Jury Duty: To Be Or Not To Be?

Filmmakers and critics weigh in on the pros and cons of being jury members at film festivals

- Rica Arevalo

We reached out to directors Lav Diaz, Jose Javier Reyes, scholar Nick Deo-campo, and critic Tito Valiente to discuss the lesser-known job but very powerful position—jury in film festivals.

Reyes, the 66-year-old director who is a regular jury at local film festivals, namely Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival and the Metro Manila Film Festival, says, “The pros outweigh the cons: You get an exclusive, firsthand glimpse of works of filmmakers, both established and better yet new, and you get to see the direction cinematic creativity is going. The cons: you have to withstand all the works, which you would have otherwise not wasted your time watching. Worse yet, when you have to watch works of your friends and do not have the heart to tell them that they sucked.”

Diaz rubbed elbows with Oliver Stone at the 2017 Busan International Film Festival and has sat down as a jury member at numerous festivals abroad. “You get to watch a lot of films, new ones, with all the perks—a hotel room big enough for a football game, a limousine, a guard, an assistant, sometimes a salary, the best seat in the cinemas, with the shamelessly discriminating tag, Jury Seat,” he muses. A leading figure in “slow cinema” movement, he confesses, “I feel guilty because oftentimes the exercise would become too profligate and decadent. You’re treated like a king.”

How does he handle heated discussions? For him, the best attitude is to listen carefully. “I’ve witnessed bloody discussions, even petty discourses that resulted to dangerous quarrels, and I’ve become an expert now on calming people down,” he adds.