Educational screen & audio-visual guide (c1956-1971])

Behind The Screens At The American Film Festival by Harriet Lundgaard I N these days when every village, hamlet and town from Vancouver eastward to Vladivostok seems to be lowering the lights for its own film fete and for yet another gilded token of some kind of cinematic superiority, the Blue Ribbon Award of the American Film Festival has unique status as substantial evidence of genuinely meritorious production in 16mm film or 35mm filmstrip. While other awards are challenged —and in one recently publicized case, even refused —as based on "mere popularity contests," rendered meaningless by trade politics — the American Film Festival Blue Ribbon is proudly displayed and advertised by producers, sponsors and distributors of films and filmstrips which have won it. And if there is sometimes honest difference of opinion about excellent entries passed over by the Blue Ribbon juries, the handsome certificate of merit which is accorded each film and filmstrip nominated for the American Film Festival competitions has come to have its own status as a mark of special distinction. There is good reason for all this. The American Film Festival is the largest and most comprehensive event of its kind anywhere in the world. More films are submitted, more films are shown in competition and available for seeing than at any other film festival anywhere. The American Film Festival features more kinds of films than any other festival-309 of th-m in 1962, with EFLA president Fred Krahn presiding over the presentation of 42 Blue Ribbon Awards in 36 competition categories ranging from "Film as Ar^" through Industrial and Technical Processes" and "Classroom Films for the Lower Grades" all the way to "Medical Sciences for Professional Audiences." In addition, the American Film Festival is the only major film event which features and honors 35mm filmstrips, with 70 filmstrips shown and 19 accorded Blue Ribbons in 1962. But the sturdy basis for the integrity of the Blue Ribbon Award is the judging system developed by the Educational Film Library Association, which has sponsored the American Film Festival annually since 1959. Popular or unpopular as people entering their work may be, their entries are rated in accordance with stringently defined and rigidly enforced standards by experts whose qualifications are carefully established and checked. As the official Festival regulations stipulate: "All entries are examined by EFLA Pre-Screening Committees in each category. Each of the Committees includes at least six persons: two from the fields of audiovisual production, distribution or administration; two who are specialists in the subject area; and two who are experienced in using films with the audiences for which that category is intended .. . All members of the Pre-Screening Committees and all Festival Jurors must file applications stating their qualifications, which will be examined and approved by a special EFLA Festival Committee." And it is perhaps almost unnecessary to add that "No person who has any personal interest in the production distribution or sponsorship of a film entered in the Festival may act as a Pre-Screener or Juror in the cate gory in which his film is entered." These PreScreening Committees, then— 36 of them each composed of as many as 38 specialists, meetint 436. Educational Screen and Audiovisual Guide — August, 196!