"TREAT YOUR PREMIERE LIKE LOSING YOUR VIRGINITY"

At a pair of panels on the state of U.S. film festivals and the strategies filmmakers should bring to their film’s festival life, Gabe Wardell of the Atlanta Film Festival and SXSW’s Matt Dentler made the analogy alluded to in the title of this post, making light of the fierce competition that exists among the major winter and spring festivals to be the first place to shed light on bold new American independent feature films.

Representatives of each were there at the second panel, including programmers from Sundance (David Courier), Slamdance (Sarah Diamond) and Tribeca (David Kwok). Each stressed the unique strengths and programming concerns of their festival while seeming very much at peace with the currently jam packed festival scene, where any spring weekend two or three major regional film festivals may be showing the same films that these festivals have recently premiered. While everyone was quite cordial, Diamond couldn’t help but mention the antipathy that has largely characterized the relationship between the Park City festivals. “It’s nice that we get to sit next to each other on a panel and open the dialogue a bit.” said the programming director of the insurgent festival Robert Redford once referred to as “parasitic”. A few pointers from the programmers on submitting films to their festivals:

- The essentials: Make sure your disc works. Fill out the submission form completely. Get your film in as early as possible. Don’t send multiple cuts; send in the film when it is complete. Don’t send extraneous materials the programmers have not asked for. Don’t hassle them with excessive phone calls or emails (“If premiere is like losing your virginity, submitting is like courtship.” reiterated Dentler.)

- “Align yourself with people who have your best interest at heart.” Dentler said, referring to the situation many films completed after the Sundance deadline face, when trying to choose between Tribeca and SXSW, but also alluding to the fact that filmmakers should try to play festivals in which the programmers are clearly passionate about their films, so as not to get lost in the shuffle of a large festival.

- For shorts: Premiere status is largely unimportant, but the shorter the better. “Its easier to program a 12 minute short than a 20 minute short.” said Diamond.

At the sunday afternoon panel, sales reps Jeremy Walker and Ronna Wallace joined Wardell, ThinkFilm acquisitions exec Ben Stambler and “In Search of a Midnight Kiss” director Alex Holdridge in a discussion of what steps filmmakers should take to bring industry awareness to their projects. Most stressed the need to “build a narrative” for your film, be it by taking iconic stills that capture the essence of the film, making clips for TV and online media that are durable enough to work outside the context of the film and knowing the film well enough to discern weather it will play better in front of a big crowd, or on a distribution exec’s DVD player at the Racquet Club.