Western Film's cyclical nature

One thing that makes running Western Film interesting / maddening is the unusual cycles it operates under. We are starting to get some of the Oscar product and the Christmas hits and here comes Slack Week which kills all of one playweek and most of another. We have to play as many good movies as we can in March because as soon as exams starts attendance drops no matter what we are playing. The next couple weeks I have good stuff to play but there won't be any students here to see them so I'm holding off so good stuff will start to back up. It may mean smaller movies I would like to play like Little Children might get dropped.
On the other hand we have times like November and sometimes February when we end up playing less than stellar movies only because there isn't anything better to play.

It is better than it used to be. The studios sometimes hold off on letting us play films that are Oscar Nominated. If the movies win they often get rereleased. The Oscars used to be at the end of March so we weren't able to get most of the nominated films until April. Now the Oscars are in February so we can play most of the films in March.

There are no or few students here at what are usually two of the peak movies seasons, summer and Christmas. It kinda works out for Christmas though, the first run theatres would hold anything that is doing well so Western Film probably wouldn't get anything good. The playweek that covers Christmas and New Year's is two weeks long so we would have to play the same movies for two weeks which wouldn't work too well. Plus I get two weeks extra vacation.