Questions to Festival Programmers
It happens quite often. Mails arrive with sad news – ”they” did not take my film, nobody likes it, what should I do? Filmmakers are disappointed, the film that took them a couple of years to make are rejected by festival after festival. Why, is there something wrong with the film. The mail often deals with a film that I have seen and maybe even written positively about on filmkommentaren. I mostly choose the easy answer, which in most cases also is the right one: don’t worry, you have made a good film, it will find its festival(s). And there are a lot of festivals and if you are not taken for idfa or DOKLeipzig or cph:dox or Sundance, there are other quite as good for your film. And there are so many good festivals nowadays, in Europe and in other parts of the world.
Nevertheless, the question remains whether we know enough about the festival’s profiles and if the selection process is open to everyone. How many are involved in the first selection process before you reach those programming, the programmer(s) or curators as they are called today. Do those who screen as the first see the whole film or just the first 10 minutes…
Indiewire has made an article (link below) on this issue – ”5 questions you always wanted to ask a documentary festival programmer” – it deals with American festivals and is very informative, but the same questions could be directed to European festival programmers.
I have been invited to ask questions to festival people at the upcoming Jihlava International Film Festival (photo) – hope to get wiser on the role and way of working of different festivals.
