Maryland Film Festival 2011

It has been an occasionally brutal year on the film festival circuit for our strange little movie, but that is not to say that there weren’t occasionally bright respites along the way: for every form rejection letter we received, there were five new lasting friendships made with folks we met at the Maryland Film Festival. So it’s important to stress how grateful we all are to everyone there at the festival, as they truly provided us with one of the best possible venues and audiences for the world premiere of “Small Pond.” It represented a one-of-a-kind opportunity for us to share our movie with an incredibly warm and receptive audience comprised of both our own local Baltimore crew and many other stalwarts of the Maryland production community who have continually encouraged and inspired me to make the leap to long-form feature filmmaking. I also personally thought that the festival itself really reached a new level this year in terms of how many friendly and interesting filmmakers in attendance responded to its plucky vibe and how the festival is beginning to assert itself as a mandatory annual stop for a lot of them.

(photo credit: Alix Southwick)

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