Re: festival responses

From: Pablo Marin (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Jun 03 2009 - 09:34:48 PDT


i agree with Jorge. it's very simple, actually...

best,
pm.
 

--- On Wed, 6/3/09, Jorge Lorenzo Flores Garza <email suppressed> wrote:

From: Jorge Lorenzo Flores Garza <email suppressed>
Subject: Re: festival responses
To: email suppressed
Date: Wednesday, June 3, 2009, 12:56 PM

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I get rejected from festivals more than I get accepted, jeje, and I understand that there are tons of reasons for not getting in.  But most of the festivals don't send a note saying it didn't get in.  I know it is time consuming but a simple yes or no will do it.  It's not for the filmmaker to feel bad about it, there are millions of reasons for getting in or not.  I sometimes get a letter saying that they are sorry they are so late, but the festival is still deciding.  But after that letter, nothing.  Not long ago I had a film shown in a screening in Vienna (I live in Mexico) and I needed to know if the film was to get in elsewhere to have the people at Vienna send the film.  It kind of complicated things because I never knew until I myself took a look at the program (of course, I hadn't made it).
Yes/No is enough.  I don't like those letters that say how good the work is but it couldn't get in because of the amount of high quality work they got from everyone else.  It's the same as saying that your work is good but someone else's is better, jeje.  Oh, and for the tone used, you know it's a no from the first word you read!!  So just something like:  Your work didn't make it, try it again next year, we are happy you considered us.  That's fine with me.

Saludos,

Jorge L.

Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 09:52:54 -0400
From: email suppressed
Subject: Re: festival responses
To: email suppressed

Caryn,

My festival does send out acceptance and rejection emails to each one of our filmmakers, but there are rare instances where things fall through the cracks and an address is left off our list or our message ends up shuffled into their spam folder. We do our best to notify everyone, though we do occasionally here from the angry filmmaker who wasn't told of his or her rejection.

Of course, I would love if we could make the process even more transparent. I would love if we could give rejected films some of the comments and notes we make in screening committee to give them an idea of why we rejected their film, but given that we received over 700 submissions last year alone, it would be a time-consuming effort to say the least.

Best,
Bryan 

On Jun 3, 2009, at 8:01 AM, Caryn Cline wrote:

Dear Frameworkers, 

I’m submitting my experimental films to festivals again, after a hiatus of several years.  When I submitted before, in the early 2000s, I always received a response from the festival, whether my work was accepted or rejected.  Now, I find that festivals that reject my work rarely contact me at all. 

I wonder why this is the case?  I’ve paid a fee to enter, usually, and it seems to me that the very least the programmers, or their interns, can do is to send me a form letter letting me know that my work didn’t make the cut.  It would be even better to receive a thoughtful response with some feedback about my work.  I realize that programmers often have a lot of entries to view and judge, but shouldn’t a response, even a canned response, to each and every filmmaker, be a standard of professional courtesy? 

I know that there are curators and programmers on this list.  I will appreciate hearing their perspectives, as well as those of other filmmakers.  I would also be interested to hear about festivals that do respond to all applicants. 

Thank you,

Caryn Cline
New York City

__________________________________________________________________ For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.

__________________________________________________________________ For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.

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__________________________________________________________________ For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.

__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.