For a few years I worked as programming director for a local film festival, selecting and scheduling all the films. And I've helped a friend who selects films f

For a few years I worked as programming director for a local film festival, selecting and scheduling all the films. And I've helped a friend who selects films for a very large film festival, serving as a sort of first-line screener for him, pulling out the worst so he didn't waste time on them. Even with our local (L.A.) film festival, we had a ton of submissions. I could cut 80-90% of them very easily. They just weren't very good. We got a lot of submissions that simply weren't competent, they had multiple fundamental flaws. There's always a few that are easy calls. Very good work, and you know you can build a night around them. Then there's some that are obviously good enough to screen, if not to be the keystones. Then there's the borderliners, and that's where you spend all your time. Trying to make those choices. Sometimes it literally comes down to how long a movie is and if it will fit in the slot you have to fill. Sometimes it's how a given movie will play off the others you've decided on already. It's not completely "fair", but it's how it is sometimes. But you know, even those awful films (and some of them are really awful, worse than you've ever seen)... They represent a massive amount of work. And perseverance. And dreaming. And I always respected that, and it sucked to reject even the worst. These were people who DID something with their time, and I hated hated hated sending the rejection emails. Even the worst filmmakers deserved some respect for having actually done it. It's important to separate the work from the person who did it. The person who did it almost always deserves respect and admiration.