The Circuit

Chris Holland, who runs fest operations for B-Side and has the Film Festival Secrets blog, has come out with a book, Film Festival Secrets: A Handbook for Independent Filmmakers. 

It has loads of useful info, including a peek into the sorrowful life of a fest screener. 

Festival screeners have seen hundreds upon hundreds of independent films, most of them by young, first-time filmmakers who have made a lot of the same minor mistakes. My friend Linda (who screens films for a festival she’d rather not identify here) loves independent films, but after seeing a significant number she wrote this “Checklist for Art Film Viewing,” where “Art Film” is not a complimentary term.

If your film has a number of these rookie moves, you run the risk of rejection – or at least not being taken very seriously. Below is Linda’s original list, with a few editorial comments by festival staffers included in italics.

This is necessarily an incomplete list, but after two or three checked boxes you know you are onto something.

• Someone is rudely awakened by an alarm or outside noise or knocking. Preferably the person is twenty-something and looks like they have shouldered the world’s troubles…or just drunk too much last night. Sometimes the film goes on to chronicle the subject’s entire morning routine – a cliché that simply should be skipped most of the time.


• Someone says ‘shut the fuck up.’


• People walk down a sidewalk with a backdrop of colorful graffiti.


• A scene in a convenience store switches to security camera footage.


• Someone sits at a bar smoking and drinking shots or martinis while a worldly-wise bartender waits on them. Extra points if the bartender is wiping down the bar with a rag.


• Someone points a gun at someone. Preferably while saying ‘shut the fuck up.’


• Someone takes a leak. Preferably outdoors. Points if urine stream goes astray.


• Someone answers a phone only to be hung up on.


• Someone tosses a portable phone or cell phone in disgust at the call received. Points for throwing it out the window of a moving car.


• A profound quote is displayed on the screen.


• Someone takes a shower or brushes teeth. Preferably while someone else uses the toilet. Someone vomits, particularly as a precursor to finding out she is pregnant.


• Camera pans up into trees to denote passing of time or space.


• Camera pans down to shoes to denote passing of time or space. Preferably shoes are Chuck Taylors.


• We realize it was all a dream.


• Someone goes to a party only to retreat outside in a funk while everyone else gets completely drunk.


• Someone tries on different outfits in front of a mirror while also trying out dance moves for the party to come.


• Someone sits in a cube farm pretending to work. Points for abuse of office supplies.

Buy the book here.