Sara Morrison v BFF - thread 5

[SexRealistic]

https://genderblog.net/sara-morrison-v-belfast-film-festival/

Excellent squirrelling and confirms the lie and proves, by including that seemingly irrelevant aspect, that the whole is not to be taken as in any way reliable.

To summarise:

Homebird is premiered as part of Outburst 2021. Public screening. Ticketed and advertised, not invite only.

Film is then submitted to BFF in 2022 and is selected.

Sara is the member of staff who is delegated the task of checking selected films do, in fact, meet the eligibility criteria including not having screened publicly in NI before. (Perhaps someone drew their attention to earlier screening). Finds out it doesn’t.

Film is still included in fest but not in competition. Someone tells filmmaker and producer that it was Sara wot done it. They are livid because winning comps is the grease that oils the wheels in terms of getting further funding.

They grow an immense dislike for SM because they have convinced themselves they didn’t lie on the submission form and she is a cow for doing her job.

Sara goes up to filmmakers after screening and congratulates them on great film and even tho it couldn’t be in competition she hopes it will be seen by many.

Word goes out amongst Outbursties (like groupies) that they need complaints. Filmmakers have convinced themselves that Sara is transphobic so feels justified in making up a whole lot of nonsense the help get her sacked. Revenge. Spite.

They think their lies will all be kept secret because they asked for it to be kept secret.

BFF know it is a lie but use it a way cos they need it for the complaints to reach level of ‘many’.

I dont think a registered health care professional was involved. The person who submitted the complaint was a support/advocacy worker for a Rainbow Project. By training she is into storyboard design/animation, has an arts background and had previously worked for the Belfast Film Festival!

It doesn’t matter who turns up, and they’ll no that fine well. It just matters that it was advertised as open to the public.

That makes me feel better.

Although it further highlights the disingenuous nature of both the complaint and it's insertion into the process.

There seem to be a lot of people adjacent to all of this that have behaved poorly but may never ever even have that pointed out to them.

Mistake in my summary. The event at BFF was the opening gala, not a screening of Homebird so I don’t know if the fiom screened at BFF out of comp or not.

Yes, I was already being charitable in hinting that maybe noone else turned up, but even then they had advertised a 'premiere'. Other contenders for the prize could have felt cheated if outburst hadnt been disqualified

If almost nobody wants to see these films, why is public money being thrown at them?

This is what makes so many people so cross.

Homebird premiered a year earlier at Outburst's own festival. The opening gala of the 2022 BFF festival was a film produced by Caleb's friends. Caleb was there to help and Sara spoke to Caleb over drinks after the screening.Homebird was included in the programme a few days later but wasnt eligible for the competition.

We don't know who attended in total. That's an unfortunate digression that I inadvertently triggered by trying to be fair.

Also, the stray cat has been neutered and would like to complain because the film traumatised him. Or so my cat tells me. He may or may not be reliable, but will give evidence in return for salmon.

Yes. This unfolded during the cloudflare disruption and the boards here were jumping around different topics while we waited for NW summaries. But Naomi C put it to a witness that the complaint from Caleb at Outburst, via Amie (ex BFF) was quite "incestuous".

Well I think she’s realised our out of towners are just about the only people in the room heavily invested in stuff like the truth, unbiased panel members, uncovering the fact what’s in the bundle is a pack of lies.

So she’s been fair and in her favour - this has been an incredibly unusual case.

I think for example Sean Doherty potentially was instructed to ask re Caleb’s anonimity - because they can see that Naomi and Charlotte do their research and keep their receipts.

For me the big standouts are:

• Panel members need to be vetted and verified
• Likely no one is untainted from this massive brainwashing ideology
• On these cases research is always needed
• Once someone is caught in a lie / hides something then always verify everything they say
• The grift is real

If there wasn’t funding for Sara none of this would have come out. So fair play to her solicitor Simon who got her funding that got her the right team.

The 12K for Purebred (plus a second grant of <10k) was from an NIScreen/BFI fund that Outburst applied for. Not BFF funding.

Please send your complaint to BFF -

Laurence McKeown says they have to consider all complaints and this has to clearly be a ‘staffing issue’. And since Michele was the only full time staff member at the time that Caleb got her £12.5 k funding - the staffing issue & but for causation is as follows:

• Michele needed a complaint to get rid of Sarah
• Caleb submits said complaint
• Two months later Caleb & Outburst get given £12.5k to make the film
• Said film scares cat as the film awoke them to the fact that transitioning causes sterilization in some cases and they are sterile and now identify as a trans cat.

Strong case. Complaint will be upheld.

Turns out Blackadder was talking about Ape Creatures - I always heard it as eight creatures because that was the background knowledge I had when watching Blackadder. Every day is a school day. But there really are EIGHT creatures of the Indus, as well as ape creatures.

Yes absolutely- but to hide the lies - they present it as a mental health issue in court / vulnerable user / please don’t for Gods sake mention their name or the Mumsnetter will find out all the lies.

It's no dafter than what's been going on, is it?

I will always argue that film as an art form has as much value in and of itself which shouldn't be measured 'in the moment' by box office as mainstream film is. It's easy to place mainstream standards on arthouse and it is misplaced. Sometimes films grow audiences over time and there are lots of examples of filmmakers/ writers/ poets/ painters etc whose work didn't 'hit' in the moment of release/publication/ exhibition but who have subsequently become very important artists in the firmament.

Film was always a tricky area because for decades the financial support from public funds all went in one direction: the idea of the male 'auteur', when in fact it is a very collaborative art form and the results are because of director, producer, writer, actors, designers and composers unlike poetry or such which is actually authored by one person. Directors are usually the decision makers in the hierarchy but that doesn't make them the sole artist.

So there has been some work in the last decade or so to increase support for women filmmakers and for the ethnically/ racially marginalised. Also for gay filmmakers as this is often work that is ghettoised into special strands/ special festivals etc and not included in more general programming and curation.

Unfortunately, the question of the taste of the gatekeepers was never really challenged so the attempts to widen access were kind of stifled by the fact the decision makers had quite a narrow taste culture which they found it tricky to step outside so the whole remained quite monocultural overall.

But before this had really taken time to develop and to challenge those established taste cultures, the public funding bodies were Stonewalled and, in response, the laudible aspiration to widen participation became a very narrow thing indeed. It became more thought policing that widening access.

This is further exacerbated by the BFI enforcing a questionnaire for all funding submissions and which has had to be adopted by all funding orgs in UK and NI, in which applicants must testify before my Lord Jesus Stonewall that their project has thought about diversity and inclusion. Nowadays any funding application has to include a manifesto not just covering the project's themes in terms of EDI but also on how it is staffed.

This, of course, excludes the types of aspiring filmmakers who can't build a successful argument around EDI to justify their work and favours the easy tick box exercise of EDI that fails the artworld generally. It doesn't actually, for example, make it any easier for disabled filmmakers in any real way.

It also means that the bias has now gone completely the other way, and this perception of bias totally puts off broader audiences.

I think it is a real shame as so many films continue thus to be sidelined into 'Queer' festivals/ strands and that becomes the MOST IMPORTANT aspect of the film when often they are just exploring the human condition generally.

Anyhoo, rant over.

Just to say - I misread BFI for BFF as the second funded on Caleb’s film.

That being said the other one Screen NI who half funds BFF and there are so many little threads to pull on there. I’d not say there is direct evidence but likely a link could be found very easily.

I don’t want to de-rail but it would be useful to know more about this (if you haven’t posted about it in what I’m still to read?!) as a really useful example of institutional damage caused by language… and especially how did they sort it out/get back on track?

Fair enough.
But IM(limited)E of publicly fined local arts events, almost everyone who attends could afford to pay market rate anyway.

I get the argument for fostering young talent and all the rest of it, but I think an awful lot of people look at the dosh slung at things like BFF and think, WTF?

It’s never a de-rail - it educates us all on these topics - generates interests and helps other people learn how to challenge the group think.

Yes I went back to read probably and added a correction - I’d do it to each post I mentioned.

Profuse apologies

This is now a campaign of harassment.

I will whip up two complaints both from people at the same organisation but from two different email accounts so that it obscures the source.

I know I think it’s many - many is 3. 2 is 2. So not many. But enough for an investigation.

You will soon be burned for a witch.