<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;">While this is all fascinating, I think there is a more fundamental issue at hand. The festival circuit is huge now. Every little community has a film festival. They are all on the Freeway and they all charge people for entries. Even the little tiny ones. However, if you’re a famous filmmaker or a friend of the programmers, you can tapped directly and they often wave the fees. It is ridiculously expensive for independent filmmakers to break into festivals. Filmmakers need to craft their careers to ease into it. And filmmakers who know English go much further than anyone else because of it. Some years ago the Ann Arbor Film Festival fired its programmer, partly because he was letting all this friends into the festival free but charging everyone else for submission (and not everyone was being properly viewed—typical, I suspect). To their credit, the Ann Arbor Film Festival has a code of ethics and operates in a righteously transparent way. <a href="https://www.aafilmfest.org/statement-of-integrity">Check this out</a>. ) I think these fake festivals are insignificant compared to the real festivals that don’t actually give their (paid) submissions a fair shake. <div><br></div><div>A personal example: our film <i>The Big House </i>showed around the world at many festivals and got distribution across Japan. If I submitted the film to the same festivals, I doubt they’d pick it up. But Soda’s name was attached and he could directly contact the festivals he’s already participated in…..</div><div><br></div><div>Markus</div><div><br></div><div><br id="lineBreakAtBeginningOfMessage"><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Aug 25, 2024, at 5:29 PM, Aaron Gerow via KineJapan <kinejapan@mailman.yale.edu> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;">Thanks, Jasper. Searching online, it seems people are making a distinction between fake film festivals and pseudo film festivals. The latter is like the ones you mention, which do things like give everyone an award but make you pay for it, barely do any screenings, etc. But they do exist and they do something, though nothing like a full fledged film festival. The former, however, only take entry fees and then disappear. A total scam. These seem to be increasing in number since COVID. There are now a number of guides online on how to spot fake and pseudo film festivals. <div><br></div><div>Aaron Gerow<br><div><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>8/25/24 午後12:07、Jasper Sharp <jasper_sharp@hotmail.com>のメール:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div><meta charset="UTF-8"><div class="elementToProof" style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sadly an all too common phenomenon, especially since the advent some time ago now of online submission websites like Film Freeway where filmmakers pay a submission fee to various events of dubious legitimacy and find not only do their films not reach an audience, they don't reach critics or juries either. All you get in return for your money is a jpeg of some festival Laurels to add to your poster and promotional blurb.</div><div class="elementToProof" style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">This has been going on for years, especially in North America, but also numerous small towns in the UK. I remember reading one such report in the Guardian about the Swansea Bay Film Festival as far back as 2011:<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jun/27/swansea-bay-film-festival-disaster" id="LPlnk">https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jun/27/swansea-bay-film-festival-disaster</a></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br></div><div class="elementToProof" style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The object lesson here is if you can't get a film into an established film festival that has a reputation and a sizeable online presence, you probably shouldn't bother submitting.</div><div class="elementToProof" style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br></div><div id="Signature" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><div dir="ltr" id="divtagdefaultwrapper" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div style=""><br></div><div style="font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><span style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);"><b><i><a href="http://www.creepinggarden.com/" target="_blank" id="OWA80559fb6-1fe9-0e57-2321-413083727222" class="OWAAutoLink" style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);">The Creeping Garden</a></i></b></span><i> </i>- A Real-Life Science-Fiction Story about Slime Moulds and the People Who Work With them, directed by Tim Grabham and Jasper Sharp. </div><div style="font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">Available now on Dual-Format Blu-ray/DVD from<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);"><a href="https://arrowfilms.com/product-detail/the-creeping-garden-dual-format/FCD1435" id="OWA7d80d1fa-cf80-a685-e95c-584e3b68936f" class="OWAAutoLink" title="https://arrowfilms.com/product-detail/the-creeping-garden-dual-format/FCD1435
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