The “East Winds” film festival and my professional experience on it

The following essay/presentation aims to reflect on the professional experience I had during my second semester of the current academic year.

Finding a professional experience was never an issue for me, because I am generally a pro-active person and by the time I learned I had to do one as part of my course – I was already involved in several projects. In my proposal a few months back I outlined 3 of them – a research assistant to one of Coventry University’s lecturers and his project European Dreamscapes; a co-manager of the third year CCM students’ international projects; an administrator of the East Winds film festival & symposium, organized by Third Window Films and the Coventry East Asian Film Society.

Due to unforeseen circumstances the first two positions were terminated, but this gave me the opportunity to focus my attention and energy on the third project – the festival administrator position, which turned out to be a goal-changing experience and introduced to me a new and exciting career path I hadn’t considered before.

The festival took place on the 11,12 and 13 February in the Warwick Arts Center, but  the whole project took a good two or three months of preparation. During that time there were many small events and organizational tasks I had to fulfill, which were all part of the bigger experience and have enriched me in some way. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this essay/written presentation and the given word limit I will focus on the final month before the festival, which was the most intense, and the week after the festival ended, as it turned out to provide me with some invaluable life lessons.

I’ve been a central member of the East Asian Film Society from its’ very creation at the beginning of last year. Working with the society quickly made me realize that one of my strongest aspects are my organizational and problem-solving skills, and others must have seen that too, because by the end of the first year I was practically running the promotional aspect of things, and as of the beginning of the second year – I was officially made Head of promotions.

This may not sound like much to an external person, but for me it has been an educational path from the sort they don’t teach you in classrooms. I learned that indeed one of the hardest things to do is work with people and especially to motivate them to do work on a professional level without any material compensation. In short – it thought me social politics. So when Spencer Murphy asked me to become one of the 3 administrators of the festival and take large chunks of its organization in my own hands – I knew my skills were going to be challenged further.

A part of the festival was the Asian film symposium, which took place the first two days, but my responsibilities lay more with the actual film festival and more specifically – with the organization of its promotion. At first I had to come up with new ways of promoting and with schedules for the promotion shifts. The last was quite difficult to construct, since people don’t give up their free time that easily and we had promotions going for 4 to 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. To say that my social and persuasion skills were tested to the absolute maximum, would be a slight understatement and the entire time I had, threateningly hanging over my head, the realization of how important those promotions are. After all – what use is a film festival if there is no one to come and see it?

This required also a lot of organization of my personal time, since I was “on-duty” even when I was “off-duty” – i.e. I was in Facebook and on my email and phone, organizing people and shifts at 11PM practically every night, because circumstances changed almost by the hour.

A situation, which arose out of nowhere, was the matter with the transportation. We had promised all students a free transportation with minibuses from Ellen Terry to the Warwick Arts Center and back; we had promised the same to all delegates, but their minibuses would directly pick them up from the Coventry Techno Center, where the symposium was to take place.

Two weeks before the actual festival it turned out that in all the work-load, nobody had actually gone up to the Students Union to book minibuses and arrange drivers. I offered to take this on, but when I went to the SU it turned out that all minibuses, save for one, were already booked for those days. In the following two weeks to organizing the promotional shifts, and the box office shifts (because at that time we had already started selling tickets for the films) were added a desperate search for transportation vehicles and drivers and I had to take my organizational skills yet another level up. Looking back on it, I can honestly say I have never in my life been so pressured or busy. These are the moments when you also appreciate the people close to you, so this professional experience has actually made a difference to me in a personal sense as well, because without the support of my friends the stress would have surely beaten me down.

The situation got complicated additionally and I had to face a new level of pressure when one of the members of the society and a very close friend of mine passed away only 10 days before the start of the festival. I had to very quickly learn to separate my personal struggles from my professional duties and looking back on it now, I believe for the next couple of weeks I sank in a state of denial and was rather grateful for the loads of work to distract me. We decided to dedicate the festival to her and raise some donations for her family, so now I had to assign additional “fundraising” shifts, but luckily people were very willing to take up those.

And so the symposium+festival came. The pressure from the last month was slowly dying away, since the only thing I had to do now was ensure everything ran smoothly. I did still have to deal with the minibus rotations (since we only got the one, I had to come up with a schedule, which would allow it to pick up delegates from the Techno Center, drive them to the Warwick Arts Center and still have enough time to pick up the students from Ellen Terry and drive them as well), but at that point my head was already in the “chess” mode and was used to thinking organizationally and a few moves ahead.

To cut things short, the festival went extremely well; everyone – from the delegates, to the students, to the external organizers from the Warwick Arts Center and Third Window Films – were happy. I was so happy and proud and frankly – grateful for it all to be over.

But I had one more lesson to learn before I closed the chapter of my professional experience. A week after the end of the festival I was called on a short meeting between the administrators. After the initial short congratulations, I was personally pointed at and asked to answer why the whole minibus situation occurred and holding me responsible for what was called “a failure”. According to the main organizer the minibuses had been my responsibility from the very beginning, and apparently some kind of misunderstanding has happened and I hadn’t realized that. It was pointed out to me that on the last evening the fact that we had to call additional 4 taxis had cost 300 pounds out of the pocket of one of the administrators. Very few times in my life had I been so shocked and offended, especially since apparently I was the only one who realized how much time and effort and even money I had sacrificed for it all to even happen in the first place.

But then another thing was pointed out to me – even if we leave the misunderstanding aside, I had volunteered to take up the responsibility for this aspect and since in retrospection there had been a large problem with it – naturally, it was me who was to be held accountable.

This was a point I couldn’t argue with so I had to swallow my pride and draw some conclusions for myself:

1. If you take up the responsibility for something – make sure you have enough time to execute it, because if there is any kind of a problem afterwards – you’ll be held responsible.
2. Always confirm, confirm and confirm again, so as to avoid any sort of misunderstandings. NEVER assume.

In conclusion, this has been one of the most educational and invaluable experiences in my life. I am deeply grateful to Spencer Murphy and Adam Torel, who gave me the opportunity to participate in this and to all the students I worked with, for all the support and smiles and tears we shared together. Not only did I learn many life lessons, but I also got to push myself further than I had before and it’s made me realize how much I love to organize events and see people smile because of them. This has made me consider a new career path – in event management, and now that I have all that’s happened around this festival behind my back – I also have the confidence that I can do it.

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* NB!!! – By the time it was announced that we had to write a diary for 20 days for this module (201MC) the whole experience had ended. This is why as a confirmation I am choosing the other option – Spencer Murphy will be able to sign off/confirm full 20 days of my work.