FIRST ACCEPTANCE!

WE'RE IN!

    LOS ANGELES CINEFEST is a monthly online film festival which gives prizes for Shorts, Short Docs, Trailers, Features, and Feature Docs. Of course, because there are many other Festivals that don't want you to have your film on the web, most people choose to keep their film offline and just let the judges award the films. However, there's also an Audience Award - these are voted on by home viewers. So really, this means that whoever has the biggest social media presence, they win an award, even if they don't stream their film online. Plus, hey, it's a MONTHLY Festival, so they always need material. In fact, thinking about it, this is a genius business model: use Weebly to create a site, allow advertisements, spend a few bucks for access to Film Freeway and one or two other sites as well as paying a few "film professionals" for your voting panel and rake in cash - the filmmakers provide you with links to posters and the films so you don't use up bandwidth, and you get a few hundred bucks a month or more in submissions.

     While my initial reaction may seem a bit cynical, I'm actually super excited! Getting a laurel is super validating and this is the first response we've gotten from a Festival - and it was YES! So really, this is a good thing all around. My mother, of course, is certain that we are going to win, but I actually don't care about that. As far as I'm concerned, we did it and now we just wait for the next response dates which are August 15 (LOS ANGELES LIFT-OFF FESTIVAL) and August 18 (OUT ON FILM in Atlanta)!

     Speaking of knowing when the response dates are: