If anyone had told me at this time last year that Out on Film would be on relatively smooth ground now, I would have thought they were crazy. 2008 was a tough year in many ways. But here we are in November 2009, two festivals behind us this year, and Out on Film is back, baby!
We are coming off of a very successful October festival, one that saw many sold-out screenings, great guests, a killer opening night party, terrific press and very strong feedback from our patrons. We surveyed our pass holders after the festival and the reaction was almost uniformly excellent.
Most improbably, in May we broke even and in October we even made a little bit of money. People liked the films, people liked the return to the Midtown Art Cinema, and people really liked the structure, the fact that they could see every film and not have to make choices. Most of all, people like the fact that Out on Film is still around and prospering.
Was our October festival perfect? Nope. We still have some things we need to work on. We need to find a better way to get women to see our films and we need to find a way to incorporate more businesses/corporations into what we do. And like all nonprofits, we need to find money! But headed into next year, I think we are in good shape.
Our team is all extremely excited about 2010. Heck, if we pulled off two festivals this year with limited funds and a small crew, imagine what we can do next year with 10 months planning. We have a devoted team now and it’s been great working with them. We hope to grow Out on Film into one of the top five LGBT film festivals. Will it be easy? No. But I think we can do it. Atlanta has a huge GLBT population and if we can tap into just a small percentage, we can continue to grow.
More than ever, it’s important to have GLBT film festivals. Most of the films that played in our festival will never get a regular theatrical release. Having a forum for artists to display work by, for and about our community is still vital. Our community is more mainstream now, but we are not in the mainstream yet.
I have said this so many times, but where we take Out on Film is up to our community. We need your support, your opinions, your time and energy, and your money. Putting on a film festival is about all of us and I think our community deserves a kick-ass festival each and every year.
We hope to have our 2010 festival around the same time next year, the first week of October. We’d like to hear your thoughts on how we can improve the festival. Please keep us with us on our website - www.outonfilm.org - and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
We look forward to hearing from you…
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment