We had a follow-up call this afternoon with the two board directors of that event I mentioned on Monday. As a reminder, this is the established event with the long history and strong brand equity but also a fair bit of not-so-great baggage; they have offered us the opportunity to take over the board and own the event, which is structured as a not-for-profit. Interesting convo. They (these 2 board directors) feel it should be scaled back to a much greater degree than I expected (major relief!) - MUCH more manageable and viable. Essentially, they feel the current programming schedule should be more than halved, including reducing the number of theaters from 6 to 3. Considering each of those theaters is located in a different local market within one umbrella region, let us all now say, "Amen!". It's current format is WAAAAYYYY too sprawling. The new concept we're kicking around is to 'travel' the identical mini-festival (10-15 films) to the three most relevant local markets over the course of 3 successive weekends. I still believe we need to take a 2009 hiatus b/c it's just too late to start sponsorship for a second event and I literally don't think I have the time to deal with it. Plus, there is a ton that needs to be massaged, reviewed, reorganized, restructured, etc. before we can even consider fundraising. And, even if I could slide it in under the sponsor radar now, it most certainly will be a challenge if we wait for what I anticipate will be at least 2 months during this development period. Looking forward, it seems unrealistic and somewhat foolish to try to make this happen next year. If we proceed with this opportunity, however, we believe the way to try to maintain a degree of continuity and buzz is to issue a press release announcing our take-over. We may also consider a single screening event in the fall '09 to formally introduce ourselves in that market and keep the momentum humming. It's auspicious timing because 2009 is the NY Int'l Latino Film Festival's 10th anniversary. If all goes well, we may have a roll-out of press releases, including Cinedulce, which we've never formally announced, the DVD release(s), potentially this new event, a strategic partnership with a prod. company (more on that another time) and, of course, the usual set of festival-related releases (i.e., call for entries, HBO contest call for entries, sponsor line-up, programming line-up, etc.). One would hope this onslaught will catch the eye of some major local and national outlets, which, of course, continues to drive the profile of the organization. Anyway, next steps are I need to write the recap (what else is new?) and they need to send us some detailed info we requested, including financials from previous years, so we have a better sense of what's happening. One fairly big outstanding issue is how we're going to pay for the few visits we'll definitely have to make. They feel there should be limited net assets after 2009, but we don't yet know that number and it also may have to be applied to local overhead expenses. The deliberations continue...
~ Liz
(P.L.H.H.)
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