Jason tells you how to see everything at Indiefest (in many ways)

Woo hoo, Indifest starts tonight! I've missed all of the music fest (wanted to catch a bit, but I've been crazy busy) and Indiefest has only 3 TBA slots to fill. I'm hoping they choose just one movie to fill all slots, otherwise I will be in trouble. Anyway, let's start with the whole schedule:


If you look at it for a while, what first jumps out--after the three TBA screenings in the second week--is that the first week (Feb-4 to Feb 11) is completely different than the second week (Feb-12 to Feb-18). So this is really 2 different 1 week festivals stuck together (at least in terms of "solving" the festival). Now if you stare at the first week for a while, you might notice something (highlighted in grey):


Three movies--LIMBO LOUNGE, LESS ADOLESCENT, and GAMES OF TELEPHONE--form a little ring unto themselves. That is, whatever I choose to see in the first time slot directly affects the other two but has no effect on anything else. What's less obvious is that the rest of the movies in this first week have the exact same relationship, in a much larger ring, leading to two solutions (times 2 solutions for the 3 movies in grey, so 4 non-trivial solutions just for the first week). I've already defaulted to the 7:15 show opening night instead of the 9:30, but those are two trivial variations that make 8 total solutions to week one. These solutions (leaving the small ring in grey0 are:


and:



Okay, so let's look at the second week. The first thing that jumps out is that there is only one showing of LOVE BITES: The 80s Power Ballad Singalong (on Valentine's night). It will be annoying as hell, and I'll probably hate myself for being there, but as a completeness freak I just gotta do it. But that propogates out like thus (movies I have to see are in green):


Big important takeaway: I cannot see the TBA screening at 5 pm on Sunday, Feb. 14th without missing something else. Remember that, it's very important!!

Now I can simply do the same thing with the remaining screenings as I did with week one. It might not be obvious, but when you play around with it there are two distinct solutions to week 2. They are:


and:


And that's how you do it (in 8 non-trivial ways). But wait, what about those TBA screenings? Well, remember I can't see the one on 5 pm Sunday, Feb. 14th. And you'll notice that both of my week 2 solutions involve seeing 1 TBA with something else playing at the time of the other TBA. That means simply this: The three remaining TBA slots must be filled with the same movie, or else I will not be able to see everything! If the good people behind the scheduling get 2 or 3 movies into those TBA slots, I'll have to make some hard choices and miss my first Indiefest movie since I've started attending (in 2002).