Last year, I wrote a 2,000 word article for a small arts magazine detailing the best local digital entries in my city’s biggest film festival. I also made some recommendations for improving the festival in my article. As a result, a couple of days ago, I got a call from someone I knew asking me to volunteer for the committee this year. Although my role hasn’t been hashed out yet, this could potentially mean I could participate in the selection process for the films this year. As I am now the arts magazine’s film columnist, I expect to do a similar article next year.
Furthermore, I have been involved in the production of a digital movie that we expect to enter into the competition this year. I am not the writer nor the director, and I only have the smallest of bit parts in the movie. Now I KNOW that’s a potential conflict, but I have already offered to recuse myself from any discussion of the film’s merits, either for admission into the festival or for any potential awards. And, since the independant film community is pretty small in this town, this sort of thing has happened before.
Do either of these situations present a conflict of interest for me? What should I do to prevent a conflict from occurring?
Obviously you’ve already figured out you can’t judge your own film, but recusing yourself from that situation, in my mind, leaves you free to evaluate the other entries.
The magazine article is a little trickier. I would suggest:
a) Full disclosure. Say in the article that you were a participant on the committee and what your role was
b) You can (heck, you probably should) say that you had your own entry in the competition, but don’t make any other comment on it.
How about you turn it around a bit, and give your readers an “insiders” perspective? Make it a condition of your participation on the committee that you will be giving them a written evaluation of what you thought it was like to participate, and your suggestions for improvement (exactly like before, but now from the inside instead of the outside). Condition two: You’re going to publish this evaluation, with an appropriate introduction: “I participated in the fest this year in such-and-such a capacity, here’s the wrapup letter I wrote them.” What would you think of that? It makes your role clear, and it gives you a certain objectivity in both capacities. The fest knows in advance you’ll be evaluating them and making your evaluation public, and your readers know your evaluation comes from the perspective of a participant rather than an outside journalist.
I agree: be up-front with everyone from the start and all should be fine.
This could be an opportunity to create contact between the magazine’s readers and the film festival, which would be good for all involved: festival gains publicity, magazine gains readers, you get your by-line on some provocative insider-pieces on the local film comunity.
Of course, you may conclude that the film committee is full of self-serving idiots or some such, in which case it’ll be a clusterf*ck for you, but I doubt that’s the case.
If you want to be really fair about it, and emphasize your impartial intent, you can refer back to previous criticism(s) in your evaluation. To wit: “In last year’s article, I suggested you do such-and-so. Having been a part of the process, I feel even more strongly that this be adopted, because yada yada yada. Of course, in that same article, I also suggested this-and-such, which I now know sounds good on paper but, given my experience, is actually pretty stupid and unworkable in reality.” And so on.
