Two useful resources for doc-makers submitting to festivals

C

custerc

Well-known member
Hi guys...so my film is coming along well (I think) and I've begun looking into festivals as we should be ready to submit by this August. I've never done this before and I have no idea whether our film is good enough to get into any of these festivals, but I came across this site, which has a wonderful guide for the top 25 film festivals for documentaries:

http://edendale.typepad.com/weblog/...for-documentaries-2nd-edition-1-sundance.html

In addition to the top 25, there are also 9 extras in the US, and 9 extra international ones as well, and each entry is pretty detailed. It's all circa 2009 so it's a few years out of date now, but that's still pretty good. So if you're interested in festivals (like me) but haven't ever done this before (also like me) you might find that helpful.

The one thing it's missing is that it doesn't necessarily say when any of these festivals are, which is obviously pretty significant for planning. To make things easier for myself, I made a Google calendar with almost all the festivals on that list (I think I left out one or two I decided I wasn't interested in). This might also be helpful to you guys, so you should be able to view it here:

http://www.google.com/calendar/embe...TV2anA5cXNAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ

A couple things about it, just FYI:
  • I only added festivals into 2013, so you'll have to move forward to Jan 2013 before you see anything.
  • MOST of the dates in this calendar are APPROXIMATE as most places haven't announced their 2013 dates yet. In that case, what I've tried to do is drop in the 2012 dates and mark it as "Appx" (for "approximate dates"). But since they're generally around the same time every year, I think it's still a useful way to see what festivals are at which times.
  • If you click on a festival, for most of them, you should be able to see the location, and also a link to the official site (in English, for international festivals). I think there are a couple I didn't do this for at the beginning, but for most of them it should be there.
Anyway, it isn't super precise but I think it will be useful for me in visualizing what's when, and trying to figure out what we COULD go to if we are lucky enough to get in to anything. So I thought I'd share it.

Also, if there's anyone here who has done the festival thing with a feature (especially a foreign-language feature) I'd love to hear your stories/advice/whatever...
 
Just wanted to mention and make sure you know about Withoutabox.

Many festivals will direct you to submit through here anyway, but it's great for planning because you can search the database of thousands of festivals using certain parameters, create a watchlist, and keep track of deadlines and all your submissions.

Just make sure you research each festival you submit to and don't assume they're all prestigious, Oscar-qualifiers.
 
mburkefilms said:
Just wanted to mention and make sure you know about Withoutabox.

Many festivals will direct you to submit through here anyway, but it's great for planning because you can search the database of thousands of festivals using certain parameters, create a watchlist, and keep track of deadlines and all your submissions.

Just make sure you research each festival you submit to and don't assume they're all prestigious, Oscar-qualifiers.
Click to expand...

Yeah I know about Withoutabox, and I have set a watch list there as well. But I really hate their interface, search function, etc...I just find the site a pain in the ass to use, so I want to minimize the extent to which I have to.

@amr: For now, it's the dates of the actual festival, but I do plan to add in the submission dates, or maybe make a separate new calendar for submission dates, soon.
 
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