From: 40 Frames (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Sep 09 2006 - 13:16:04 PDT
> It is great what Media City is and can do, but let's not forget that
> they've got the deep pockets of the Canadian government to make this
> possible. For those of us struggling to run festivals stateside,
> it's really not as simple as waving a magic wand & doing away with
> entry fees. (My fest, FLEX, only charges $10, and is free for alums
> & foreign entries.) As has been pointed out here before, none of us
> are doing this in order to fleece the filmmakers. Most of us are
> filmmakers. And most of us hate entry fees as much as you do. But
> in the absence of generous government and/or institutional subsidies,
> they may be necessary.
>
> 2 cents,
> Roger
Roger,
I appreciate your comments, and certainly understand the sentiment,though
I have to say I still disagree....just one of those dividing subjects I
suppose, and not necessarily something we have to agree on.
That films get shown is indeed very important. I would just prefer to see
that more barriers to showing films get eliminated for filmmakers. A
festival is thinking about their costs, meanwhile the filmmaker (if
submitting work to festivals with fees) has to cough up a considerable
amount.
Let's say everyone charged as little as your festival, $10. If one is
submitting to let's say 50 different festivals that's $500, and were just
talking submission fees, not shipping costs (which many festivals aren't
covering), and the fact that the festival is not returning tapes/DVDs
which means the filmmaker has to pay more in duplication costs since the
festivals don't allow for bicycling tapes/DVDs. (Who knows perhaps in the
near future filmmakers will be delivering AV files instead tapes/DVDs, but
there's other issue regarding this process, such as unauthorized
duplication and distribution.)
There does remain the option for a filmmaker to make a formal request (by
phone, email, snail mail) to have the fee waived, but this seems to me
another barrier and the amount of time one would need to devote to this
project stacks up when looking at the total number of submissions.
I'm not saying it's easy here in the States, and certainly Canada has some
amenities that are hard to come by for artists living/working in the U.S.
(Oregon in particular has very little opportunities for filmmakers, and
the Oregon Arts Commission does NOT even recognize filmmaking as an
artform worthy of funding at the State level), but I think its important
to look at other perspectives, particularly the filmmaking side. If
funding existed for filmmakers at the local or state level, and was a
reasonable amount (our regional arts council barely provides enough to
cover project costs, forget about paying yourself), then paying small
festival submission fees may not seem like such a big deal.
Regards,
Alain
> On Sep 9, 2006, at 4:06 AM, 40 Frames wrote:
>
>>> CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
>>>
>>> MEDIA CITY, INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF EXPERIMENTAL FILM & VIDEO ART
>>> WINDSOR, ONTARIO, CANADA
>>>
>>> Media City is seeking submissions for its thirteenth edition,
>>> February 13-17, 2007
>>>
>>> Entry deadline: November 24, 2006
>>>
>>> Absolutely no entry fees!
>>
>>
>>
>> Brilliant! Perhaps others should take cues....no entry fees.
>>
>>
>> Alain
================
40 FRAMES
Alain LeTourneau
Pamela Minty
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Skype ID: frames40
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