Film Festivals

Had a great time at the NSI FilmExchange. Really impressed with the films - can sincerely recommend all of the ones I saw: Sean Garrity's Lucid, Gary Yates' Niagara Hotel, David Ray's Fetching Cody and Charles Biname's The Rocket.

Lucid opens in Canada next Friday, the 17th, and Niagara Hotel opens the 24th. I'm attempting to revitalize the Winnipeg branch of the First Weekend Club to get the word out for opening weekends of these Winnipeg-shot films.

I also enjoyed meeting filmmakers and going to workshops on writing and producing. Further inspired by watching the shorts, I'm starting to send The Coffee Maker out to festivals. So far:
Worldwide Short Film Festival (Toronto)
Fairytales (Calgary)
OutFest (LA)

And several more yet to send out, hopefully some with the help of the Film Group distribution office. Have to say I'm becoming a fan of WithoutABox, which allows you to put in all the details of the film just once, pay fees online, and just ship off the judging copy of the DVD to the festival programmers. Need to make a press kit, but luckily, I have some experience with that!

This weekend starts the Freeze Frame Kids Film Festival. I'll be helping out with some of the workshops, and apparently will be speaking as an Expert at a couple, which should be fun. I'm all for getting kids into filmmaking!

The Poetry Face-Off went great, incidentally - thanks to those who came out to listen and support! Chandra Mayor will be the Winnipeg representative at the Natinals, but my poem will be read on Ron Robinson's Saturday morning show - probably next Saturday.