By Benjamin Angrisano
@BAngrisano
There is something special about a film festival that feels inseparable from the city hosting it. The Sidewalk Film Festival does not simply bring movies to Birmingham, Alabama. For a few days, downtown Birmingham itself becomes part of the festival experience.
My visit to Sidewalk was particularly meaningful because I have a personal connection to Birmingham. My Italian family is from the area, and members of my family still live there today, giving me the opportunity to spend time with them while I was in town for the festival.
In fact, Birmingham has a larger Italian history than some people might expect. Like many immigrant communities, Italians who arrived in America through Ellis Island eventually made their way to industrial cities like Birmingham in search of work, especially opportunities connected to the city’s steel industry. Birmingham’s identity was built around that industrial history, something symbolized by Vulcan, the iconic statue overlooking the city. Depicting the Roman god of fire and metalworking, Vulcan has become one of Birmingham’s most recognizable landmarks and an enduring symbol of the city’s connection to the iron and steel industry.
My family’s history is also literally part of Birmingham’s downtown landscape. My great-grandfather owned the Dixie Cycle and Toy Company, and a vintage sign for the business can still be seen downtown today. That connection made exploring Birmingham during the festival feel like more than simply visiting another city for a film event. There was a personal history there as well.
I was only able to attend a portion of this year’s festival, including opening-night festivities, screenings and a seminar. But even within that relatively limited experience, it was easy to understand why Sidewalk has developed such a strong reputation. The festival combines independent film, cinema history, education and community in a way that makes simply walking around downtown feel like part of the event.
The centerpiece of my Sidewalk experience was the screening of John Wilson’s The History of Concrete, his first feature film. Having watched Wilson’s HBO series How To with John Wilson, I was already familiar with his distinctive filmmaking style and his unusual ability to turn seemingly ordinary subjects into unexpectedly personal and philosophical journeys.
The History of Concrete feels very much like an extended version of that approach. In many ways, it plays like a two-hour episode of How To with John Wilson, taking a familiar subject and allowing Wilson’s curiosity to lead the audience down increasingly strange and unexpected paths.
For someone already familiar with and fond of his show, that was part of the fun. There is a comfort in Wilson’s particular rhythm and narration, while his ability to connect disparate people, places and ideas continues to make his work unlike almost anything else being made.
At the same time, the transition from television to a feature-length film raises an understandable question about pacing. The film’s two-hour runtime feels long for material that follows a style audiences have primarily experienced in much shorter episodes. While I enjoyed spending more time in Wilson’s world, I also heard several people express a similar criticism afterward: The History of Concrete probably could have benefited from losing 20 or even 30 minutes.
That does not mean the film is unsuccessful. If anything, the criticism comes from how familiar and effective Wilson’s style can be. There is plenty to enjoy throughout the film, but the loose and wandering structure that feels perfectly suited to a television episode can occasionally feel more indulgent when stretched to feature length.
Still, seeing Wilson’s first feature in a festival environment was a memorable experience, particularly at the Alabama Theatre.
The Alabama Theatre alone is one of the reasons Sidewalk feels so connected to the history of cinema. The theater is remarkably beautiful, ornate and full of history, the kind of historic movie palace where the venue itself becomes part of the experience. Its elaborate architecture and atmosphere make walking into the theater feel like stepping back into another era of moviegoing.
It provided an especially appropriate setting for another event I attended: a presentation celebrating the 100th anniversary of Buster Keaton’s The General, accompanied by a live organ performance. Watching a century-old silent film in such a historic and visually stunning theater with live accompaniment is about as close as modern audiences can get to experiencing these films in the way they were originally presented.
The audience also added to the experience, laughing and cheering along with Keaton’s comedy and even booing the villains at times. It was a small but enjoyable reminder that, even 100 years later, the film could still generate a lively response from a modern audience.
Sidewalk’s ability to place contemporary independent filmmaking alongside film history gave the festival a greater sense of connection to the larger story of cinema. It also demonstrated why theatrical presentation still matters. Watching a classic film at home can be enjoyable, but there is something entirely different about experiencing it with an audience inside a historic theater accompanied by live music.
The festival also utilizes other distinctive Birmingham venues. The McWane Science Center, for example, is home to a dome IMAX theater. I had actually seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens there about a decade earlier, so returning to the area for Sidewalk brought back another personal moviegoing memory.
The festival also offered opportunities to learn from people who have spent years building and supporting film culture. I attended a seminar on film festival strategy led by Bart Weiss, a familiar figure to me and members of my press team from the Dallas film community.
The seminar offered valuable perspective on what goes into building and sustaining a successful film festival. From the outside, festivals can appear relatively simple: select films, sell tickets and invite people to screenings. But successful festivals require a clear identity, strong relationships, thoughtful programming and an understanding of how to create an experience that gives people a reason to return.
As someone involved in building a film organization myself, hearing from someone with Weiss’s experience was particularly valuable.
Opening night captured much of what makes Sidewalk feel like more than a series of screenings. The block party brought filmmakers, attendees and members of the Birmingham community together for an energetic celebration, complete with an excellent DJ, dancing, great food trucks and an open bar. During the festivities, Sidewalk also unveiled a new Sidewalk Cinema street sign, a fitting symbol of how deeply the festival has become connected to Birmingham itself.
That relationship between festival and location may be Sidewalk’s greatest strength.
The festival does not feel like something that could simply be picked up and dropped into another city. Its identity is connected to Birmingham’s theaters, streets, architecture and people. The walkable nature of the festival contributes significantly to that feeling. Moving between events becomes part of the experience. Festival attendees spill out onto downtown sidewalks after screenings, conversations continue outside theaters, and walking from one venue to another provides opportunities to run into filmmakers, fellow attendees and other events happening throughout the festival.
I only attended a small portion of Sidewalk’s overall programming, so this is not intended to be a comprehensive assessment of every film or event presented during the festival. But based on the experiences I did have, from John Wilson’s ambitious first feature and the 100th anniversary presentation of The General to the opening-night celebration and Bart Weiss’s film festival strategy seminar, I came away impressed by what Sidewalk has built.
The festival successfully combines contemporary filmmaking, cinema history, education and community. It gives audiences reasons to spend time outside the theaters and makes Birmingham itself feel like an essential part of the event.
And while The History of Concrete may test the limits of how long John Wilson’s wonderfully strange style can sustain itself at feature length, it was exactly the kind of distinctive filmmaking experience that feels at home at a festival like Sidewalk.
The best film festivals do more than schedule a collection of movies.
They create a temporary world around cinema.
Sidewalk Film Festival succeeds because, for a few days, Birmingham feels like a city connected by movies.
