The TCM Classic Film Festival, running this year from April 24-27 for its 16th annual edition, comes at a pivotal time for the network and the state of classic cinema as a whole.
As a new generation of cinephiles flock to vintage film screenings across Los Angeles and beyond, the TCM Classic Film Festival is meeting the moment with Tiktoks and creators helping spread the word.
Beginning in January, TCM hosted a video series titled “New Voices of Film,” where three content creators and impassioned cinema lovers presented a film of their choosing to program on the network. The selections ranged from the Douglas Sirk melodrama “All That Heaven Allows,” Billy Wilder’s “A Foreign Affair” to the pre-code classic “Merrily We Go to Hell.” But in order to reach younger audiences, TCM has also focused its efforts across social media, with short-form videos on TikTok and Instagram drawing bridges between contemporary and older films.
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Videos included Clara Bow in “It” having a “brat” summer in the 1920s. Or the “Challengers” love triangle being compared to the likes of Ernst Lubitsch’s “Design for Living.”
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These TikTok and Instagram videos have caught the eye of Isabel Custodio, the YouTube creator behind “Be Kind Rewind,” who was featured in TCM’s “New Voices of Film.” Her female-centric history channel has amassed 330,000 subscribers.
“They’re using modern slang or a TikTok vernacular within the context of a classic film. They’re opening new audiences up to the visuals using the parlance that they’ve already recognized, which I think is a really smart strategy,” Custodio tells Variety. “When I was at the TCM Film Festival a couple of years ago, the higher-ups were having a conversation with the members club and that was something they were really enthusiastic about.”
Based at Hollywood Boulevard’s historic movie palaces including the TCL Chinese Theatre, the Egyptian Theatre and the El Capitan, the festival’s range of offerings look to appeal to a wide audience, including mainstream moviegoers — and the festival will soon have insights based on how many younger film lovers show up.
Take the opening night selection “The Empire Strikes Back,” which kicks off the festival April 24. Then there are beloved Oscar winners like 1942’s “Mrs. Miniver.” Plus, lesser-known classics like 1935’s “Diamond Jim” with Edward Arnold and Jean Arthur, which are thought of as the “deep cuts” for the “real TCM heads.” Films from the 1960s and beyond in several genres, from “Mothra” to “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and “Car Wash,” help to broaden the “classic film” designation.
As the TCM Classic Film Festival places the network in the spotlight for four days, giving movie lovers a glimpse into year-around programming, executive director Genevieve McGillicuddy believes it’s the perfect opportunity to embrace a “multi-generational mix.” However, she notes the demographics of the festival haven’t changed “too dramatically over the years.”
“There’s no singular mandate that we’re trying to go after a particular demographic, but we really want to make sure we’re representing the depth and breadth of film history,” McGillicuddy says. “We know our fans are looking for that.”
In addition to film screenings, the festival often features hand and footprint ceremonies. This year, Michelle Pfeiffer will be honored at the TCL Chinese Theatre on April 25, along with a screening of “The Fabulous Baker Boys” from 1989.
For Brandon Johnston, an L.A.-based TikTok creator who was also featured in “New Voices of Cinema” for his devotion to film history, a festival like TCM provides a rare opportunity to see living legends discuss and celebrate their work in-person. That especially applies to people visiting the festival from outside of L.A., where rep screenings aren’t as common.
“We’re nearing the end of the period where you can have these true Golden Age stars coming and talking about these films,” Johnston says. “I’ve tried to make it to every screening I can where someone is there that I’m like, ‘This might be one of the last few chances I have to hear them talk first-person about this experience.’”
In the months since David Lynch’s death, these sentiments ring even more true. When deciding which guests to bring in, an important approach for McGillicuddy and TCM is to extend their reach outside of academia and experts or scholars.
“Jennifer Grant, Cary Grant’s daughter, has been at the festival several times to talk about her dad and his work and she’ll be returning this year with ‘To Catch a Thief,’” McGillicuddy says. “Another example is Lol Crowley, the cinematographer who won an Oscar for ‘The Brutalist.’ He shot that film in VistaVision, so we’ve invited him to help introduce one of the films we’re [also] showing in that format.”
Another conversation that TCM has been grappling with “since the inception of programming,” McGillicuddy says, is what it means to screen films with outdated or offensive content. Take, for instance, TCM’s panel discussion back in 2019 on “The Complicated Legacy of Gone With The Wind,” which focused on one of the most dissected and revisited classic films of its era.
These internal conversations often carry over to the festival, too.
“It’s important that we present films and not just [decide not to] show them — we think there is value in understanding the context of why a movie was made at a certain time with representation and stereotypes,” McGillicuddy says. “That context is really important to everything that we do. It’s the DNA of the network.”
Johnston shares a similar sentiment. “If you contextualize it too much, you run the risk of being dismissive of it,” he says. “Like, we need to talk about how bad conditions were and that obviously there was racism. But we have to balance it. It was also a huge accomplishment — one, for [Hattie McDaniel] to do the film and two, to win the Oscar for it. If you don’t try to balance the scales enough, you can push history to a place where you’re just saying that it’s all regressive.”
As the festival draws back both former attendees and people looking to dive into these films for the first time, Custodio notes how it’s one of the few remaining opportunities for classic cinema lovers to celebrate their shared love in the same space.
“You can grab a drink, sit, maybe there will be a talkback, but people will be hanging out. They’ll talk to each other in line and everybody is curious about what everybody else wants to see,” Custodio says. “It doesn’t feel like a film festival where people are just there angling to get the seat at the next big thing, right? They’re there because they love it and are investing money to see something they love on the big screen — maybe for the first time.”
