Filmmakers Avoid La Femme Film Festival
Terrible and expensive place to screen. For the submission fee of $70, you get a room with a couple of chairs and none of your posters nowhere to be seen. We were also “lucky” enough to have our screening scheduled against the opening party of the festival. Needless to say that nobody had any idea we were showing, besides our friends.
Also needless to say, that there was no effort from the festival organizer to put any attention to our film, because our time slot was in competition with the film crew, that paid huge money to the festival publicist.
During the closing ceremony, we struggled to find parking place, because place dedicated to VIP only was not for us. The parking attendant laughed when we asked and said : “Well, are you a celebrity?” Foolish of us to think that since our film was at the festival, we might have been the VIPs. At that point, we were so upset, that we approached the organizer Ms Leslie La Page to find out what exactly happened with our screening, our posters and her festival. She was very busy standing around carrying a baby, I guess her son…
Upon our approach, she started looking very uncomfortable, claiming she is very busy and cannot talk to us. We did mention we emailed her earlier with no feedback. She started getting more upset, looking for any way out. We left. We didn’t bother to attend award ceremony, that was dedicated to people, who paid thousands of dollars to receive her award.
How does this woman sleep at night? Scamming filmmakers of their money, taking their promotional materials and trashing them right away? If this woman is really a mother, I feel very sorry for the children she will raise. Nothing good comes from family of thieves, liars and con artists. Avoid this place if you are a serious filmmaker. If you film is no good, this place might be a great for you, because for few thousand $, you can buy attention, great screening time, publicity and award. No respect though. That you can only buy with good film.
Final evaluation:
Price: expensive
Perks: some if you have extra $ to pay for them
Media: Ms Leslie has some friends that lent their names to the festival, they are as interested in indie film as I am in farming
Professionalism: appears good until personal contact
Interaction with filmmaker: only with the rich ones
Rating on a scale from 1-10: 3 (at least the “festival” takes place)
Website:
Final thought: After receiving emails from other filmmakers that attended La Femme, wanting to stop Ms LaPage from running
the festival another year, I realized, that we came out OK. We didn’t pay any additional money besides the submission fee, we didn’t get
scammed into her bogus publicist, we didn’t travel across the country to attend this circus. We came out OK, just smarter. Will you?
Which Film Festival? 
It couldn’t have been worse. No publicity at all, so the only way anybody attended was by filmmaker’s getting them there. No parking anywhere. Suggested publicist got no results. Festival director selects awards. Reviews for the grand prize winner, the showcase for “opening night,” were scathing when it opened, but it was the only film with any recognizable talent. Events that weren’t canceled were described inaccurately and miserably produced. And perhaps $100,000 of entry fees were collected.
When I asked for a refund of my entry fee, plus the $1,000 I paid the bogus publicist, festival director said she would bury me with her lawyers if I made trouble.
Suzanne Taylor
Producer/Director
“What On Earth? Inside the Crop Circle Mystery”