Festival Entries #1

Today I entered 'ALICE' my film from 2017 into Cinefest film festival. The festival is free to enter and is held at Middlesborough college in May. Last year we attended the festival under the full impression that ALICE was successfully entered/nominated. We sat through the entire screening and award section of the festival only to find the film was not entered at all. There had been a lapse in communication and the organiser of the festival had failed to alert me that the link I provided to the film wasn't 'downloadable'. This is a very strange and lacklustre way to run a festival in the first place. The vast majority of festivals will only accept submissions via film freeway, a platform for filmmakers to store and enter their projects with ease. Long story short, we're going for it again this year for redemption. We were very disappointed last year, even after being told we were nominated for awards. Hopefully this year we will pick up an award at least for ALICE, to ensure that all of our hard work was not in vain. 

I also entered the script of Echoes of Silence into the festival. Last year by late April we were able to make a cut of ALICE just for cinefest. This year, unfortunately we are unable to do the same for Echoes of Silence. It's simply too much work for our editors on top of the fact that two thirds of the film are yet to be shot, and filming will be finalised in early May. Despite all of this I thought I might as well go ahead and enter the script into the screenplay category. Then next year we might be in the same position again in entering our film from the previous year once Echoes of Silence is complete. 

This is the earliest festival entry we have so far. A chunk of the GoFundMe budget will be spent on international film festival entries. As of this week I am embarking on an extensive research project around as many film festivals as we can possibly enter, both national and international. For now I'm focusing on the festivals that I'm aware of (e.g. cinefest). I will 100% be entering Sunderland Shorts and Newcastle Film Festival, as they provide networking opportunities for you by attending the festival in person.