Inside Indies [ii]: How do films get considered for your festival?

Brian: We have three basic ways: [first] a call for entries, which we just announced for the 2006 festival. We get lots of shorts, animated and experimental works, as well as features and documentaries. At the same time that’s happening, I’m reading the trades, reading Variety reviews and talking to film festival programmers and people I know to get ideas. And I’m going to different festivals and looking for films that way. So those are the three basic ways. In the second instance, if I read about something in Variety I’ll ask for a DVD or tape, if I’m not going to be seeing it at a festival. And then we have some media professionals here in Nashville. We divvy up all the entries and send them to our pre-screening professionals here. They handle most of the call-for-entry submissions. Then we all converge and try to whittle it all down to our festival program.

Matt: It’s pretty much divided up between the films that are sent to us and those we solicit. Soliciting films can be anything from hitting up a distributor to going to festivals and making contact that way. That always brings up the issue of premiere status, which all of us have to work with—not only with our own festivals, but sometimes with one another’s festivals.

Rachel: Our process is similar but with different emphasis. Most of our international films we’ll get through solicitation or festival visits, but with our U.S. films, because we are looking for premiere status films, more has to do with either finding something through the general call for entries, or talking to producers, sales reps and distributors about their work. We have a huge number of entries now—almost 3,000—so we have to rely on pre-screening or pre-screeners. But I think our system works well because there are always things in the festival that come in unsolicited that started with a screener.

ii: Rachel, can you describe what a “screener” is?

Rachel: Like Brian, we have a lot of people who volunteer to watch films for us. Most of them are professionals: they might work at a distribution company or be development people or screenwriters or script readers. It’s not like some festivals, where it’s a group of retirees with no particular film experience doing the screening. We have every film screened by at least two screeners. Because often what’s most interesting would be the film that one person hated and another person loved. That might be more interesting than something that everyone felt kind of "ugh" about. Then I also have usually three to five trusted associate programmers. So each week the programmers on staff and the associate programmers get together and talk about what we have seen that week.

Matt: With committees, it’s great to have people who actually have been to a film festival, because a lot of the submissions that we all get are not horrible. Some of them are really bad, but some are just mediocre, and it’s good to have very strict taste and know the caliber [of film] you’re looking for.

Rachel: Let’s face it: There’s no objective measure of quality. I have screeners who have different sensibilities than I do. I am looking for interesting places where tastes may overlap a bit.

Matt: I think we have all programmed things that we didn’t love as much as we know someone [else] would love. Ultimately, we have to stay true to the audience and the filmmakers—because that’s who we’re doing this for.

Brian: That brings up something else. It’s important to formulate your festival in synch with how the city operates. I can’t do San Francisco in Nashville.

Rachel: I can’t do it in L.A.

Brian: But at the same time, every year I like to push the envelope, especially showing more foreign films, getting people excited.

Matt: There are so many festival programmers out there who feel like they are doing the audience a favor by throwing the festival. The audience is doing us a favor by letting us throw this festival, and it’s important to have films that push the envelope. We had Lukas Moodysson’s Hole in My Heart this year, which is a very controversial film and, not surprisingly, turned a lot of people off, but at the same time it did evoke a lot of conversation. Although we certainly don’t want to fill a program with titles like that, because you may scare everybody off.

Rachel: It is also really important that each festival has its own personality and stays true to it. I always have a hard time when my European colleagues say, “I would never program a film that I didn’t love. That’s just looking down on your audience.” And I respond, "That’s a luxury that’s great for you to have, but what our festival might be trying to show is a survey of what’s actually happening in our field." There are some festivals that are about skimming the cream, and there are some that are a cross-section of what’s going on in their purview that year. Read More