[Frameworks] Current situation with Film Festivals

[Fred Camper]

Two questions:

Has the number of entries gone up so much because of the cheapness and  
availability of video?

and, for the people who evaluated film festival entries:

Is the average quality, in terms of aesthetic merit, of the entries  
now higher, about the same, or lower, than, say, ten years ago?

Back in the days of celluloid only, and before grants, and before film  
schools provided access to equipment, many of the "experimental" films  
that got made were made out of urgent personal necessity, because the  
maker felt she or he *had* to make them.

Something I've written before, but which I often find worth repeating:  
Brakhage once hat when he started reading Freud, the first thing he  
understood was, "Here is a man trying to save his own life." Years  
later I asked Brakhage if he could have also been talking about his  
own filmmaking. He replied, "Yes."

Fred Camper
Chicago