Finding an Audience

(I actually got this message in a fortune cookie this week! Maybe I should buy some lottery tix.)

I'm finding my short films really difficult to categorize, and as a result am trying to find my way through the maze of film festivals and knowing who might "get" what I'm doing. My "Yorick" films are a peek into a very personal and idiosyncratic world. Giving these short films (actually videos, I guess) a broad definition like "fantasy" or "geek interest" is just that, too broad. So-called Geek Culture itself is an immensely vast universe of different interests and passions, bound together by fine wires of "in jokes" that may (or may not) include references from books, comics, gaming, tech, film, retro pop culture, science, etc., etc. See what I mean? It can seem "esoteric, arcane, obscure and abstruse" (to quote the Anachronaut Declaration of Purpose) to those not in that particular loop. "Yorick" is full of these types of references. So how on all of the billions and billions of planets am I supposed to nail down a category or a label for the Anachronaut world?
What, then, might you find in an Anachronaut short? I think it would be far easier to list what you would not find, and come about a definition by exclusion: anything to do with of-the-minute news or pop culture, mainstream music, celebrities (or those who wish they were), what's trending or viral, what passes for reality. The world of the Anachronauts has its own rules and code of conduct. It is a gentler, kinder and funnier world (despite the explosions, which are those "special film explosions" which don't really seem to seriously hurt anyone) far removed from the mainstream.  It is a world of acceptance where differences don't matter as long as you're nice; a world where a talking skull and a construction crane can be family. That sounds pretty corny, but it's my world. Because, you see....I am Yorick, and Reality is overrated.

You may think I'm waffling on answering the original question (I am a master at waffling, as you have no doubt realized). In an Anachronaut short you might find: an erudite skull, robots, Shakespearean references, weird inventions, rewritten history, anthropomorphic rodents, pirates, automatons, alternate technologies, anachronisms (of course), art history, music (traditional and original, not pop), classic film references, magic (the art, not the game, and usually hand-in-hand with technical aspects), ghost ships, classic literature references, philosophy, brain power, twisted philology, the scientific and artistic processes, astronomy, vintage pop culture, etc.....   All of this filtered through the unwritten (but strict) principles and ethics of this world.
And so you see my problem; how to categorize these films and find an audience? If anyone out there has any ideas, let me know; Yorick is listening.

The Anachronauts getting ready for Movember.