From the press release:
Dear BUFF Supporters,
This is difficult and incredibly sad. After talking with our venue during an emergency meeting last night, it’s clear that we can’t, in good conscience, go on with this year’s festival as scheduled. In the best interest of our attending filmmakers, community partners, and all of you that were planning to come, it would be egregiously irresponsible of us to potentially put anyone in harm’s way.
We are postponing and we are pretty devastated about it; we also know that it is the right thing to do.
What we can say right now is that we fully intend to hold our 2020 edition later this year, but we don’t know exactly when yet. We want to preserve our lineup as much as possible, and we are hopeful that the majority of you will still be able to attend.
Right now, we’re facing an incredibly frightening financial situation, as we’ve paid for everything to bring you our best edition yet. We are scrambling to recoup as much of that money as possible. Through this postponement, we are losing several major revenue sources and cash sponsorships that we rely on to get us through each festival cycle. Your support is the single most important financial source for us and to lose it as well would have a deep impact on whether we’ll survive past this year.
With regards to Kickstarter rewards: All of the BUFF swag we ordered is currently en route to our office. We plan to ship out those rewards to everyone in April. We had not anticipated any sort of situation like this, so we did not factor shipping costs for all of the backer levels into our campaign, which will entail further unanticipated expenditure. But we will get your items to you as promised.
We will 100% honor all tickets and passes purchased for our rescheduled dates. We understand this may not be ideal for everyone. If you would prefer to receive a refund, please contact us directly at info@bostonunderground.org and we will get you sorted.
We wanted to let you know that this decision did not come lightly and we are beyond sorry that this has come to pass. We ask for your understanding and patience as we deal with the fallout of this situation. And most importantly, please keep yourselves informed and safe during these uncertain times ahead.
Regretfully,
Team BUFF