Calgary's film festival gets a new hashtag to avoid confusion
#ciff booted because it was used by other festivals and organizations
If your hashtag leads your social media followers to a furniture fair in China, it might be time to create a better hashtag.
That's the thinking behind the Calgary International Film Festival's recent decision to drop #ciff and replace it with #calgaryfilm.
The festival, which is gearing up for its Sept. 20 opening gala, made the announcement public this week, in anticipation of an avalanche of autumn social media promoting the event.
"We have for a long time been informally known by our acronym CIFF," said executive director Steve Schroeder. "We have not changed our actual name. It's still the Calgary International Film Festival. It's a great name, and I don't foresee that ever changing."
The problem, Schroeder explained, is that Calgary is far from the only city hosting an international film festival, and many of them also use the hashtag #ciff.
"The challenge you run into with an acronym CIFF is that there are dozens, scores, potentially hundreds of other organizations — not just film festivals — in the world that have the same hashtag. It's massively confusing."
That can be costly, when it comes to trying to communicate your message to media gatekeepers.
"In the world of social media, any number of things can be #ciff. It's global, so it's really confusing, and especially because a lot of those film festivals happen at the same time of year," said Schroeder. "We're competing with Camden, and Chicago and the Congo."
The hashtag #ciff also refers to film festivals in Cleveland, Cardiff, Cairo, Chatauqua, and Canberra — as well as the Chinese International Furniture Fair and the Children's Investment Fund Foundation.
Cutting through the hashtag clutter
To cut through the #ciff clutter, they're replacing it with #calgaryfilm, a hashtag that makes perfect sense, Schroeder said.
"Our website, and our email and even Twitter handle has been Calgary Film for many, many, many years," Schroeder said. "Pretty much since we've been online. So we just thought it would make a lot of sense for the actual hashtag to be #calgaryfilm as well."
The festival is busy announcing its slate as well, releasing the lineup of documentaries this week, with more films being announced next week as well.
One of those documentary films is Living Proof, Calgary filmmaker Matt Embry's first-person look at living with multiple sclerosis and the challenges surrounding it.
Other docs of note include Brimstone and Glory, a drone's eye-view of a festival at the fireworks mecca of Tultepec, Mexico; Human Flow, from Chinese artist Al WeiWei, which chronicles the flow of humanity in 23 countries over the course of a year in the life of the migrant crisis; and PACmen, which takes a close look at Ben Carson's run for the Republican nomination in 2016.
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