11 April 2008

Festival 7.0 (with a twist)

Howdy,

First, some email history for you:

7 March 2008

"Thank you for submitting to the Lake Forest Film Festival. As we received nearly 200 submissions, we were only able to accept a little over 30% of the films. Many deserving films were cut from the program. Unfortunately, your submission will not be shown at this year’s festival."

Our initial thought was that not making the 30% cut probably wasn't a good sign, but these things happen. We've gotten a number of emails just like this one.

Then, out of the clear blue sky, today I got this email.

"I want to apologize for this late notice and incredibly horrible mistake we made when notifying filmmakers, but also want to congratulate you. Your film Gravida, was marked as not accepted, and it is in fact accepted into the Lake Forest Film Festival and is competing in the short live action category. For information in regards to your screening, please visit our website at http://www.lakeforest.edu/life/orgs/film/default.asp.

I am so sorry for this terrible inconvenience, but am delighted to screen your excellent work next weekend!"


This, of course, is something close to an artist's dream, to get accepted for something he previously thought had rejected him. Kind of the equivalent of having a critic retract a negative review. It's also a little weird and unexpected.

Oh, and Sundance, if you're reading this, there's still time to accept us for the 2008 festival. We don't even care that it's already over. We just want the leafy thing for the webpage.

So what, you ask, do you need to know about the Lake Forest Film Festival? Well, it's April 18-20 at Lake Forest College outside Chicago and we're in competition with Academy Award nominee Binta y la gran idea and fellow Festivus Film Festival entry Simulacra. So, based on that it should be pretty cool.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Awesome. Brilliant. Most excellent.

What a story this will make when you're famous someday!! :)

Rebecca W.