International film festival taken over by weenie directors?

I am hearing grumbles about the heavily promoted Thailand Film Destination Festival which begins next month. A competition was organized to bring 100 film makers from around the world to Thailand.

It appears just 48 are from overseas, and 33 of those from south east Asia. What’s more there have been widespread complaints that professional film makers have been barred. At least some complain their applications were not even considered.

The remainder of the ‘film makers’ are from Thailand by the way. Most seem to have been selected from Universities.

All have a limited period to make a short film on Thailand and qualify for a chance to win US$30,000. Well, I guess that is not going to attract the big boys anyway.

In fact most seem to be fresh faced kids from schools and universities.

One Facebook wag even joked that perhaps the teams were being chosen to be ‘kidnapped’ in Thailand.

Said one applicant:

“People started to notice something else about the teams selected. Not one of them was a professional or experienced film-maker. The whole competition had surely been designed to attract film-makers to Thailand, and many of the applicants were working film-makers. However, by searching Google and film-making databases, it soon became clear that all experienced film-makers had been rejected.

“Not only had they been rejected, it was soon discovered by checking access logs that the organizers had not even looked at their show reels or supporting information for their application. 

“It was absolutely clear that they had been rejected without consideration.

“The comments on Facebook might be condemned as the bitterness of sore losers, but there was clearly something to this”.

Meanwhile as part of the festival organisers will be showing notable films which have been made in Thailand and given Thailand an international boost like er ‘Bangkok Dangerous’ and ‘Hangover 2’ which were partially filmed in Soi Cowboy – and in the case of Hangover 2 – outside the Eden Club in Sukhumvit Soi 7/1, which might have been a bit of an eye opener for the stars.

Film makers have been told to make films in the spirit of the competition, which is to present Thailand as a world film hub, and promote Thailand too – one of the sponsors is the Tourist Authority of Thailand. The Flying Sporran missed enrolment day.

Meanwhile the chief foreign promoter of the project Paul Spurrier, whose film below looks like a TAT promotion is no longer part of the project. He refuses to say why.