[KineJapan] Fake film festivals

Mon Aug 26 01:49:05 EDT 2024

 It's worth noting the proliferation of, not just fake film festivals, but also fake conferences, fake CFPs, fake universities, fake anything that can be faked and monetized to unethically procure IP, identity, you name it. 
Thomas B

    On Monday, August 26, 2024 at 12:41:40 PM GMT+7, Eija Niskanen via KineJapan <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:  

 We at Helsinki Cine Aasia film festival get often emails from Freeway and other similar, who promise to provide us with films. We have absolutely no need for that, as we select our program ourselves by going to Busan film festival, Tokyo Film Festival, Filmex and Berlinale or such. We also have good contacts to for ex.- Japanese distributors and they can be contacted and asked for screener links. 
I have no idea why any proper festival would need this in-betweener.Eija
ma 26. elok. 2024 klo 2.22 Markus Nornes via KineJapan (kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu) kirjoitti:

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. Check this out. ) I think these fake festivals are insignificant compared to the real festivals that don’t actually give their (paid) submissions a fair shake.  
A personal example: our film The Big House 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…..
Markus

On Aug 25, 2024, at 5:29 PM, Aaron Gerow via KineJapan <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:
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. 
Aaron Gerow

8/25/24 午後12:07、Jasper Sharp <jasper_sharp at hotmail.com>のメール:
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.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:https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jun/27/swansea-bay-film-festival-disaster
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.

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Eija NiskanenProgramming directorHelsinki Cine Aasia, March 14.-17.2024www.helsinkicineaasia.fi
+358-50-355 3189

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