I wish that I could turn back time…
Hi All
Ryan Parish here, one of the cofounders of Birmingham Anime Film Festival.
Firstly, thank you to those who joined us for the (attempted) screening of End of Evangelion at The MAC on Friday 18th August.
Secondly, apologies that technical difficulties prevented us from showing the film to you but the technology had gone into berserk mode.
Frustratedly we tried everything we could to bring the film to you but as time ran on we were conscious that we wouldn’t be able to bring you the full film and still finish at a reasonable time for people to travel home.
It’s disappointing and we understand some of you had travelled long times or distances to watch a rare screening of Hideki Anno’s masterpiece. As big Evangelion fans ourselves we’re upset that things went so awry. All we can say is God was definitely not in his heaven and all was not right with the world tonight.
Next Steps
The MAC should be getting in touch with ticket holders over the next few days, so please bear with us. If you didn’t leave details or haven’t heard from them by the end of the week please email baffuk@geekybrummie.com, and we’ll do what we can to help make things right. We’re considering multiple options to make it the best situation possible.
Once again, everyone involved with BAFF would like to sincerely apologise, and we hope that this incident won’t affect your interest in the rest of what is truly an amazing range of anime titles which we want to share with Birmingham and the wider world.
We can offer assurances that lessons have been learned from last night. All future films will be double and tripled checked to ensure they’re in full working order. We also ensure that backups are available where possible. Again, we’re fans of these movies ourselves, and we want nothing more than to see these movies up on the big screen where they belong, and in the right order.
I know we can’t forget the past, you can’t forget love and pride, but we hope you can forgive us
Please don’t feel disheartened! While I appreciate what happened wasn’t ideal for a handful of attendees, I’d still call the screening a massive success based on the timing of the technical error alone. Keep up the great work guys.
Not sure i’d call that a “massive success” tbh. How about “massive disapointment”. For starters, the wrong film was left playing for 40 minutes before anyone supervising the event even seemed to notice. There should have been an automatic refund, plus the option to come back and watch the correct film for free.
Thanks for you comment and I appreciate your disappointment. We orginally thought we’d been given a suprise copy of Revival of Evangelion, the last theatrical relase which included significant portions of death and rebirth. When I realised the error I tried to get this swapped over as fast as I could, but I had to wait for the projectionist, and then the copy we had just refused to play ball. We can’t unfortunately initiate any refunds or reschedule ourselves as purchases and bookings were throguh The MAC’s ticketing system. If you’ve not heard within a couple of days, please e-mail us at baffuk@geekybrummie.com and we’ll try to do what we can to make it right.