It is a tremendous thrill to have your film invited to a film festival and seen by a large audience. After the struggle to complete your film, the struggle continues to get it into festivals. When I was invited to be part of the preselection committee for the 1998 Zagreb International Animation Film Festival, I eagerly accepted, anxious to uncover the mysteries behind the process of invitation.

I was very honored to be invited to participate in the selection of this year's program and I took the responsibility very seriously. Zagreb had a three person, multi-cultural jury consisting of myself, an American filmmaker, whose film, The Dirdy Birdy, won the Audience Prize at Zagreb in 1996, a distributor from Germany via Hungary, Detelina Grigorova-Kreck, and a Croatian studio executive, Vedran Misletic. The hosting country of a festival will always have a native representative on the jury. The trio and a senior festival director will decide which of the 800 plus films will be presented in this year's festival.

John Dilworth, left, with Niko Meulemans at Zagreb `96. Photo by Maureen Furniss.

The Basics
The process begins with a first night dinner hosted by the festival. Here the ground rules are laid out and the festival philosophy is expressed. Quality and artistic expression are top priorities. It is important for the directors of the festival to "push young people to be creative, so that in 25 years they are not waiters." Another important issue is funding, as arts money continues to erode even in Zagreb, a town rich in it's historical artistic significance to animation. One way the festival finances itself is by including commercials and television series categories. This insures advertising dollars from the submitting studios while avoiding becoming a market like Annecy.

For the next ten days the jurists will sit in a large dark room with three separate tables lit by small lamps. Twenty feet away is a large video projection screen and a large television set. The TV is for more accurate color. All entries are viewed on video. Each jurist is given several thick books containing specific details about each entry. At the bottom of each page are several boxes. One box is for comments and the other boxes are for voting. A `+' vote indicates the entry is in. A `-' means it's out and a `?' means it isn't bad, but it isn't good either. The jurist cannot decide. After 14 hours of watching films, all the `?' votes will be revisited and who knows which way it will go. The worst vote is the `?' with a big `-' next to it. It is as one jurist put it, "the kiss of death."