On this Thanksgiving Monday, VanRamblings would like to give thanks to the folks who, each year, make our annual Vancouver International Film Festival possible, focusing accolades on the volunteers, and the hard-
working theatre ‘administrative staff’ hired for the duration of the Festival.
VanRamblings is certainly grateful to the Festival’s full-time administrative staff: longtime Festival Director Alan Franey and able Programme Manager / Senior Programmer, PoChu AuYeung, as well as all of the other fine programmers, administrators and board members, publications, box office, film handling, film and television forum, hospitality, and publicity and promotions folks who make our annual Film Festival a joy for us. Theirs is a sacrifice made for each of us, and for that we should be especially grateful.
In this posting, though, we want to focus most particularly on Iulia Manolescu (pictured above), the so-called VIFF ‘exhibitions assistant’ (we think her contribution merits a title more grand than that of ‘assistant‘), at the Empire Granville 7 Theatre. Iulia, quite simply, has made VanRamblings’ Festival; we believe most heartily that Iulia represents everything that is right and good about our local, annual Vancouver International Film Festival.
Iulia may be designated the exhibitions ‘assistant‘, but throughout the first twelve days of the Festival, this year and last and previous to that, she has been so front-and-centre — as she works one arduous 18-hour day after another, keeping VIFF volunteers, her fellow theatre staff, and grateful (and sometimes difficult) VIFF patrons happy and calm, directed and appreciative of their contribution to our annual Vancouver International Film Festival — that her contribution has proved to be invaluable, and near transcendent.
Certainly VanRamblings (who tends to be a little over-enthusiastic during the Festival, well-meaning with a tendency to exuberance) acknowledges Iulia’s contribution to our personal appreciation of the annual Festival.
Always present with a ready smile, calm in the midst of what seems at times to be madness, ensuring that lines of communication are always kept open, and patron lines move in properly, ready with a kind and thoughtful reply to any question posed to her (we try not to be a bother to Iulia and limit our questions to her, as we see just how ‘in demand’ and available she is to her fellow staff and to patrons), Iulia is a wonder and a miracle of kindness and becoming serenity during the often hectic days of our Film Festival.
Thank you Iulia.
And thank you, once again, to every one of the hundreds of administrative and volunteer staff who continue to make our annual Vancouver International Film Festival the première social and cultural event of the year.
