From: Peter Snowdon (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Jun 04 2009 - 01:58:01 PDT
Curious, but this made me think: I don't think I've ever NOT received a notification from an experimental/AG film festival, whether my film was rejected or selected.
However, several times since I started dealing with more mainstream fiction-biased festivals, I've heard nothing back, and only discovered after the fact by checking on the festival website that my film was not selected. Some of the larger festivals even include disclaimers in their application conditions, to the effect that you should not expect notification if not selected -- or even if selected (are they serious about that?!). Still, some of the ones that didn't notify me were festivals which hadn't made their policy on this clear in advance.
OTOH, I have several times had films selected and even screened without my being notified directly, even via my Trash/Spam can... So there's obviously an element of cyber-serendipity/human error can creep in!
However, my favourite rejection note was one I received recently by email, with the subject heading: "[Film Title]: Exclusion from XXX Festival".
I was expecting to read that I had sent a preview DVD which had destroyed three Power Books before self-destructing itself/provided them with 7 JPEGs in 287 dpi and a short biographical note when what they needed was 6 TIFFS in 349 dpi plus a photocopy of my life insurance policy/been identified by one of their interns as 'the' Peter Snowdon who was briefly associated with the Red Brigade in the early 70s and still had several arrest warrants outstanding in their country...
But it turned out this was just their term for rejection.
Now that's what I call getting a boy's hopes up...:)
Here's what worries me, tho: roughly half the festivals that have screened a film of mine this year have asked me whether I am happy for them to screen from the preview DVD -- and one or two have even insisted that this is the only thing they can do, even tho they had seemed to offer other screening formats when I applied. Has anyone else noticed this trend?
Peter
On 6/3/09 7:01 AM, "Caryn Cline" <email suppressed> 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>.
----- End Original Message -----
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.