YUBARI DIES, LOCARNO IN TROUBLE, HKIFF THRIVING

It's been a lousy couple of years for film festivals with budget cuts, administrative setbacks and a host of tiny monsters making life miserable. Tokyo's Fantastic Film Festival died a dog's death recently and now Yubari is gone and Locarno ain't feeling too good.

The Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival has been running since 1990, showing great heaps of horror and sci fi from Japan and elsewhere and while it was a b-list festival it was definitely much loved and a real destination for a lot of people. But the local government is basically bankrupt and so they had to make new priorities and a fantastic film festival wasn't one of them. They provided well over half the money for the fest each year and without it... well, goodbye, Yubari.

Now Marco Solari, the president of the Locarno International Film Festival, is getting down in the dumps about his festival's future:

"For the first time I have real budgetary worries...I pose the question to everyone, to the politicians, business and culture: Do you want this festival? It is not a question that they should give us a present. The prerequisites for a good festival which can hold its own internationally are there. But this festival must be financed."

There are a million little things going wrong at Locarno this year: a hotel they relied on has been turned into luxury condos, they have to house guests in a nearby town, operating costs are up, too many people accepted invites to this year's festival, Swatch withdrew as a sponsor and they are facing their 60th anniversary Jubilee celebration next year. The festival cost US$7.9 million this year and without financing it will have to cut back and restructure next year, which Solari fears will take it out of the running as a major European festival.