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

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EFLA's Emily Jones: Administrative Director of the Film Festival and one of the "Stout Hearts and Strong Backs" behind its success. next year's Festival." Formal debates, coffee-break encounters and panel discussions led by nationally known AV authorities offer plenty of opportunities for the exchange of ideas and information, and for constructive airing of opinions. There is, moreover, a rumor that some Festival registrants show up just to enjoy seeing good films and to have a good time. The EFLA Board has officially decreed that this is not prohibited by any Festival regulation. And even for people who are not able to attend, the Festival makes possible an immensely useful source of film information in the 54-page descriptive catalogue of Festival films and filmstrips, which is available through the EFLA office in New York. With plans for 1963 already in the works— larger screening rooms and more of them, a different kind of Award Banquet, a full-scale debate on the decision between "Film— or Filmstrip?"— the American Film Festival would seem to be an automatically selfperpetuating phenomenon. But only four years ago this summer it was a pap>er project that might well have been called "EFLA's Folly"— by anyone who didn't know Emily Jones. The decision to undertake sponsorship of an annual Film Festival was a hard-toconceive addition to the heavy work load of the regular EFLA program of evaluations, publications, regional meetings, informational services, and special projects. But EFLA's inspired foolhardiness in the summer of 1958 was based on the stout hearts, strong backs, boundless energy, and notable professional competence of people like administrative director Jones; like Erwin Welke, who was president of the Association when the Festival was momentously voted onto its schedule; and like Elliott Kone, the succeeding EFLA President, who not only presided over the preliminary planning and the actual events and ceremonies of the first Festival, but also developed the truly marvelous high-speed system by which the Blue Ribbon trophies are produced and ready for presentation just three hours after the last Jury casts its votes. For EFLA's welcome to registrants at that first Festival in 1959, Emily Jones wrote: "The idea of running a film festival is not a new one to the EFLA Board of Directors. It had been discussed as a possible project on several occasions as far back as 1952, since EFLA was already well established as a film evaluating organization, and the giving of awards would simply carry further the two major purposes of improving the standards of film criticism, and of giving recognition to good work by film makers." If EFLA makes it look easy, consider that the success of a comprehensive national film festival depends on the participation of hundreds of producers and sponsors making and using films in close to 40 different fields of interest; upon establishment of a system of standards by which an ultimate variety of films can be fairly rated; upon recruitment, accrediting and supervision of over 70 groups of highly qualified volunteer judges. With generous counsel and support from EFLA Board members on the Festival Committee and from Gus Giordano, who had worked on the discontinued Golden Reel Festivals, Emily Jones mustered her full staff— one assistant and one clerk— and tackled the job. For her, it was literally a do-it-yourself festival. Adequate screening facihties had to be found— three times, so far, as the Festival has successively outgrown the Statler and the Barbizon-Plaza and overflowed into the corridors of the Biltmore. Invitations to enter films and how-to-do-it rules and regulations had to be formulated and homed into layouts for the printer. Competent chairmen for Pre-Screening Committees and Juries had to be enlisted, and helped to recruit their judging groups. An efficient system must be devised for shipping hundreds of prints to Pre-Screeners all over the country, and reshipping them into insured and checked-out safekeeping before delivery to Festival headquarters. Rating sheets for the judges had to be developed and detailed instructions composed for chairmen of the judging groups. A program must be planned and outstanding speakers secured. Invitations must be issued to related film organizations who might be interested in sponsoring special events at the Festival, and help on their programs and announcements provided. Appropriate trophies and certificates, a banquet for several hundred people, a big catalog listing and describing hundreds of Festival films, hotel accommodations for registrants, advertisements for the Festival program, provision for display materials, signing on of volunteers to man the hospitality desk, reminders to tardy producers forgetful of deadlines, announcements for the press— the list of Festival chores is as long as a bad film. But as the New York Times' 16mm critic, Howard Thompson, said in reporting on "the best-organized film festival in the world," Emily Jones is a "thoughtful dynamo who knows how to get things done." Solidly backed by the members of EFLA and other Festival volunteers, Emily Jones got it done— and again, and again, and again. "It helps," she says, "if you can talk on the telephone while you are writing letters." That is what she will be doing again this year as plans develop for the fifth annual American Film Festival! in April of 1963. 438 Educational Screen and Audiovisual Guide — August, 1962