To anyone who was looking forward to seeing artful and rocking, local-but-not music documentary 72 Musicians at the Kansas International Film Festival next month: We have some bad news.
Yesterday, the film's director, Bob Moczydlowsky, posted a blog entry to the film's Web site explaining that the board of the KIFF had rejected his film, even after the festival's president, Ben Meade, had given him a very strong impression that the film would be included in the festival.
"Here's the short version: The film was never actually accepted. Turns out, it was rejected," Moczydlowsky writes, in his somewhat circumspect, somewhat dejected post.
After Moczydlowsky received an enthusiastic voicemail from Meade this past May, he writes....
Needless to say, I was pretty stoked. We really wanted the film to play at KIFF, as it gave us the best chance to show the film to everyone in KC and Lawrence. Perfect. So I called Dr. Meade back, and we had a great conversation about where else I should submit the film, about KIFF, and about his own music doc called American Music: Off The Record. We also talked about my work at Topspin, building marketing and management software for artists. We left off that he'd contact me with more details closer to the festival.I called Nick, the film's editor, and we added the KIFF laurels to the film's trailer. Sure, I probably should've waited for written confirmation of acceptance, but I *did* just hear directly from the president of the festival. And let's be honest: KIFF isn't a major festival. It's a small festival that needs all the help it can get to put butts in seats. So knowing that I had powerful marketing tools and a pretty good size email list at my command, I set out to make sure I promoted KIFF whenever I talked about the film, and to make sure that we had a packed house come September. And it was working.
Whoops. ;)
So fast forward to a week or so ago, when the emails from fans are rolling in and I'm getting ready to do some press but we still haven't heard back from KIFF about screening dates, times, travel, etc... and then suddenly there was a list of films on the 2009 KIFF web site. And 72 musicians isn't one of them. ...
Finish the sad tale at the 72 blog. Summary: According to Moczydlowsky, Meade never got back with him. When Moczydlowsky called the festival's vice-president, Brian Mossman of the Fine Arts Group, Mossman told him the film had been rejected. Now, Moczydlowsky's looking for an alternate place to screen his film.
I think I know of a certain club in Westport that might open its doors to the movie.
(I've put in an e-mail to Meade and will report on his side of the story if and when I get it.)
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It's a joke! And seems that no one knew that the Kansas City Film Festival and Kansas International Film Festival had this agreement for a long time that if one of the festivals reject a movie then another WILL ALSO REJECTS it as well too. It's very manipulation marketing strategy on their part and in my opinion it was 'illegal activity' to control the public's interests and it ought to be investigated by Jackson and Johnson Counties. Every film festival should be bias-free without any agreements and let its board of directors and personnel making the decisions to screen movies based on how good a movie and knowing the public will love or not is instead being an "a**kisser" instead. Let ask ourselves why did the Kansas International Film Festival created after the Kansas City Film Festival??? Why do we need two film festivals in the first place. Obviously one or more person(s) who was/were dissatisfied with a festival for a long time then go out and create another one and still an '"a**kisser" at the same time??? What a joke!
This internet site is really quite good, but for some reason it does not display properly when trying to view on my Nintendo Wii. If it helps, the console uses the Opera browser and am impelled to using the console for accessing the Net whilst my PC is away being restored.
Try talking to Anton and Stretch down at Grinders/Crossroads. I have always thought an outdoor movie night would be a cool thing to have there. I'm just another working stiff down there but I'll put the bug in their ear.
Judging by the films KIFF did choose, it looks like they have no local-filmmaker-supporting agenda. Or even American...
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