Welcome to the official Tampa Film Festival blog for Tampa Bay's best Film Festival series, the Tampa Film Showcase.The Tampa Film Showcase is a Tampa Film Festival series which will combine an advanced film festival with a professional networking event. There will be a total of twelve film festivals a year. Eleven of the Tampa Film Showcases will be monthly events showing short indie films. The remaining film festival will be scaled up as an annual Tampa Film Festival, which runs longer, features feature-length indie films, and will have a more elaborate judging and awards segment. None of the shorter monthly film festivals will skimp on any features shared by the annual version.The Tampa Film Showcase web site has been up since late 2007. The debut of the Tampa film festival is scheduled for 2009, and the Tampa film festival series will be produced by Eventi Stage and Tampa Bay Film. Tampa Bay Film's Tampa Online Film Festival will also be a sponsor of this exciting Tampa film festival event series. Since the official web site was launched, we noticed that unethical, unprofessional people in the Tampa indie film scene have studied it, and some of our marketing material and even our slogans are being plagiarized and used by them. They will describe their amateur Tampa film festivals as "showcasing Tampa indie films" and being a "showcase" for the "Tampa indie film community". These phrases were not used at all before our web site launched, and it is a shining example of what is wrong with the Tampa indie film scene and why there is no professional Tampa indie film community in existence today.There is no Tampa indie film community. These unprofessional, unethical characters infesting the Tampa indie film scene are running a small Tampa indie film clique which has been masquerading as a Tampa indie film community. They have self-serving interests, practice discriminatory politics, and use the professionals who they come into contact with for what they can get from them. After they use the professionals, if they perceive them to be competition, they will openly slander them and spread rumors about them in an attempt to undermine their credibility. Such unprofessional and unethical behavior only as serves to undermine their professional credibility and prevent the formation of a professional Tampa indie film community, and this hurts everyone in the Tampa indie film scene. This is going to change.
Correction about the term "showcase". "Showcase" implies that they are screening their film festival submissions and are only showing the nest Tampa indie films. This is not true at all. Many of these people show everything that is submitted to their film festivals, which make their film festivals long, boring events. As a result, many Tampa indie film fans, talent, and indie film professionals avoid these so-called film festivals like the plague. The Tampa Film Showcase will live up to its name. We actually screen our films and only show what's worth the time to see. We respect the time of our audiences and want them to be entertained while networking and being informed.The Tampa Film Showcase is being developed to be the ultimate Tampa Film Festival series and professional networking event for talent and production professionals. Once it debuts and the film festival series runs every month, it will be interesting to see the Tampa indie film clique try to catch up and compete with a Tampa Film Festival which has them beat in every area.Here's to putting the fakers in the Tampa indie film scene out of business. Here's to the formation of a genuine professional Tampa indie film community of qualified professionals. It's coming, and there isn't a thing that the Tampa indie film clique can do about it. The future of indie film in Tampa, and the beginnings of a professional Tampa indie film community, begin with the upcoming debut of the best Tampa Film Festival, the Tampa Film Showcase.
For more about the Tampa indie film clique, what it wrong with the Tampa indie film scene, and what is being done to fix it, check out the Tampa Film Blog by Tampa indie film professional and Tampa entertainment expert C. A. Passinault.
