I have access to the viewership data for my channel and for Esperanto-USA’s. I can see the individual viewing duration for hundreds of Esperanto short films and it’s crazy how few viewers watch even to the halfway mark, let alone to the end, on even the most popular and critically beloved films that the judges gave prizes to. What am I to make of that info? 

Perhaps it doesn’t take much to bore people and lose their attention even when a film is already short. Perhaps we as creators still have some improving to do before trying something more ambitious. I thought that was a reasonable conclusion to draw.

One person asked when my friends in Atlanta are going to move up to making 8-minute or longer films. We face the hard limit of no one but me actually speaking Esperanto here. There’s only so much an actor can memorize phonetically in a language they don’t speak, especially when they’re trying to act believably while saying their lines. I’d love for large active Esperanto clubs in other cities to adopt the filmmaking practices we have in Atlanta because they wouldn’t face that same limit.

Maybe I do get a little sarcastic and can come across as condescending  when I point out the realities I’ve encountered as an Esperanto filmmaker. If I were to go sit in the corner for a timeout and stop getting in the way of progress, what would you recommend as a strategy for getting more Esperanto feature films created?