Other Venice Film Festival

I have a film making the rounds on various festivals, I’ve seen all kinds now, from the best to the, well, ‘small’ ones. This one is probably the second to smallest one we’ve been in. The Festival Director, Ruby, is a great guy, he busts his ass putting this on and he really loves the history of Venice.
Here’s the super odd thing, though. No festival I’ve ever heard of does only an «Audience Award». It’s always the Jury Award, then the extra award is the Audience Award. «If» you win an award from this festival, as far as everyone knows, you had the best film… not true. There are only three (or four?) awards and they are ALL «audience awards» per each category. And, I don’t want to sound bitter… I didn’t expect to win, it’s not why I make films.
Now, here’s the super fishy thing that really soured me to this festival. The winner came from our block of films. It’s a super small audience, we counted 26 people in the crowd for five or six films. Being local, our group had 12 and we all voted. Another film that didn’t win had five people. Another had a couple more. The eventual «winner» had, maybe, three people there.
Ruby was super stoked on their film too, it was first in the block and he said how excited he was to show it. He placed one of their foamcore one-​sheets by the sign-​in desk (where you vote). And, honestly, if it wasn’t an «audience» award, then hell yeah, get excited and make it the winner… but if you really are going to do an «audience award», there’s just no way in hell they had the numbers because nobody was there who didn’t have a film in it. I’m telling you, this movie was awful and juvenile… I wish any other film from our block would have won it instead of that one.
Another odd thing was that there was a sponsor for next year… and they also won the documentary award.
Again, every other festival, it’s the jury or Festival Director voting… which is what this seemingly is. To me, I wish Ruby would just say that he makes the final decision which he has every right to do. But, in an effort to sell tickets, they want you to bring people to «vote».
And that’s what sucks too… so, if you wanted, (and if the votes actually counted), you could just buy 50 tickets and guarantee yourself the win? C’mon. That cheapens the award, it’s not the «best film» that won. Ruby should just do away with that because we didn’t even know that whoever has the most people is supposed to win… we just came regardless. He needs to make the final call on the winner otherwise this award doesn’t mean anything.

Grass root, event right here in Venice. Film fests can be fun, entertaining but also far and expensive. This event made it affordable, friendly and accessible for anyone to be part of the fun and even be in touch with many who’ve created wonderful works. Check in next year!