Often people ask me, “Where can I see your films?”. I usually pause, half embarrassed and half frustrated, which leads to the following question “Are they online?” or “I’ll look you up on YouTube”. Which then leads to my explanation that unfortunately, due to the nature of film festival and broadcast regulations and agreements that I actually have to prevent the public from watching my films online whenever they want because then I would be making myself ineligible for Festivals, or in a lot of trouble from my distributors.
It’s counter intuitive to think that emerging filmmakers who just want anyone and everyone to watch their films, in hopes that they become a smash success and lead to a lifelong career of filmmaking, actually spend more time trying to prevent their precious password protected links from being published on the web for a global audience. This is to protect the exclusivity that an “Official Selection” by a festival holds. It can be frustrating as a filmmaker to go to all that work making the most amazing film only to try really hard to not let anyone see it.
That said, I am grateful to have had my films screened by many festivals around the world, but also thrilled that two of my films have been selected by the National Screen Institute of Canada for the Online Short Film Festival. By next week you can be watching the first installment of what I refer to as “The Sex Ones”, ie/ Why I Bought a Bike (2008) and the following week the second installment Why I Fired My Secretary (2008) on your very own computer screen – or someone else’s if you prefer. Don’t get too excited, you may be thinking “porn” when you read “sex” and “film” in the same sentence, but these two films are PG and more along the lines of hearing your parents talk about their sex lives – and I find it fascinating. Don’t get scared off. The programmers of the Edmonton International Film Festival, the Victoria Film Festival, the Dungog Film Festival, and more, all thought both films were worthy of their exclusive audiences.
Brianne Nord-Stewart 