All that to say, every film festival has its own “filters” whether it’s spelled out or not. It’s judged by humans, and therefore filtered through the preferences, convictions or standards of those screening the films. It’s what’s called “subjective objectivity.” To say it doesn’t exist is ignorance. In the case of the civil war example above, we felt the graphic violence was not “excessive.” (again, subjective objectivity).

Some may think the glass is half-empty, I like to think of it as half full. With all the studies done (even the recent article about “Night at the Museum”) that are proving the “gish” of Hollywood as considerably less profitable, less attended and even down in production output versus it’s more family-oriented counterparts, I view us as perpetuating a trend, not squelching creativity or acquiescing to a paradigm of festival “typical.”

We’ve thought through a bunch of different names and kept coming back to our own hometown. It’s that simple.