After looking over this whole thread, indyfilm clearly has no idea how a festival system is supposed to work.
When my short animated film "Pseudo Pluto" was accepted to the now closed Kalamazoo Animation Festival back in 2002, I was sent an email stating that my film was accepted, I was given instructions on where to go to pick up my complimentary festival pass, which allowed me to attend almost anything and everything at the festival for free, and I was also notified by email after the festival was over when and how I would receive the prize money that I won after my film was given 3rd place Bronze in the 5-12 age category.
Now of course different festivals will run things differently depending on how large their funds are and how big their staff is. But it is my understanding that if you want a festival to run smoothly and to have everyone accounted for, it is the obligation and necessity of the festival to personally contact each and every entrant who has been accepted and will be screened at the festival, both to ensure who is able to attend personally (that way they can potentially build programming around those directors/writers/producers/actors of high profile projects who are able to speak on their films personally), and to ensure that a high-quality to-spec copy of the film is made available to the festival for screening purposes. If these completely necessary and simple steps are not taken, then it is a blunder on the festival's part. It is also a major blunder if all options to contact the festival are rendered moot, either because the telephone numbers are out of service, or no one is checking the FB or email messages for the festival, and responding promptly. It shouldn't matter how busy a festival particularly is. Someone needs to be on the other end of these correspondence channels in order to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. It's only sensible.
I'm not sure how large or small this Galactic Sci-Fi Film Fest actually is, but by the sound of it it's rather small-ish, considering how difficult it was to get in touch with them personally. Because of this, I wouldn't have dove out and got plane tickets and a hotel room for something without having researched the festival enough to know what it's all about, or before having some sense of how worth while attending it personally would have been. I'm a very careful and slightly paranoid person, so I tend to take things rather slowly and methodically before putting down money for something, especially when it involves travel out of state.
So in this instance, I would put blame on both original parties. I don't blame the original poster for dropping out when he reasonably felt the whole thing was probably a scam. But I do blame him for not coming to that conclusion sooner, even if it probably isn't true based on his later findings. And again, I rightfully blame the festival itself for having outdated contact info and understaffed customer service, because that's quite the screw-up if the original poster made 5 different attempts to get in touch with them, and no one got back. I don't care whether it's a festival, a pharmacy, a doctor's office, a theme-park, or a fast-food restaurant, it should never be that hard to get a-hold of somebody.
