~ by Ty Pi and Legendary Lew
Last night, we received a response regarding sexual harassment allegations from someone claiming they represent MIFF. Here is what this person wrote:
Late last week, through your website, we became aware of alleged inappropriate behavior by an individual associated with The Midwest Independent Film Festival. Thank you for bringing the allegations to our attention. We are writing to inform you of the actions we’re taking and the steps we’ll continue to take to insure The Midwest Independent Film Festival remains a respected part of Chicago’s film and creative communities. We encourage you to share them in their entirety with your readers.
We have initiated an internal investigation into the matter. Should it be warranted based on the outcome, appropriate actions will be taken.
Moving forward, The Midwest Independent Film Festival is implementing processes and procedures to insure all staff and volunteers are fully aware of the Festival’s expectations and zero-tolerance policy toward inappropriate behavior. This includes implementing a reporting structure to encourage and enable members of the MIFF community to report their concerns so that MIFF, to the extent that it is within MIFF’s abilities, can address and correct inappropriate conduct and actions.
We take these allegations seriously and are grateful you brought them to our attention.
The Midwest Independent Film Festival
The letter certainly seems to lay out a plausible course of correction for preventing further harassment. It would be nice to know if the above letter sent to us is, in fact, official and who specifically sent it to us.
The Underground Multiplex 