WOMEN IN COMEDY FESTIVAL: FILM & SCREENPLAY COMPETITION

ALL ENTRANTS AGREE TO ADHERE TO THE FOLLOWING RULES, TERMS, and CONDITIONS BEFORE SUBMITTING YOUR FILM OR SCREENPLAY.

NO REFUND of your entry fee will be permitted.

All entry and payment will be submitted through FilmFreeway.

All decisions by judges, programmers and organizers shall be made in their sole discretion and will be FINAL.

TV, SHORT FILM AND ANIMATION SUBMISSION ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS:

To qualify, the protagonist of the film must be female-identifying, and a woman must hold AT LEAST ONE of the following roles: Producer, Director, or Writer.
This is a comedy film festival only. All submissions must fall under the comedy genre.
The contest is open worldwide except where prohibited by law. All entries must be either in English or contain English subtitles.
Films must be submitted as an online streaming video via the participating submission platform FilmFreeway.
You must provide your film on a digital download for submissions. Digital exhibition format will be used at the Festival theatrical location. If your film is selected, you must supply the highest possible quality digital version.
We strongly encourage filmmakers to submit ONLY their fully-finished film. We will judge each submission as a completed work, whether it is or not. Once a film is submitted, we will not update the submission with a more recent cut. Should the film be accepted for screening during the Festival, the filmmaker may have the opportunity to supply the festival with their most recent version, given extreme extenuating circumstances such as a corrupted file.
Women in Comedy Festival and their affiliates have no responsibility for loss, theft, or damage to the materials you submit.
Women in Comedy Festival screens films as digital files during the Festival and does NOT screen films on Blu-Ray, HDCAM, or DCP. If accepted, you must provide us your film as a digital file for exhibition.
Submission for the WICF COMEDY SHORT CONTEST with Feigco Entertainment category must be between 2 to 10 minutes in length, including credits.
Submission for the WICF TV COMEDY/DRAMEDY PILOT CONTEST category must be 30 minutes or less in length, including credits.
Submission for the WICF ANIMATED COMEDY SHORT CONTEST category must be 5 minutes of less in length, including credits.
Employees, officers, subsidiaries, affiliated companies, advertising and promotion agencies, and immediate family members of WICF are ineligible to participate. An “immediate family member” includes spouses, parents, grandparents, siblings, children, and grandchildren.
You must be 18 years or older to submit.
We will NOT look at works in progress, so please do not submit them.
All films must be submitted as they will appear at the Festival. No editing is permitted after entry.
Please do NOT send stills or press kits. If your film is selected we will request additional information at that time.
You may enter any category multiple times. But remember: each entry requires an individual submission, application and entry fee. You may submit no more than 5 entries in each category through filmfreeway.com.
Only completed entries through filmfreeway.com will be processed and considered for screening. Submissions made in any other manner will not be accepted.
By submitting your entry, you confirm and warrant you have the required legal authority to submit the entry into the Festival and to use all music, images and content in the entry and to authorize use and exhibition of the film.
You must have exclusive rights to your film as well as any pertinent releases including but not limited to actors image, location image, trademarked or copyrighted image and music. Women in Comedy Festival Producers reserve the right to request proof of such releases at any time before films are screened.

IF YOUR FILM IS SELECTED:

Participants whose films are selected to be screened at WICF will be contacted by email on or around April 6th, 2020. The winners of “Best of Fest” and “Audience Choice Award” in each category will be announced at the event on May 9, 2020 at The Brattle Theater in Cambridge, MA.
You are responsible for your own travel and accommodations.
The winners will be ANNOUNCED the screening and must show picture identification to claim their prize. Women in Comedy Festival reserves the right to examine additional identification and may choose to accept or deny awarding the prize based on the identification presented.
You agree to allow Women in Comedy Festival to exhibit your film in venues during its 2020 festival, regardless of subsequent distribution deals secured after the submission process. You further agree to allow Women in Comedy Festival usage of clips from the film and all related publicity material submitted for promotional use on television, radio, in print, web and at live Festival events.
Films accepted for exhibition may be screened on the Women in Comedy Festival website and sister websites after the Festival with permission from the film’s owner. Films may be maintained on these website for up to one year.
You are responsible for all shipping costs and risk of loss of your submitted materials to the Festival. The Festival has no responsibility for loss, theft, or damage to the materials you submit.

SCREENPLAY SUBMISSION ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS:
All genders are encouraged and welcome to submit. Your script must have a female-identifying protagonist.
All scripts must be submitted in English and entered electronically in .PDF format. Hard copies of scripts will not be accepted.
All submissions must be the first 5 pages of a completed, orignal, television script. Please only submit up to the first 5 pages.
Your script must be your original work.
Scripts that have been sold, produced for a profit, or are currently under option are not eligible.
Prior contest-winning scripts from other contests are acceptable.
The 1st 5 pages of your 30-minute Comedy or Dramedy only are accepted. Anything else, including but not limited to short scripts or web series, novels, short stories, stage plays, musicals, treatments, synopses, reality show concepts, documentaries, and/or spec scripts for existing TV series are not eligible.
Script must be industry standard format. Formatting is taken into consideration in judging.
Include a TITLE PAGE with your TITLE and LOGLINE only. Under no circumstances should the writer include name or contact information within the title page or body of the script.
The title page WILL NOT be considered as one of your 5 pages.
It is the writer’s sole responsibility to register material to be submitted with the U.S. Copyright Office and/or with the Writers Guild of America or the appropriate agency in the writer’s country.
Writers retain the rights to their screenplay.
Applications are non-exclusive and applicants may submit their screenplay to any other person, competition, producer, agent, publisher, and/or organization.
Applicant accepts without reservation that the submitted screenplay will be reviewed by WICF staff and/or panel of Industry Judges for evaluation and that any one of these staff members or judges may have been or may be exploring ideas similar to the submitted material, and the applicant hereby waives any claim that the staff or judges may have misappropriated any ideas or portions of the submission, logline or screenplay.
Collaborations are accepted, but please note that ALL PRIZES ARE AWARDED TO A SINGLE WRITER ONLY. WICF will provide a single check made out to one writer.
You must be 18 years or older to submit.
The contest is open worldwide except where prohibited by law.
Once you complete your application, we will not accept a revised draft. If you have a revised draft you want to submit, you will need to complete a new application.
Entrants may submit up to 5 scripts, but each script will require a separate application and payment.

IF YOUR SCREENPLAY IS SELECTED:

The top 5 scripts selected will be invited to pitch at the WICF Pitch Workshop on May 9, 2020 in Boston, MA.
You are responsible for your own travel and accommodations.

I ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE AS FOLLOWS:

1.I have read, understood and complied with all eligibility requirements of the categories for which I would like this film or screenplay to be considered.

2.Women in Comedy Festival has no obligation (other than as stated in these rules or on our website) to disclose any of the following information: i) identities of screeners or judges; ii) notes, feedback, or information relating to the submitted project; and/or iii) details regarding the submission review or selection process.

3.The Women in Comedy Festival explicitly disclaims any liability or responsibility for any comments, notes, or opinions expressed about a submission, whether by the WICF judges or by its volunteers.

4. This film/screenplay is not subject to litigation nor is threatened by any litigation.

5. I am duly authorized to submit this film/screenplay to the Festival and its Competition.

6. By submitting an entry, I agree to the Rules, Terms, and Conditions as set forth above, and further agree to indemnify and hold the Women in Comedy Festival and their respective affiliates, officers, directors, agents, co-branders, sponsors, or other partners, and any of their employees (collectively, the "Festival Indemnites"), harmless from any and all claims, damages, expenses, costs (including \ attorneys’ reasonable fees) and liabilities (including settlements), brought or asserted by any third party against any of the Festival Indemnites due to or arising out of your film\screenplay and any other materials you submit in this Festival, or your conduct during and in connection with this Festival, including but not limited to claims of violation of copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights, right of publicity, right of privacy or defamation.

7. By claiming a prize, you authorize the use, without additional compensation, of your name, likeness, and/or voice and photograph for promotion and/or advertising purposes in any manner and in any medium now known or developed in the future throughout the world that Women in Comedy Festival deems appropriate.

8. This contest shall be governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.