According to MovieMaker Magazine, this is “one of 20 festivals worth an entry fee.”
They just got to let me in.
Maybe Mark Bordchardt from "American Movie" will be there. One can only hope.
Three wonderful film festivals in Washington, D.C that take place at the end of summer and early fall of 2010. Pretty much all three have deadlines for submissions in late April or early May. I have decided to enter the only two real short movies that I have finished this year: Olfactory Thriller and Island Dog Robber. Why shouldn’t I? What do I have to lose? Well, about 30 bucks for each movie I submit for approval and if I get rejected, well, I’m so fragile and unstable I might just fall to pieces. No, the film festivals should be a good learning experience in trying to sell my wares because most of the submissions require you to develop press kits, write good synopsis, create posters, flyers, and sometimes trailers. Now if I get accepted into one of these fine D.C. film festivals, naturally, it’s a great opportunity to meet other young moviemakers, composers, and marvel at the smörgåsbord of artists.
On a side note, Washington, D.C. is really such a small place that the occurrences of coincidences is rather high. When I was getting footage for Set It Off , the dance video, specifically the scene where I dance across the cross walk on 14th Street and Jefferson Drive near the Holocaust Memorial, I had to go through some minor mental processing to actually get the shot. I had to set up my tripod and camera on one side of the street, press record, cross the street, then wait until the pedestrian walk light signaled again, and then dance across the street towards my video camera. For some reason, before I did all of this, I was irrationally paranoid that while I waited across the street for the light to change, some opportunistic thief was going to grab my camera and tripod and run away with it, which would have caused me to panic and run out in the middle of the road and gotten hit by a car. I did have some reason for concern about my camera because we all know German tourists can get quite brazen. Anyways, I assuaged my fear by walking up to a jogger who appeared to be resting and tying his shoe at the same time. I asked him if he could stand by my camera and watch it, while I crossed the street, waited for the walk signal again, and then danced across the street towards the camera and him. The abridged version of our conversation follows:
Stranger (he was Asian): What are you making?
Me: A dance video.
Stranger: Oh, have you ever heard of DC APA?
Me: No, what’s that?
Stranger: I can’t believe you’ve never heard of DC APA. It’s Asian Pacific American Film and they’re having a film festival. I’m actually on their committee.
Well, what a coincidence. The stranger turned out to be named Tony. He sent me an email a month ago reminding me about submissions currently being accepted for the 2010 D.C. Asian Pacific American Film Festival. After perusing their website and getting slightly intimidated by the quality of some of their past entrants, I replied, “How professional do these movies have to be?” I haven’t gotten a reply back from Tony so I guess that means…I’m a shoo-in.
For the movie makers who are interested in trying to showcase their work and independent movie enthusiasts out there check some of these out:
D.C. Asian Pacific American Film Festival
D.C. International Horror Film Festival
D.C. Independent Film Festival
FilmFest DC, the Washington, D.C. International Film Festival
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