Every screener has to make written comments, including positive ones. We mail letters to all filmmakers with constructive feedback. Filmmakers have to understand that the selections process is complicated and time consuming. They're selling themselves short if they think they can just take a shotgun approach to festival submissions. Lobbying certainly can't hurt.
Some towns have more than one.
Take Park City in January. Slamdance, conceived as a rebel alternative to Sundance, in turn inspired Slumdance, No Dance and Slamdunk. And it's not like Slamdance invented the concept. In the '60s, Louis Malle was dissatisfied with the mainstream program at Cannes and created the Directors Fortnight for precisely the same reasons. We felt that the films being rejected by Sundance weren't necessarily bad films.