AFL Bulletin matters...

[Stephen Cremin]

I've been meaning to write this email for months and months, but not sure
how to approach it.  Hmmm.  Apologies for the incoherence of this email in
advance.

Most of you receive the Asian Film Library Bulletin every week and you'll
have noticed that I dropped the link section in the latest issue: a
collection of weekly abstracts of online articles on Asian film.  I
introduced this section in January to boost the amount of "original" content
in the Bulletin.  I've had several approaches to license content from the
Bulletin so I wanted to beef it up a little.  I'm thinking of introducing it
as a separate email later this week which allows the main section to be more
timely and gives the article section more space to grow.

Since this is the first time that the Bulletin seems to be in a position to
have an income - by which I mean by the end of the year - I wanted to open
it up to outside contributions: article abstracts (print and online), film
synopses, TV drama synopses, obituaries ... anything which could be argued
to be objective at around around 100 words (+/- 25%).  Several of the
licensing approaches have been from film business websites launching later
this year, so perhaps original film business articles have a place too.

Many of you are aware that I've spent most of the last seven years working
on bilingual Asian film databases, part of which was published in book form
in 1998.  I was going to chip into the recent IMDb debate on this list, but
others raised my own concerns about fair payment, etc.  The open source
movement works for software development because programmers have high-paying
day jobs.  That isn't the case with Asian film academia so an online Asian
film database needs mechanisms to pay contributors properly.  At some point
I'm coming back for help writing thousands of synopses and biographies.

Finally, with this email I also want to encourage Kinejapan members to write
more film reviews.  Whether you post them on the Kinejapan website or set up
your own domain name, I'm very happy to link to them from within the
Bulletin.  I can't guarantee hit counts, but subscriber numbers are pretty
steady at the 4200 mark, the majority of whom work professionally in Asian
film as filmmakers, sales agents, distributors, festival programmers,
journalists, etc.  Same goes for interviews and academic essays.  And do
bring your writing to my attention offlist in case I overlook it.

Well, contact me directly - asianfilmlibrary at mac.com - if you're interested
in contributing to the Bulletin in some way.  There's an enormous breadth of
talent on the Kinejapan list so I haven't approached anybody directly.  It's
a free-for-all.

Stephen Cremin


PS: If you haven't seen the Bulletin and would like a sample, or a free
subscription, email me directly.