The County’s, and The Regent’s, new film festival, the County Adaptation Film Festival, took place over the last weekend in September at various venues, from Armoury Square to Closson Chase and Karlo Estates to The Eddie to Macaulay Church Museum. The whole thing was, it must be said, sensational.

Artistic Director Alexandra Seay, joined by The Regent’s new General Manager, John Galway, and a phalanx of co-founders, advisors, fundraisers, programmers, publicists, marketers, designers, and photographers, not to mention a fleet of volunteers, went to town, as they say, funded by a $200,000 grant from the province’s Trillium Foundation.

At the press conference to launch this event, Ms. Seay stressed the festival will consider every kind of adapted content. “We will focus on how screenwriters take the great variety of materials presented to them — an original story, a famous novel, a piece of music, dance, or artwork, even a meal or an experience in nature — and adapt it into the film that we see.”

Ms. Seay anticipated a festival that works across the County’s rich artistic, literary, culinary, agricultural, and viticultural scenes, in conversations with creators of all kinds — artists, farmers, winemakers, and chefs, as well as writers, directors, and producers.

In this, its inaugural outing, the festival engaged film and literature, exploring the ways in which films and books both do, and do not, come together.

Half of all films are based on books. Why don’t we know much about this? Partly because of something endemic to film, which tends to obscure the intricate choreography of collaboration required to make it. Much of what goes on behind the scenes to make a film, as to make a festival, is hidden. Perhaps no one figure so much as the writer.

Maybe this is why my favourite film genre is the ensemble production — from Gosford Park to L.A. Confidential to Clue to anything from Agatha Christie. Like life itself, there is no one principal character. The ensemble reflects what every film is: a sustained, incandescent collaboration that at its best far exceeds the sum of its parts.

CAFF engaged these questions by foregrounding the collaboration that goes on behind the scenes. Most of all, though, it engaged us.

From the opening night gala, to the party afterwards in Armoury Square, and across its many films and conversations, all the way to the closing screening Sunday night of the nearly-pulled Trump biopic The Apprentice, this festival saw full houses and generous audiences. Whether at the films or the conversations, they got all the jokes, clapped at everything, and, to all appearances, enjoyed the proceedings immensely.

The County turned out to support this festival, as it supports everything else — from a new hospital to the Picton Branch Library expansion. The numbers of residents in attendance went far beyond those who came from away — though they were here, too.

This festival will become a major draw. It will attract distinctive speakers, and its unique programming will earn the recognition it deserves for creating a multi-faceted conversation around writing in film. Surer sources of funding than a one-time provincial grant will come. But none of that will be easy. It will take years. Until CAFF gets traction and support, as the forum that bridges the Toronto International Film Festival and the International Festival of Authors — in a setting of outstanding natural beauty, resplendent with award-winning wineries, restaurants, and boutique hotels — it’s going to take a village.

This village.

It’s time we got the recognition we deserve. It’s not just tourism that drives this place. It’s us.

County Arts published a study last week that affirmed what we already know: this place is chock full of artists. Having one’s sense of things confirmed is always satisfying, though, and the details are intriguing. 

The County’s 300 professional artists — painters, sculptors, producers, directors, choreographers, musicians, photographers, and, of course, writers — put PEC, it turns out, in a tie for first place with both Stratford and Niagara-on-the-Lake for most artists per capita in Ontario. This is real news. Both those places are renowned for long-established summer theatre festivals. They are major destinations for arts, culture, and heritage.

That artist head count is just the beginning. The official definition of an “artist” is ridiculously stringent; it rules out all those who kept their day jobs. And alongside its practicing artists, the County is full of people who work in arts-related fields — designers of landscapes, interiors, websites, advertising, and housing; museums and archives workers; fundraisers and administrators; and those in radio, in print, in publishing, and in film. The official 2021 census records 830 County residents who work in arts and culture, or 6.6% of the 12,600 people in the workforce. That’s well above the provincial average of 4.7%. 

Earlier this summer, Tim Jones, the CEO of Base31 and a member of the Order of Canada for his initiatives and leadership in Creative Placemaking, said he wants to make the County as well known for music as Stratford is for theatre. To do so, the Base is not just bringing major musicians to the County every weekend all summer and well into the shoulder seasons. It is building a culture of collaboration.

The partners at Base31 have already made major investments — at last count $55 million — to create a destination founded on the arts. They are not just building a history museum — though they are doing that, too — they are revitalizing 70 acres of picturesque old barracks and massive warehouses, the former Camp Picton, into a work of living art and culture that will draw people from across the country and around the world, both to visit and to live. Around this core, they are building housing modeled on the idea of a campus, a place where people live, work, congregate — and pursue their dreams.

In all of this, PEC Community Partners is only amplifying the culture of community, art, and innovation that brought them here in the first place.

A real and sustained investment in the arts and heritage of the County — its new film festival, its longstanding fine arts tradition, its jazz, chamber, and classical music series, not to mention its stunning heritage architecture and landscapes — is long overdue. Such an investment should form the major part of any “tourism destination management strategy.” Coordinated collaboration in such an enterprise would set the stage for an ensemble of ready actors. The people who live here. Us.

We will make this place all it can be — which is just more of what it already is.