Found this posted over at Machinima.com. The author raises good questions that will likely not get answered unless more people question the integrity of the decisions made by the AMAS and the contests and festivals it is involved in.

QUOTE:
How can a film such as "Stolen Life", which was submitted to the Machinima Film Festival, and won numerous awards in 2006, be then accepted to the Europe Machinima Film Festival in 2007.

Both festivals are overlooked by AMAS.

Of course, it again won all the main categories. Just how are small no cost amateurs supposed to compete with a professional organisation with 60 people working on a film.

Can someone please explain to me how this is allowed ?

Great Film though, richly deserved awards for sure.

Is it worth us submitting to the Machinima awards for 2007 when we will probably be up against "Stolen Life" AKA known as "Stolen Awards" at the 2007 Machinima awards ?

Stacked ?

This is the big question .. I believe that hobbyist movies should be at these shows but be regarded for a separate prises/awards.

We have to look at who was behind setting this award ceremony up, was it solely a commercial venture? Could we really have an independent awards without commercial interference?

On the positive side these awards are in their infancy and as this media grows, the dateline of the movie will come into play, the fact that those movies had been given other awards should not deny them entry. After all you see this with many Hollywood movies being entered for multiple awards all over the world.

Gas

The statements in that first post are not accurate. For example, Stolen life was not made by 60 people.

Anyway, the European Festival organisers must have had a hard job to decide how to run their competition - what to let in, what categories to award and how to gain sponsorship to run the festival in the first place. They did a fine job trying to balance all the conflicting motivations. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but as a vehicle for raising the profile of Machinima in the UK and Europe, it was a great success.

I agree with joe90 on this - one of the main aims was to raise awareness of machinima - one of my clan mates buzzed me asking if i wanted to lodge with him for the festival

lets not also forget machinima.com has a high proprtion of threads with drama & people moaning about X - so i wouldn't put too much concern about the "opinion"

But in a contest they should compare apples to apples.