BAM! Festival

Thank you for your interest. The specific schedule of every film played was listed on the home page of the website and posted on the Facebook page about a week prior to the Festival date. The itemized schedule also provided the times, subjects, and name of presenters for free workshops. This year we had the head of student recruiting from Texas A&M present a workshop on their opportunities for for animation and film as well as information about their job placement programs after graduation. We had a professor from UT Austin that teaches animation and video game design provide a workshop on constructing narrative. The published schedule also contained the films that made the finals. The BAM! winners are currently posted on the home page of the website. BAM! is focused primarily on providing an amazing Festival Day experience. Audience members, Texas High School educators, and judges have offered extensive praise for organization and presentation of the live festival experience. We attempt to play every Texas student submission, and in fact play films this year from 1 pm to 9:30 pm. For most of these students, this is the only opportunity to see their film on a big screen. As seen on our website and festival page, our theater is amazing and rivals any big city theater anywhere. Nocona High School has attended every year since 2019. I recommend that you give them a call and get an independent opinion of the great job we do at BAM!

BAM! awards a monetary prize to the highest scoring film submitted by a student of Sam Houston State University. Thus all films from SHSU are marked as selected so it can be scored by multiple rounds of judging. Further, BAM! prioritizes screening of all Texas films if possible. However, BAM! is funded by local hotel taxes from the local government and must be held as a “family friendly” event. Films with excessive profanity or other content that violates community standards cannot be screened in front of the theater audience. Your film went through multiple levels of judging as was all selected films and all SHSU films. BAM! chose the best film from SHSU and is awarding the cash prize to that film. That process is separate from process of actually playing the film in the theater. BAM! consulted with faculty of SHSU about this decision to omit films with prohibited content but still select the films for the purpose of multiple level judging for the SHSU special award. I would have reached out to you in person about this at the festival in person, but I don’t believe you were in attendance.