Submission update: March 2nd marks the last day of festival nine Late Submissions. Thank you! As you know, we chose to test the market and only take submissions via Filmfreeway.com this year. We have been working with withoutabox.com since our inception. We wanted to know if Filmfreeway was/is poaching from the WAN submissions. We also wanted to know if we used both platforms, could we actually watch the amount of films we expected to receive. The only way to know this was to try one year without WAB. So we did. We will post our experience after this years festival, here are a few things we learned:

1. Filmfreeway has a stronger foreign audience
2. Filmfreeway has a simple collaborative tool for judges. WAB provides more of an environment/ability for virtual collaboration.
3. Price is important for submissions but does not mean you will get a better or worse film.
4. The VIDEO download options has all but replaced “mailing in DVD’s” and is great for filmmakers but complicates a film festivals ability to screen.

We’ll add more updates here soon as the next 3 months unfold. Welcome to the city of Philadelphia and the 9th annual Philadelphia Independent Film Festival. We look forward to seeing you at this years festival. Of course, if you need to contact us with any questions, please do!

See you at the festival –

Benjamin F. Barnett, Festival Director