prospective patrons when you effectively disrespect those who are not "badge holders" or "members." This is not "red carpet treatment"; it's foolishness. You are damaging your image and *losing* business and prospective patrons by allowing anyone at the Ritz East or PFF to treat even one person this way. Not to mention that it's simply mean and wrong to do so. Opting to use volunteers is no excuse--it's your responsibility to select and use them adequately. In one of the above instances, after being treated as described above, these lowly "ticket-PURCHASERS" were then subjected to the inane ramblings of the manager, who appeared before the curtain and undertook to tell them the basic facts about the film they were going to see. They know about the film! That's why they're here! Then --irony of ironies-- after the staff's / volunteers' behavior--he exhorted the audience in a William H. Macy voice to "stop and thank our volunteers" because "they are not being thanked enough" (what?) and "they are doing a great job." Uh, it's time to consult opinions other than your own about that one. The attempt to emphasize the "Star Bellied Sneeches" type distinction between those who have badges etc. "upon thars"-- and those who simply (gasp! what losers!) *paid* you for a ticket to one of your festival films-- is having (to put it mildly) the opposite effect. Wake up, or kindly leave the stage.
