IAC DISCUSSION FORUMS

There are hundreds of film festivals worldwide on Film Freeway. Many of them are dubious ways of making money, I suspect. You pay your non-refundable fee, then you're told by email eventually that your film has not been accepted.
Something remarkable happened yesterday. Four of my films were accepted into three different festivals on the same day!
The GOLDEN SHORT FILM FESTIVAL in Italy has officially accepted my Woody Allen pastiche BLUE LADY which was awarded just 3 stars at this year's BIAFF.
THUNDR SHORT FILM SHOWCASE has officially selected the off-the-wall drama NOBODY ASKED which was given a measly 2 stars last year at BIAFF, seemingly because the judges didn't understand it.
MONTHLY INDIE SHORTS has officially selected two of my films made this year, CONRAD and TOPPY which will be entered for BIAFF 2021.
I'm quite chuffed. Even if the films don't win anything I feel that it's quite an honour to have films accepted, and I can put the appropriate laurels onto the posters.
If anyone else has had success with films being selected, perhaps they'd like to recommend the film festivals in question.

Yes, I do have films accepted for exhibition at these festivals from time to time. Just recently my new film The Orchard has been selected for about three. I usually choose events from FilmFreeway that take place in the UK but sometimes it's difficult to tell. Howard, how do you use the laurels? I can't be bothered to go back to the edit to add anything, besides, I've usually deleted it all by then. It's interesting that my (and it seems your) BIAFF higher graded films do worse at these festivals than some lower graded ones. It's a pity that all current film viewing is probably on computers, we make films for big screens or big televisions, how things are changing!

It is best to avoid the big, famous Festivals with screenings often of less than 1% of entries; most of us are just financial fodder for festivals such as Sundance. I have suggested that Film Freeway have the Festivals list the percentage of entries screened; not well received as this would show which to avoid.

I have personal knowledge of two Festivals with good level of screenings; DOCUTAH where if I remember correctly Michael has had three entries screened and this year the screenings are at 20%; 60 entries to be screened in November to usually very well attended audiences. The other is Desertscape; open to all genres so would be a good for narrative films. Also very well attended. Both closed for this year.

My wish is for screening of my films to an audience; I like to be present to get some feed back; awards are nice but not important compared with audience reaction. Which is why BIAFF is so important; we don't have to agree with the judge's comments but they are a critical review of our work.

ned c

Michael, I never add the laurels to the film itself but I occasionally create a poster and put the laurels on that. I used to make a poster for every film, with a tag line, but it’s too time-consuming now as I make so many films. And you’re quite right, it DOES seem that lower awards at BIAFF are given to the films which are more likely to be officially accepted in other festivals. Strange, that.

It was a great honour that my film NOBODY ASKED was included in an online festival at 7.00 pm this evening:
THUNDR SHORT FILM SHOWCASE
It was selected as one of the Top 8 films officially selected from all the films submitted during August.
The whole show lasted about 50 minutes. NOBODY ASKED was the 7th film in the lineup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdIiWWdN8Mg
The results of the competition will be emailed to me within the next 2 or 3 days apparently.
Clearly the THUNDR organisers saw more in this film than the BIAFF judges who awarded it 2 stars!