[Frameworks] Film Festivals in General

[William Gazecki]

Excellent post Ken. Thank you. No need to apologize for the length.

I was halfway through reading it and remarked to myself, "this is really
good information" before I looked to see who had written it.

It was nice to see it was you.

Thank you for sharing.

 

William

 

www.williamgazecki.com

 

 

From: FrameWorks [mailto:frameworks-bounces at jonasmekasfilms.com] On Behalf
Of Ken Paul Rosenthal
Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2014 8:36 AM
To: Frameworks Postings
Subject: Re: [Frameworks] Film Festivals in General

 

While volumes can be written on the logistical, psychological, bureaucratic,
nepotistic, and economic challenges and limitations of entering film
festivals in this day and age, I'd like to share one personal motivation and
one anecdote.

 

 

I began entering festivals on the cusp of a time when sending in one's entry
on a 16mm reel was soon to be precluded by mini-dv tapes and DVDs. Given
that my lifelong singular vocational goal (since first grade!) was to teach,
festival entry and acceptance from the outset was all about beefing up my
resume in order to appear as a working artist. After a 10-year teaching
career, I've spent the last four as a touring artist-activist, endeavoring
and enjoying far, far more personal, professional, and monetary satisfaction
than any number of festival acceptances or appearances could ever offer me.
In short, being one's own 'traveling film festival' is evermore attractive
in the face of competing entries, the lack of accountability, and a host of
other problematic issues already broached on this forum that preclude the
worthiness of entering festivals.

 

 

All that said, I still enter festivals with a more pointed eye towards those
that thematically and historically support work of the nature I am entering,
again, largely with the intention to support my applications for grants,
residencies, and other related professional endeavors. Funny thing is,
though I'm making the strongest work of my career (as measured by critical
and popular response), my festival acceptance rate has shrunk considerably
even as the award rate has increased. Most alarming is that some festivals
that have traditionally accepted all of my earlier, less evolved work have
full on stopped accepting my more recent work. 

 

 

As an example, one higher profile experimental fest didn't accept a piece
that I finished this past October. So for only the second time in my career,
I decided to followup with the festival. I received an exceedingly generous
note from the festival director saying they (I'm being gender neutral here)
had previewed 75 per cent of the entries but not mine, and would personally
review my film. Well, they fell over themselves with praise for my piece, so
I asked why it had not been accepted. Turns out that the other 25 per cent
of entries was farmed out to a group of non-filmmaking students to preview!
The director (whom I should point out was only in their second year as
director) was aghast and admitted to being in the process of turning things
around for the better. Furthermore, they pre-accepted my film for the
following year. 

 

 

Point is, this is a well-established festival in the experimental world. How
long had it been farming out previews to students, let alone non-filmmaking
ones?! Please don't ask me to name the festival. Some years back, I named
another even more reknowned fest in this forum that suddenly stopped showing
my work after screening almost all my early pieces, and my attempts to
follow up created a lot of unnecessarily bad blood between myself and the
fest, resulting in what appears to be an unrepairably burnt bridge.

 

 

Sorry for the long post, comrades. I've been trying to hold off sharing any
of my experience over the course of this thread as it the festival game as
been just that: a game with winners and losers, alas. But to conclude on an
up note: festivals at their heart are about collectively sharing and
experiencing work with our audiences. So as a working antidote for our
festival entry blues, why not conscious exploration of the wealth of
possibilities for true independence that are available to filmmakers today
thanks to the relative merits of technology and the internet. Personally, I
have no interest in the internet as a site for online festivals and
screenings. But as a means of building audiences, distribution and sales,
and researching venues and institutions in person screening presentations,
the internet has been indispensable. There's also a ton of micro cinemas and
artist-curators out there--many of whom walk the virtual hallowed halls of
this forum--that program work in a more thematically and interpersonally
conscientious manner. 

 

 

Cheers, Ken



www.maddancementalhealthfilmtrilogy.com

 

www.kenpaulrosenthal.com

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