Response to Blackboard Reading: Festivals of Their Own

I found this reading to be very helpful when it comes to interpreting what makes a film festival so important and how they were started. I did not realize prior to this reading that film festivals started in foreign countries such as France, who had Cannes Film Festival, and then were followed by American film festivals that are more well known today, such as Sundance. When I continued to read about filmmaker Michael Williams and his BYOF Film Festival (Light + Screen in New York), I learned more about how film festivals are one of the best ways to circulate your work with the hope it gets noticed by mainstream, big-time film industries. However, the article goes on to say that that Light + Screen altered their feature-films only rule to accommodate the acceptance of short films of varying genres as well (which eventually escalated to Monday Night Shorts at the Freight Salon, ran by Victoria Clark, producer). For me, this also means that film festivals are a way for filmmakers to come together and view specific genres which they can then discuss afterwards. Following these festivals, audience feedback to artists' films was beginning to take root through a festival known as the Nomad VideoFilm Festival, which was also a traveling film festival. Mostly amateur filmmakers submitted their work, and this aspect of audience feedback reminded me of what are now our Q & A panels, which are so important in order for the participants of a festival to learn from each other as well as give each other pointers. As far as straying away from genre-specific goes, there are Underground Film Festivals, such as Cucalorous, which allow all types of genres to be screened and are often separated into different viewing blocks. This entire reading reaffirmed the stance that film festivals are important for a multitude of reasons: the networking amongst filmmakers, accommodations for all types of audiences, and the endless opportunities to learn from other filmmakers.