Bypassing the Festival Circuit

Surely our friend Sujewa Ekanayake read this Business Week article when he declared on his blog that he would bypass festival submissions completely for his latest documentary "Indie Film Blogger Road Trip" and only focus on festivals that invited him personally, or those that offered him a waived submission fee. It sounded crazy to us, and was the cause of several friendly exchanges of varying opinions. But this wonderful piece, may in fact prove his point - especially for documentary filmmakers.

We can now vouch for this grass roots line of reasoning, based on the response we are getting to our currently in-post-production feature documentary Ink, which grows its own vast supporters, and whose myspace page boasts dozens of new adds daily. The page itself is now run by the actual owners of a tattoo shop in Massachusetts, where some of the documentary was shot, and whose loyal base of followers and past customers has sparked an automatic interest in the film.

This allows us the option to consider not having to take any time for submissions to film festivals, and simply roll the film out to it's loyal base over and over again, both theatrically (with self bookings) as well as effectively make the DVD available for sale directly from its future website. Tattoo enthusiasts are forwarding the film's page to their friends, who add us, then send it to their friends. Also, the page is becoming interactive in a way, so that tattoo lovers can send pictures of their most loved tattoos for direct upload into the page.

This makes sense when reading the below article, about how a couple of smart women who made the feminist film Whats Your Point Honey?, bypassed traditional film festivals and ended up with a distribution deal after they self released their documentary in theatres in NYC, as well as on DVD.

Enjoy!

Business Week article Here:
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jun2008/sb2008065_226261.htm?chan=search

Indie Film Blogger Road Trip:
www.indiefilmbloggersmovie.blogspot.com/

Ink's Myspace Page:
www.myspace.com/inkmovie