The Indiana Film Showcase

This past Friday The Saint Regis Club hosted our first ever Indiana Film Showcase. I organized this event, so Thursday and Friday were busy, sleepless days.

We were showing three films in a row, all by Indiana-based filmmakers. Since you should check them all out, they were:

Finding Xanadu: The Life and Films of Samuel W. Truss by Benjamin Lancaster

Ghost Stories 4 by Dan T. Hall

Trippin’ by Devi Snively

A good time was had by all. Or most. We even had some people attend who were actually involved in the making of these films, and they were gracious enough to do short Q&As with us after the screenings.

This was in important event to me and The Saint Regis Club because we’re also planning on organizing a full-fledged, multi-day Film Festival with two capital Fs later this year. This was a microcosm of that, so it was good to see what the challenges and requirements would be. And among other things, I learned two primary lessons:

Lesson one: advertising. What I did for the Showcase failed miserably. Literally not a single person came because of advertising; it was all word of mouth. So I’ll have to regroup and rethink my strategies.

Lesson two: doing everything myself. Don’t. I felt like I was going to die from exhaustion, and this was just a short, one-day event.

But my next step is a grant application, due later this month. That I can do by myself.