Anything Goes : Bad experience today by Jennifer Amorelli

I had a weird thing happen today.

Its just a rant,.

I submitted to many festivals , we had good runs, we had wins and we were runner up to Al Roker, yes you heard that right . was pretty cool to know.

But today, I got one where I was "disqualified".

The term means a violation, to have such a thing happen, means I did something very wrong and so of course, I went to check to see, what I maybe missed?

turns out;

I was the right cultured background to submit.

I had the proper time frame for my short, they said not over 10 minutes, mine was 5 mins and 34 seconds.

I also had English subtitles which it asked for..

..so what did I do wrong that I had to be disqualified? I decided to email them back and this was there response;

Hello,

Unfortunately we had an overwhelming amount of submissions. Those over 5 min where disqualified in the name of saving time. We are a small group of people (___) trying to make this work and watching 889 videos on top of work is too many. I apologize for any inconvenience.

So they had the option to just select " not selected" as in not to participate in the festival.

To save time, it seemed, to me it was "easier" to choose disqualified rather than not selected.

which many here know, disqualified is for violations , rules broken, in others words , its a a bad thing to be disqualified.

It made me feel bad, like I did something very wrong.

What made me feel even worse, I wondered, how many others got the same notice and are thinking exactly what I just felt.."what did I do wrong to earn that"

Long story short, they changed it back

Yes there is many selections and submissions

These film makers, including myself, took the time to search pages of hundreds of festivals and considered one to submit to. Not selected would have been perfectly understandable, I didn't make the cut. No harm done..

Again this is a rant, I wanted to share , I felt bummed out.