The Clearwater Film and Music Festival

First the good news.  our opening night films are

A SOLDIER'S MISSION, 3 minutes, Animation, by Mel K. Lockett, USA

LASTRAIN, 23 minutes, Short Film (Drama), by Tony Lopez, SPAIN

TWENTY TEN, 71 minutes, Feature Film (Comedy), by Byron Kaye, AUSTRALIA.

Congratulations to all those filmmakers who will be screening at our first year festival!

Now for the bad.

It is always a tremendous and excrutiating decision when you make the final tweaks and scheduling of your program.  We had 200 entries our first year.  First of all, we knew from the start we could never show every film submitted, nor would we, if quality control was to be maintained.  As a result, in the time allotted, we found it best to choose only 72 films for exhibition.  So the bad news is that I must now inform 128 filmmakers that we are unable to provide an audience for them. 

How do you send 128 rejection letters without feeling a bit out of sorts?  It's like breaking up with somebody before the first date.  You know it's not going to work out but you still don't like saying "thanks but no thanks", especially if there were some things you actually do like about them!

This is the case with many films.  We liked a lot of what we saw, but due to time restrictions and thanks to a meticulously developed scoring system we were able to discern that fine line of inclusion and decide where to make the cut.  The one thing we can tell our filmmakers who will not be screening with us this year is that it is as scientific and coldhearted as we can make it for this very reason; it's not personal - it's business. 

When I get a fresh DVD for our screeners I am always hopeful that it is a great movie that everybody will love.  Some times it is not.

We are sure that many of these filmmakers, even though not included at our festival, have or will find their audience in time.  For some filmmakers it will take a re-edit, a re-write or even a completely different project and sometimes years to find them.  I was told yesterday that Robert Rodriguez made 40 films before anybody paid any attention to him.

So, to those filmmakers whom we must tell "thanks for your submission, we are not screening your film", we will remind you that persistence is it's own reward and we challenge you to bring us your next project.  For those who did not submit to this year's festival, we hope you will consider us next year.