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Fletcher’s top post at
HIFF slashed to
part-time status

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By Tim Ryan
Star-Bulletin

The film programmer who helped bring to last year's Hawai'i International Film Festival some of the most notable films in its 20-year history says he's "stunned and surprised" to find his position will be reduced to part-time status.

Bruce Fletcher moved to Hawaii from San Francisco to join HIFF after being told that a successful, profitable event would ensure his position.

"I came to Hawaii because I understood I was being hired for a full-time job, not a contractual one," said Fletcher. "Considering the scope of programming, I'm stunned it's been cut."

Fletcher said he would not have taken the HIFF job if it had been a contractual position.

Fletcher's performance with HIFF, programming the spring and November festivals, was to be the basis for whether he would receive a salary increase, sources said. His full-time status would be retained if the November festival ended in the black, they said. Fletcher declined comment on the matters.

The recent November festival was the most successful in the event's history with some 55,000 paid attendance -- 7,000 more than in 1999 -- assuring HIFF of at least breaking even, said Chuck Boller, HIFF executive director. HIFF's annual budget is $780,000.

Boller told Fletcher in December about the job change, offering the programmer the part-time post beginning early this summer. Fletcher declined because he couldn't afford to live in Hawaii on a low salary while supporting an infant with his wife, a neo-natal intensive care nurse.

Fletcher, who was not eligible for severance pay, has begun a job search on the West Coast.

When told of Fletcher's comments, Boller, who remembers Fletcher saying he would consider the position, said, "That's news to me. Maybe it's wishful thinking on my part."

Boller added that there's no reason to hire a full-time film programmer, a job that for 19 of the HIFF's 20 years was performed by its executive director.

Fletcher was hired by HIFF in February as a film programmer/program coordinator after former HIFF director Christian Gaines was fired a month earlier. The Canada-born Fletcher, who had worked as a HIFF volunteer in 1997 under Gaines, was paid $35,000 last year, sources said.

Hiring Fletcher, HIFF's first full-time and "separate" film programmer was necessary after Gaines' firing because the organization's spring film festival was just months away and "we had no one to program it," said Boller who was hired as the festival's executive director in April.

"Identifying the film you want want is only part of the responsibility and not that difficult," Boller said. "Going after the films and physically getting them here is the other, perhaps more difficult aspect. It's the major part of the job."

Boller said he will take over some programming duties working in conjunction with HIFF's Film Programming Committee headed by board member Dwight Damon.

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