sketchbook: film festival notify-by date…

Waiting for acceptance/rejection email from a film festival… I don’t want to jinx myself so I’m not saying what film I submitted where, but the festival promised to notify the filmmakers by yesterday, and still today nothing… However:

Thank goodness for the Athens International Film + Video Festival, which accepted my first film submission ever (my short mockdoc Bountiful Borrego!), bolstering me against the tidal waves of rejections I’ll no doubt receive over the course of my filmmaking career…

Thank goodness also for my years working as an actress, submitting to casting notices constantly, learning by necessity to just move on with each rejection, or worse: non-response.

And before even the acting phase of my life, the submitting to literary journals phase, which also garnered a high rejection-to-acceptance ratio… (I keep my favorite rejection slips pinned to my kitchen wall!)

But this time the rejection wouldn’t just be mine to deal with. As a filmmaker I feel a huge responsibility to my collaborators to put their work–which I have chosen to use in my film–out into the world. My actors! Composers! Cinematographers! These are for the most part friends whose work I’ve been following and admiring for years, longtime collaborators on a variety of projects whom I’ve roped into working on my film by creating a role for them to play which I hope suits their skills best, brings out what we both most want to show to the world of their talents right now.

So cross your fingers for all of us, please.

I’ll be waiting right here… (and editing my latest film, AND IN HER IT DANCED: AN INHERITANCE)