Little festive about this PR gloom
By Andy Pearson
Oh, dear – what a tough couple of weeks it’s been for the Swansea Bay Film Festival.
And what a fresh sense we have of the power of social media.
Last year a couple of US filmmakers uploaded a documentary to YouTube.
Looking for an Audience portrayed their less than satisfactory experience of attending last year’s festival.
Profile
They felt it had been badly organised, paid too little respect to filmmakers and failed to build a prominent profile in the city.
Crucially for them, it also failed to attract much of an audience to their movie.
Binda Singh, a main mover in the festival’s six-year history, insists that many people enjoy the annual event.
In the past two weeks, however, Swansea Bay Hollywood stars Michael Sheen and Catherine Zeta Jones have removed their patronage of the event.
Stories
One of its 2010 sponsors, the South Wales Evening Post, has rightly carried the stories.
All this is a great shame for Swansea as it tries so hard to compete for attention and for the many filmmakers who wish to be associated with a positive vibe.
It’ll be interesting to see how the story unfolds when the 2011 festival takes place in Swansea from May 5-15.
One thing’s for certain – the 9,846 views which Looking for an Audience had chalked up by last night should mean that it easily claims the title as this festival’s most discussed and debated flick.
