The email came through last week. The follow-up call may as well have been an email.
“There wasn’t a lot of insight into their full thinking process,” Stacy Spikes, the founder of the film festival Urbanworld, told Variety about the Writers Guild of America East‘s decision not to sponsor the 30th edition of the BIPOC-focused festival in October.
The decision to end its 12-year partnership with the New York festival stemmed from this year’s incorporation of an “AI Sidebar,” a new initiative launched in partnership with the New School that will feature the festival screening AI-generated films and shorts, along with conversations and tech demos for AI tools. Spikes said he found out about the WGAE’s decision through an email forwarded to him, prompting him to propose a phone call to clarify the move further.
“Given a 10-year relationship, you don’t want it to go up in flames like that,” he said.
But if not in flames, fractured it was left — the WGAE said its decision would stand. While Spikes acknowledged the guilds that have sponsored the festival don’t write “massive checks,” he worried that the move could impact the pipeline of filmmakers who try to submit their work to the festival — and risk policing them as they navigate a transforming industry.
