Due to popular demand, we will be holding an encore screening of Wiener Takes All: A Dogumentary, tomorrow at the Jewel Box Theater at 4PM. Tickets will only be available at the door (There will be no advance tickets sold).
Tonight at the Capitol Hill Arts Center. Register to vote or bring somebody who does and get into these two feature films for free!
Hollerback is an excellent portrait of why some Americans choose not to vot, while Uncounted is an infuriating account of how voting machines can currently be manipulated. They are both MUST SEES!
Check out Barrack Obama's Site for More Details!
Is there anything I could possibly add to make this any better??
Saturday, June 7th at Capitol Hill Arts Center @ 4:30P<
Most
Outstanding Documentary: RFK
I got a message from Frank and Cindy director G.J. Echternkamp wondering what he could do to help promote his film. G.J. was worried about his screening time because he was "going up against the weiner dog movie".
Well, he should be worried because tickets to Shane McDougal's Weiner Take All are selling like hotcakes. At this rate, both screenings are going to be packed. I honestly had no idea it was going to be such a hot ticket.
But, if you are not into a documentary on weiner dog racing, you should really check out Frank and Cindy. It is one of my favorites of the fest. It is a great little doc that G.J. did on his mom and step-dad which seemed like it started as a way to make fun of him and the one-hit wonder status he earned in the 80's while with the band OXO. What starts out as a joke turns into a pretty heart warming tale. The subjects are great. It's like watching a cross-between American Movie and an episode of Intervention. Be sure not to miss Frank & Cindy.
Looking for something harder than SIFF? Try STIFF - By Mark Rahner, Seattle Times
Down A STIFF Shot of True Independent Film By Sarah Llyod, Seattle.net
SIFF and STIFF get into tiff, pix nixed by Steve Miller, Rotten Tomatoes
Chasing the Devil: A Look Inside the Ex-Gay Movement – Moving Pictures Magazine
The Project – Elliott Kotek, Moving Pictures Magazine
STIFFed – Nercore for Life Blog
A lot of people have forwarded this article to me that ran in the Seattle Times a couple days ago about blog postings regarding SIFF’s opening night screening of Battle in Seattle and the ensuing afterparty. I’m not 100% sure what kind of reaction that they are hoping for. It honestly doesn’t make me happy when people are pissed off at SIFF. Of course I think its silly to charge people $50 - $200 for admission to a movie, and I think that Battle in Seattle is an opening night choice that lends itself to easy criticism. But who is really at fault here? I think that for the most part, there are just some people who want to donate to an arts organization and there are a lot worse places to spend your money. I’m happy that there are people out there supporting the arts.
Sure there are probably people who looked at that $200 as a way to tell their friends at the watercooler on Monday that there were partying with celebrities. It’s tough to feel sorry for those people if they didn’t like the movie and want to complain afterward. The crappiest part is that SIFF didn’t tell anyone that it was going to be a cash bar. I know some people probably did an analysis and figured they’d drink at least fifty bucks worth of alcohol anyway and maybe didn’t bring their wallet to the screening. Sucks for those people, but its not like I can gloat about all of the free booze they would have gotten at STIFF because our bars are all cash bars too (The only difference is that for $50 bucks, a person could get an All-Access Badge that would let them into every STIFF show, including Moby, for the entire duration of the festival).
Like I said, it doesn’t make me happy when people are mad at SIFF. I’m not in any kind of hurry to see the end of SIFF. Sure it pisses me off when things happen like the recent Bookie fiasco, and I wish more people were interested in some of the real indie stuff that was going on locally than they were in hanging out at a party with celebrities, but I can’t fault SIFF for trying to capitalize on that market (there were obviously plenty of people who didn’t mind shelling out the money for the tickets).
And it’s not like SIFF only shows movies like Battle in Seattle. I have been exposed to some incredible movies that I never would have heard of if it wasn’t for SIFF. They are showing some really good local stuff this year too. Aside from Bao Tran’s Bookie, I’ve heard great things about Deidre Timmons’ A Wink and a Smile.
Deidre was the Director of last years 2nd place winning Weekend Film Challenge Film, Rotten to the Core. She has some serious talent and I couldn’t be happier for her. I also read recently that Joe Shapiro and Andy McCone were participating in this year’s Fly Filmmaking Challenge.
Andy was responsible for one of the most fun shooting assignments I have ever had and those guys have been a part of STIFF from the very beginning. It has been a lot of fun to watch them hone their skills to perfection. I’m really glad to see SIFF taking notice of how talented they are.
I am always reminded of one fact though, the NIT used to be THE post-season basketball tournament that every team wanted to get into. Now, teams are disappointed if they get selected for the NIT. This only means that things can always change. But, being the biggest film festival in town isn’t the end goal for us. If our existence can serve no other purpose than to be a sandbox for local filmmakers to hone their skills and help remind SIFF to shine their light on local talent, then I will be content with this endeavor, forever. If I can also come across some weird films to share with people, then I am in seventh heaven. If Seattle can become a town where audiences care more about the really cool local stuff going on than finding out what color toenail polish Michelle Rodriguez wears, whether they end up finding it at SIFF or STIFF doesn’t make as much difference to me as whether or not it happens. If we can play a small part in that transition, that is all I need.
Here is a fun STIFF 2008 Trailer put together by Spencer Fornaciari, a member of our screening team:
Tonight is the Opening Night of the Seattle International Film Festival. Can you smell the excitement in the air? SIFF’s opening night film is called Battle in Seattle. It is a Hollywood dramatization of one of the most talked about events in Seattle’s recent history, shot in Vancouver, with mostly Canadian crews, and a cast of high-dollar celebrities who may have experienced those events from shorts clips on their TV news, written and directed by a guy from Ireland (Stuart Townsend) who read a few articles about the event and made a couple trips to Seattle during the creative process. The cost of attending this single film ranges from $50-$200.
Surely there must be a lot of prep work involved in making sure that all of you get your $200 worth at that after party which will no doubt be packed full of people hoping to get their picture taken with Woody Harrelson or catch a glimpse of Cherlize Theron . But they still manage to find time to try to mess with us. How? By choosing today to force local filmmaker Bao Tran to remove his incredible short film Bookie from the STIFF 2008 program. Bao’s crime? Bookie was actually scheduled to “World Premier” one day after his STIFF Screening at the Jewel Box. Here is the email that I sent to Beth Barrett and Stan Shields (The siffers making the stink):
We are of course disappointed that we aren't going to be able to screen Bookie at the scheduled time since we all thought it was a great little film, but we don't want to show films against the will of the filmmaker, so we will of course comply with your wishes. As I mentioned in a previous email, this does create a logistical problem since our programs are currently being printed and there is no possible way that we can change them at this late date. Which means that there is a great possibility that audience will show up expecting to see Bookie and be disappointed that the film had been pulled from the lineup. We should be able to pull the film down from our website within the next few days and offer refunds to people who have purchased tickets to the screening though.
Hopefully SIFF will reconsider this. At the very least, it would be great to have Beth or Stan explain why the Seattle International Film Festival is exerting pressure on Bao to pull his film from our little festival's program though since we ARE only talking about a very small screening at the Jewel Box one day in advance of his big SIFF screening and we haven't advertised Bookie as a "World Premier" or anything. Part of the decision to move STIFF to the end of SIFF instead of the beginning was to give SIFF ample opportunity to screen the small subset of films that may end up in both programs that they were worried about being the "World Premiere" for, instead of forcing filmmakers to make a decision about which film festival they wanted to screen their film in. I can understand why SIFF might want to crack down on this archaic premier requirement for big cash-cow features with celebrities that may attend, but we are talking about a really good local short here and a filmmaker that can only benefit by having his film play in both festivals. We don't fault Bao for the decision he has made. SIFF is the 800 pound film festival gorilla in town and he is obviosly going to get the most good from complying with their wishes (and it is always nice to see SIFF shine their light on a good local film). It just doesn't make sense to me why SIFF would choose to penalize this filmmaker and potential audiences, especially when there has been precedent set in the past with local filmmakers screening their films at STIFF before their big SIFF "World Premiers" and it was never an issue with SIFF forcing them to pull their films or with our little film festival trumpeting the fact that we were scooping the giant film festival in town by a day or two. This really seems to be a situation where someone may be trying to enforce the letter of the law when they should care more about the spirit of the law.
My email was of course ignored. We may actually be able to fix the program in time and of course will refund anybody’s money who doesn’t want to see whatever film replaces Bookie. But do you want to know the kicker to this whole thing? Bookie already had its “World Premier” last September! I already lived through the actual WTO Riots, so tonight I plan to head to the theater to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. If you are at the SIFF Opening Night party, please have fun. If you see Carl Spence there, please kick him in the balls for me.
Last Saturday night was the third annual Georgetown Super 8 Film Festival. Hats off to Laura Wright and all of the organizers for the success. The last two years, I have had friends make films for the festival (Sean McBride and the rest of the Garfield High School film class of 06-07 & JP Moore and Steve Timlin made one last year). They all raved about it and it sounded like a lot of fun. So, when Jessica and I moved to Georgetown
Emmett spent a few weeks making some puppets out of brown paper sacks and I met him at Rebar to shoot it. The editing was pretty simple and I was able to crank it out in an hour or so. Doing the transfer turned out to be a little more difficult though. After I made a DVD and tried to shoot it from a TV, GS8 coordinator Laura Wright called me the next week to tell me that it looked really bad, but that I had time to re-shoot it if I wanted. Fortunately, I had also put a little test footage shooting it from a computer monitor at the end and since that seemed to look a little better, I figured I’d give it a try that way. I turned the monitor brightness way up and she called to tell me that looked better, but you could still see the control bar at the bottom. I shot it big figuring I’d have to crop it a bit anyway, so I wasn’t too worried about it.
My mom and step-dad came into town for the weekend and we took them to the screening, but we had to leave about half way through to make our reservations for her birthday dinner. It was really cool to see so many people coming down to support the event either by making a film (mid-forties) or watching them (looked to be over 400). I thought that the venue was neat (one of the old Ranier brewery buildings that managed to survive the recent demolition). Quite a few of the films that I got to see were really entertaining. I wasn’t crazy with how the film version looked on the DVD because you could tell see the video controls on the computer in the shot, but I was able to crop it down and it looks a little better here. The transfer also slowed down when played back from film, so it threw the synching out a bit. I had to really adjust the audio on this version afterwards to make it work.
If you are interested in the differences between Super 8 and Mini-DV, this should give you some idea, although keep in mind that these are both pretty compressed versions for Youtube and the film version has gone from video to film and back to video again.
