festival
I read your report on the so-called Malibu Film Festival with increasing disbelief. Do you never question their claims? Moving to Santa Monica to promote tourism? One thousand entries? Come on. If they have 100, I’ll be surprised. There must be a good reason this event is no longer in Malibu. Maybe it’s because for five years they have failed to deliver on their promises. These glowing stories keep running in your paper comparing the festival to Cannes and Sundance. Has any film, award winner or not, ever gone on to commercial release? Or been honored anywhere else? Not that I know of.
Whatever happened to the claim they made last year that they were going to screen winners from festivals around the world? Now that would be worthwhile. Frankly, this “festival” has been an increasing embarrassment to Malibu and it’s time we did something about it. Each year there is a new director and each year that director disappears. They claim they are still talking to Wallace Theaters about screening in Malibu but Wallace says they’re no longer interested. Now that it has moved to Santa Monica, isn’t it time this event did us a favor and stopped calling itself the Malibu Film Festival? Isn’t it time you stopped reporting their fantasies as news? Isn’t it time we came up with a festival befitting our community? If Santa Barbara can do it and Palm Springs can do it, surely Malibu can.
Herb Fischer