The Film Festival Guide: For Filmmakers, Film Buffs, and Industry Professionals [Paperback]

Adam Langer (Author)

Book Description

Series: Film Festival Guide | Publication Date: September 1, 2000

To garner the attention and recognition that will get a film distributed, entering film festivals is a must. With more than 500 festivals worldwide, each listing features detailed information, including contact names, addresses, Web sites, entry materials, entry deadlines, and fees. Insider information for each festival is also included, such as what types of features are shown most frequently, festival reputations, noteworthy celebrity sightings, location details, and more than a dozen interviews with festival industry professionals. It includes a listing of the 16 best festivals including the hugely diverse Berlin International Film Festival, the revamped and vastly improved Chicago International Film Festival, and the Valladolid International Film Festival, where A Clockwork Orange premiered. This book also includes a handy guide for film buffs who want to plan a vacation around an interesting festival in a marvelous setting, as well as film house listings for a great escape into the dark for a movie fix.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

While finishing his own film, Langer discovered a dearth of hard?and current?facts about festivals to which he might hawk it. Thus, he created this handbook for independent filmmakers and audiences. Seemingly all festivals are included, from Cannes, Berlin, and Sundance to the Hiroshima International Animation Festival and Nordic Film Days. In addition to listing hundreds of venues with address, entry deadline, festival history, ticket price, and average number of films screened, this work contains interviews with six festival directors and an annotated guide to the best theaters. The first chapter, "Best of the Fests: A Completely Biased Guide to the Sixteen Festivals Worldwide That Are Worth the Trip," expresses Langer's penchant for entertaining critique. Of the Cleveland International Film Festival he writes, "Any festival that hosts a seminar entitled `Is Hollywood Killing the Movies?' and then plugs screenwriter Joe Ezsterhas (Showgirls and Basic Instinct) as its featured opening night guest has to be a bit schizophrenic." More detailed and personal than Internet festival sites, this work is well worth the price.?Kim R. Holston, American Inst. for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, Malvern, PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Booklist

If you have patrons who welcome the thought of spending day and night in darkened rooms, eyes glued to the big screen, this book will help them find their next fix. Author Langer is a filmmaker who compiled this directory to film festivals worldwide when he could not find such data gathered in one location. Chapters include "Best of the Fests" (Langer's personal favorites), followed by chapters on North American, European, Asian, African and Middle Eastern, Australian, and South American festivals. Within chapters on geographic areas, there are two lists arranged alphabetically by festival name, one for detailed entries and one for brief entries. It would be more convenient to search an integrated list.

Detailed entries note place, time (e.g., first week of November), background (a descriptive paragraph giving the flavor of the fest), major award winners (although the year is not specified), number of films, celebrity sightings, ticket prices, and, for filmmakers, how to enter a film, contact information, and deadline. Brief entries have an address and often include phone, fax, e-mail, URL, and entry deadline and/or date of festival. Everything's here, from the big and famous (Cannes) to the small and specialized (Insect Fear Film Festival). Six interviews with festival directors are scattered throughout, and a final chapter is a guide to the best art-house movie theaters in more than 100 cities worldwide. The index follows the same arrangement as the rest of the book, with the various festivals grouped under chapter titles. An index listing all the festivals in a single alphabet would be a useful feature in the next edition; as it is, there is no way to locate the Insect Fear Film Festival without first knowing that it takes place in North America (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, to be exact). Also useful would be a detailed geographic index. Although the book is arranged in broad geographic areas, it is not possible to look up more specific locations, such as Pennsylvania or France. Despite these shortcomings, any library with travel or film reference collections will want to consider adding this guide. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press; 2nd edition (September 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556524153
• ISBN-13: 978-1556524158
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,042,640 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars good source; bad contact info, November 2, 1999

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Film Festival Guide: For Filmmakers, Film Buffs, and Industry Professionals (Paperback)

This is a comprehensive guide to film festivals, however there are so many mistakes in the contact information: wrong phone and email addresses, no contact info, or info for one festival listed as contact info for another -- that contacting these festivals becomes an exercise in frustration. I don't think all this is due to the fact that the pub date was 1998. It appears that the info was never correct. Ugh!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Good Book, May 28, 2004

By 

Muhammad Miguel Ali Hasan "Film Director & Po... (Sunset Beach, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Film Festival Guide: For Filmmakers, Film Buffs, and Industry Professionals (Paperback)

This is an excellent book and a great guide to film festivals, for both filmmakers and film lovers

I wish there were more film festivals listed within this book, however, the important ones are covered

Hopefully, we'll also see an update of it soon

I recommend it to anyone who is submitting films to festivals, anytime soon

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an excellent and succinct overview of festival process, August 6, 2000

By 

Myra Dubreuil (Santa Monica, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Film Festival Guide: For Filmmakers, Film Buffs, and Industry Professionals (Paperback)

I found this to be an excellent and helpful guide to navigating the film festival process. Most helpful were the pointers about how to save money applying for film festivals and how not to "cancel out" your chances at one festival by applying to another. Like with any guidebook, some of the entries will go out of date. That's why they should always be checked before you apply to a particular festival. Most festivals will mail you their application materials, so this book is a good starting point to find which of the festivals are right for your film.