Musings of an Idiot

Clarifications!!!

I put part of my comments that I wrote on NZ Film Festival Director Interview on the flicks comments board and I was surprised to get a mail from the editors of flicks website saying that Bill Gosden had replied to the comments and his reply is as follows:

I can appreciate that my statement requires some clarification, but calling it rubbish seems harsh (that was in response to a comment by another user which said the statement was a rubbish call).

1. There is often, if the filmmaker welcomes it, considerable dialogue between the Festival and filmmakers whose work does not ultimately make the cut.

2. Does the "discourse" have to relate directly to your own work to be of some benefit? We hope filmmakers interested in participating in the Festival might enjoy the opportunity to check out the work that does make it - and to meet the visiting filmmakers involved.

Good on Bill for taking time out to reply to the comments and that definitely does make his sentence a whole lot clearer. So I guess now the onus is on the film makers to open up a line of dialogue with the film festival to get more detailed information of the criteria/feedback of why one's film didn't make it in.

I did post in a reply to the comment saying: As far as 'discourse' is concerned - it's just that it benefits anyone/everyone who attends the screenings with visiting film makers (and I think it is my favorite part of the festival - listening to film maker's experiences) - not just film makers whose films didn't get into the film festival . My gripe was that the earlier statement mixed 2 different topics together in a single sentence and it was easy to misconstrue it as a backhanded excuse by the festival to local film makers whose movies didn't make it. So thanks for clarifying both the aspects.

Personally I do think 'discourse' is most effective when it is in direct relation to your work and the reason I would argue for it is - a) film making is an active and personal art form; b) every film makers circumstances in making a movie are different and so the best learning experience is from discourse on that particular piece of work rather than on movies that were made by someone else in a completely different set of circumstances.

Labels: NZ Film Festival

posted by Amit @ 4:34 PM