message From our Board President

January 2008

Dear Clip Fans,

These are exciting times for GLBT film lovers in Tampa Bay. Over the past year the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival has become more successful at capturing ground breaking new films for our local community, which now includes year-round screening events. And to launch the 2008 season we have a powerful line-up for the Clip Film Series, beginning with: Curiosity of Chance in January and Blueprint in February to celebrate black history month. We hope you’ll join us for both these films and bring a friend or two—you won’t be disappointed, promise!

The Clip organization is growing too. For the first time we now have 13 board members–a record! Plus in the past year we’ve seen a dramatic increase in volunteer help, which makes so much more possible. Please know that we all work hard at building better and better experiences for you our audience.

The work of our staff, volunteers, community partners and our board inspires me every day. To see the commitment of time, energy, dollars and passion that these people pour into the Film Festival, Film Series and Outreach events is an amazing reflection of this community. I am proud to serve you in this role.

As always your input and financial support is more than appreciated, it’s the essential life blood of who we are and what we are able to achieve. Our 2008 budget reflects a great effort on our part to contain costs in order to get the most from every dollar you give. Toward that end we will leverage more volunteer help, community partnerships, donations and in-kind trade.

Your ideas, suggestions and feedback have been invaluable, especially this past year as we have launched our new name, Clip! We’ve had a lot of input pour in, both pro and con. Much of the negative input we’ve had was largely due to miss-communications on our part. We hope that as you begin to see the new name with the graphics and event promotions that you’ll find it fresh and fun. We hope you’ll see that we’re not losing an old friend. TIGLFF is still there. It always will be.

We appreciate all your support as we continue to work toward creating a better experience for you. We’ve even added some user friendly features on our new Web site at www.cliptampabay.com. The new site was designed and developed by J Aller, board member extradonaire! J has done an amazing job with the new site. We now have online ticketing for the first time–something few (if any) other festivals have. Buying your tickets online has never been easier, so please reserve seats for the upcoming films before they sell out.

Please also join me in congratulating our four new board members: Bill Knaouff, Louanne Walters, Tonya Valdez, and Jill Stevens. Their energy and spirit reminds us all what important work this is and how absolutely fabulous our Tampa Bay really is!
 

Christopher Constantinou
President, Friends of the Festival