preamble

i've been spending many hours trolling the interwebs looking for insight on the whole film festival system.

here's the summary:
WE'RE ALL FUCKED

in many cases, even if the film is liked by all the screeners (i.e. volunteers assistants who screen through the thousands of films submitted to a film festival), and then liked by the festival programmers, there's a chance your film might not get in for the following reasons:

1/ there were too many films submitted with the exact same subject. looking at the sundance lineup this year, there seemed to be a lot of docs and non-fiction films about the iraq war. so if they only had 3 spots for slow-paced rock documentaries (cause all the other spots were filled up with iraq war docs) and yours was number 4. you're SOL, buddy and your film gets REJECTED.

2/ the topic doesn't fit within their themes/categories for that year. this means that your film about an up and coming indie rock band just won't make it into a film fest that's decided to curate all the films about the iraq war. too bad for you, sucker, a big red REJECTED sticker is slapped on your film.

3/ the low level screeners don't like your type of film. unfortunately, your ambient, slacker-inspired rock documentary was watched by someone who likes hard-hitting, in-your-face, michael moore-type docs and yours is nothing like that. your film goes into the REJECT pile.

so really, what i'm trying to do here is rationalize the myriad of possibilities surrounding a possible communication of non-acceptance by SXSW.

all inspired by this little post by SXSW's festival director, Matt Dentler.

i'm feeling right now that us getting into SXSW is a bit of a crap shoot.