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Kim Voynar

By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com

How Do You Fix What’s Broken with Film Fests

Is the film festival model as it stands now broken, from the standpoint of filmmakers? And is there a way to fix that such that filmmakers can use fests to their advantage while still ensuring that fests also serve the needs of their audience?

I was reading this piece over on indieWIRE today about the distribution model of indie film October Country (good film), which reminded me that the other day I was pondering film festivals (yes, again).

Film Threat ran a piece on Monday about the New Mexico International Film Festival, which filmmaker Justin Eugene Evans is attempting to build as a way of breaking the film fest mold — or at least, challenging certain assumptions of the film fest model — by experimenting with ways to create a business model that monetizes fests for the filmmakers.

Which isn’t to say anyone’s ever going to get rich off their film showing in a festival, even with the things the fledgling New Mexico fest is proposing, like reimbursing travel expenses for certain filmmakers, providing free hotel rooms, letting filmmakers set up and sell merchandise (an idea the Oxford Film Fest tried out last year), even sharing the box office gross with “selected filmmakers.”

But as of right now, with 13 days left to go on the fest’s Kickstarter page, the fest has only received pledges of just over $1200 toward an $8000 goal. Which, frankly, doesn’t really surprise me … I know all kinds of indie filmmakers, and for the most part they are not independently wealthy people and what money they do have goes to pay the rent and fund their next film.

And while they might be glad to submit their film to a fest that actually offers them the opportunity to make money back on their film rather than costing them just to have the film in the fest at all, they are unlikely to support the kickoff of any fest by funding it to begin with. If you build it, they will come … but they aren’t going to pay to build it.

Now, a couple things came to mind as I was reading both these pieces today. One is that one of the challenges for any fest is to build credibility — if you are a new fest, how do you interest filmmakers in showing their film at your fest when you don’t have any sort of “prestige” factor around your fest’s name yet? And how do you build a reputation for showing quality films, thereby encouraging audiences to turn out for your fest, when you’re still building just having some name recognition for your fest at all?

The folks at smaller fests like Oxford and DeadCenter (in my hometown of OKC) and countless other smaller regional fests can tell you what a challenge that can be, even if you have good fundraisers and solid local support for the arts. And without money, how do you afford to do things like give filmmakers back their submission fees, and give them half the box office take, and pay for travel? And etc … fests are not cheap.

And while on the one hand Evans has a kind of cool idea about having the New Mexico fest “travel” around the state and be in a different location each year, on the other hand … WOW. Logistically, and from a fund-raising standpoint, that seems to me to just be making it exponentially harder to get the idea off the ground. Wouldn’t you lose a lot of what could be ongoing momentum gained by having your fest in one city where you can get embedded with the arts community, build awareness in one town with cinema fans, and generate fund-raising to support your fest?

By moving around every year, it seems like you’d be starting over every year, and from a branding standpoint, it might be harder to build an identity for the fest by not being associated with one location. But then again, I don’t know that another fest has ever tried to do it this way, so maybe Evans will surprise the hell out of everyone.

I do agree that the fest model as it stands is largely broken, and that the veritable explosion of smaller fests makes it harder and more expensive for filmmakers to promote their films that way, even if it’s also a Good Thing in that more fests = more people exposed to indie film. And I applaud Evans for being bold in not just bitching about what’s broken, but leading the way by trying to fix it.

I’m going to get in touch with Evans to chat him up a bit about his ideas and his fest; in the meantime, though, I would love to hear from some indie filmmakers about your thoughts on the value of film festivals generally, how much it costs you to attend fests with your film, whether what the New Mexico fest is attempting interests you, and what kinds of things you want and need in a festival to best promote your film and make it worth your while.

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6 Responses to “How Do You Fix What’s Broken with Film Fests”

  1. Hey Kim, what a great read. It is incredibly difficult to setup a film festival let alone come up with a model to help the filmmakers that attend it.

    Although highly commendable, it is incredibly hard to set up a new festival in a different location every year. Logistically, to have a working festival takes time, you need to build relationships, earn credibility and have incredible managerial skills to get people to work in harmony.

    Is the film festival model in general broken? I think for indie filmmakers, the value in any film festival is the knowledge and contacts gained. No one makes money with short films, unless they are sponsored. But sometimes there is the chance that the exposure leads to a studio deal for a first feature.

  2. Bryan Lee says:

    Great Article. I volunteer for my local film festival and its difficult just to get enough funding to run the festival itself, so there’s little left over to give back to the film makers besides the awards we hand out for the best films.

    I think for the filmmakers in our festival, they are just looking for exposure and the ability to say their film has screened in multiple festivals will give them more credence for bigger festivals down the road.

  3. Good read Kim. Thank you. I look forward to your followup after you’ve spoken to Evans.

  4. there are many hotel rooms these days that are quite cheap and at bargain prices _

  5. i would alway prefer hotel rooms with flannel sheets and cotton beddings, i love the feel of those fabric ‘`*

  6. Kaylee Lopez says:

    i had a huge crush on Sandar Bullock when i was still in college, for me, she is the prettiest actress ‘,:

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon