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| with Lia Rinaldo | |
If you’re making a feature film in Canada, chances are that Lia Rinaldo already knows about it. James Allodi, Wilby Wonderful And Rinaldo probably also wants to give your film a shot at appearing in the Atlantic Film Festival, where she is festival director. She and her program manager do research on who’s making what. They monitor the grants that the film-funding agencies make and scan the websites of Canadian production companies. “If it’s the second or third feature film, chances are if the person is not seeking us out, we’d seek them out,” says Rinaldo. Be plucky and persistentIf your feature somehow slips through their net, Rinaldo advises pluck and persistence. Her festival has an open call for entries and she follows up on the films that come to light that way. And she likes phone calls directly from filmmakers.It’s great to have an ongoing dialogue February to May are the key months for the festival’s initial research phase. From May to August, Rinaldo and her team of three other programmers are watching films in order to accept or reject them, and putting together the September event. “We’re pretty open to talking to people throughout the whole process,” she says. “It’s great to have an ongoing dialogue.” Tips
Online application system is freeThe Atlantic Film Festival is testing a new method of receiving applications for the 2006 event. Like about 2,400 other festivals in the world (as of March 2006, but the number is growing), it has signed on to withoutabox.org, a website based in the United States to help independent filmmakers navigate the complex process of submitting to festivals.In essence, it is an online application system, allowing a filmmaker to apply to lots of festivals with the click of a mouse. More than 80,000 filmmakers had registered by early spring, 2006. It’s free to join, both for filmmakers and festivals. The website makes money by taking a percentage of the entry fee of each application, a cost to the festival. But there’s a payoff for the festival, too, says Rinaldo. When the Atlantic Festival tested the online application process for its children’s festival in 2005, the number of entries doubled from about 100 to 200. What if your film is rejected?And what if you go through the whole application process and are rejected? Rinaldo says the key is to keep talking to festival directors and keep applying with new features.“This is about building relationships. It’s still important to maintain them, even if your film is rejected,” she says. |
