International Film Festival Guide (International Film Festival Guide)

Rating:
Summary: Insightful, organized and useful
Review: The best of the bunch. Excellent online suppport for updates

Rating:
Summary: Essential reference guide for confused indie filmmakers!
Review: There are many upsides to this fest guide book, the contact information is first rate and the AMOUNT of international festivals blew me away! First of all as a low-budget filmmaker I had no idea there were that many festivals out there for me! I also liked the articles from other filmmakers and I'm hoping the author will have more of that in the next edition. The guide could do with a blast of color but really that's just minor. As a reference guide, I've recommended it to my colleagues.

Rating:
Summary: Frustrating
Review: With online listings readily available, the listings in this and other film festival books are not particularly relevant. This one in particular, since it is three years old.

The value of these books, then, is the commentary. IFFG has some good stuff, specifically the first-hand accounts, by filmmakers, of their experiences at many different festivals (though sadly they too often consist of reviews of the movies that played at these festivals, which is especially irrelevant four years after the fact). Overall, it is a useful tool for filmmakers trying to decide which festival to attend, though I would say it is inferior to the Gore book in this regard, and quite dated.

Unfortunately, it is marred by absolutely the worst editing I've ever seen. Every page has numerous typographic and grammatical errors, something that is especially ridiculous considering that this is a 3rd edition. The mistakes are consistent across the many different authors who contributed to the book, so these are errors of commission, not omission.

My favorite is the use of an enye (n with a tilde over it) for the word "in", which is particularly incomprehensible in a book with no spanish language content. My current theory is that the text was handwritten, then OCR'd into the computer and rushed to print.

I can't recommend it.