Curtain closes on film festival guru Darryl Macdonald

Above: Darryl Macdonald at the Palm Springs Film Festival Rising Star Announcement Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2008 in Los Angeles, Calif. (Shea Walsh / AP Images for Palm Springs Film Festival)

For film festival fans, nothing quite beats the Seattle International Film Festival. At least in the Pacific Northwest – including Spokane.

Yes, the Spokane International Film Festival is still a going concern. But it is a Snickers bar compared to the candy shop that is SIFF.

I once saw John Sayles interviewed onstage at Seattle’s Egyptian Theater, the festival’s home base for decades. Sean Penn once showed up for a SIFF publicity event, crouching onstage during a media Q&A as he smoked and answered in obvious reluctance.

None of the stars showed up when Danny Boyle’s 1996 film “Trainspotting” played at the festival, but the sold-out crowd at Seattle’s Egyptian Theater gave as raucous a reaction to it as any film event I’ve ever attended.

And I’ve been to a few festivals over the years. I was at the 1972 Los Angeles Filmex screening of Luis Bunuel’s film “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” the first time he’d ever attended a public screening of one of his films, and the audience that night was pretty rowdy, too.

The truth is attending SIFF, which I’ve done more on than off since 1994 (and once in the late 1980s), is a dream come true for a movie fan — an event at which it is (or used to be) possible to see as many as five (maybe even six) films in a single day in as many different languages.

And we have Darryl Macdonald to largely thank for that. The same Darryl Macdonald who died last month at age 70.

Along with Jim Duncan and Dan Ireland, Macdonald founded SIFF in 1976. It grew from a smallish affair, screening just 18 movies, into one of the biggest festivals in the U.S., screening some 433 films (narrative, documentaries and shorts) in 2018.

The 2019 festival ran for 25 days and attracted some 140,000 moviegoers.

Macdonald left SIFF in 2003 and moved to Palm Springs, Calif., where he had served as the artistic director of the Palm Springs International Film Festival from 1989 to 1993. He rejoined the Palm Springs fest and left for good in 2016.

SIFF released a statement honoring Macdonald for his efforts: “His vision, leadership, creativity, and passion for film was the foundation of SIFF, and his loss will be felt across the industry,” the statement said.

“Under Darryl’s leadership, the festival grew into the beloved institution that is now a cornerstone of the Seattle arts and cultural community,” the statement concluded. “He leaves a legacy of a city with a great passion for film and discovery. Our deepest condolences go out to his family and friends.”

For obvious reasons, SIFF 2020 never took place. If it does rebound in 2021, it will be because so many people around not just the state but the whole country believe in the enduring power of cinema.

Just the way Darryl Macdonald did.