Saturday, November 04, 2006

11.3.06 Sacto, Film Arts and other updates

Hello, my long lost friends!
My, it *has* been a while. And Lizzie has been busy!

The foremost occupier of my time has been a fabulous new job as the Youth Coordinator at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center, home of Frameline (SF LGBT Film Festival), SF Jewish Film Festival, Center for Asian American Media (Asian American Film Festival) and the venerable Film Arts Foundation. It is at this nexus of the local independent film community that I am running a program called TILT (Teaching Intermedia Literacy Tools), which teaches media literacy through hands-on production. In other words, we do awesome, soup-to-nuts filmmaking workshops with underserved youth all over the Bay Area. Woo-hoo! Youth voice represent!

On that note, A one-minute film that I made about one of TILT's youth filmmakers is screening at the not-to-be-missed film event of the season, the FILM ARTS FOUNDATION 30th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION, next Wednesday at the incredible Castro Theatre. The evening features an eclectic mix of films for film-lovers, and the one-minute films section is an audience choice awards, so if you're in town please come and vote for my lil' movie, "ericka"! It is going to be an outstanding night, and I'll be sure to write about it here. if you can make it, tix are available at www.filmarts.org/30years

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the Sacramento screening. This blog is supposed to be chronicling Jericho's Echo adventures, after all. So there have been some incredible screenings recently, in places as varied as Prague, Mexico City and the Turks & Caicos islands. Due to the aforementioned new job, however, I have slowed down on the galavanting around the world a bit. That's one reason it was so nice to have a local-ish screening in California's capitol, Sacramento, last night. The other reason it was so nice is that it was hosted in a new Microcinema that is starting up thanks to the fine folks at Shiny Object Digital Media, who also happen to be the Video-on-Demand (VOD) distributors for Jericho's Echo.

The crowd was funny and a bit surly, but mostly appreciative. The first question was a drunkenly blurted, "Are you single?!", which I ignored, and later I got a brand new one:

Audience member: "I am pen pals with someone in the movie."
Me: "Oh, really? Who?"
Audience member: "His name is Barak."
Me: "Hmmm. I'm not sure there *is* someone named Barak in the movie."
Audience member: "Oh yeah. He's at one of the shows. He hates you."
Me: "Uhhhhhhh, ok?"

I later remembered that the person he was referring to is a disgruntled member of one of the bands who was pissed about not being interviewed (even though I never met him when I was there shooting). He approached me at the Tel Aviv screening, screaming until he was red in the face and demanding a free DVD. I even gave him one! But apparently he's still holding a grudge. Wow.

In other news, I have been writing some more film articles (Look out for my year-end music doc roundup in the winter Death + Taxes and my coverage of Good Vibrations Erotic Films Compeition in the next Release Print!) and teaching a class at FAF for filmmakers called "Building Buzz Around Your Film."

Like I said, Busy Lizzie! I promise not to wait so long til the next entry, and in the meantime, I hope to see you next Wednesday, November 8 at the Castro!!

PS The Henry Rollins article mentioned in my last post is out on the shelves in the current Oct/Nov ish of Death + Taxes!

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