25 January 2008

tonight (and tomorrow)

A quick note for everyone in the Steel City (or thereabouts).

Steve Vesolich and Jerome Wincek will be playing Club Cafe in Pittsburgh tonight (that&'s Friday) at 7pm. I don't know how much it cost, but it probably will be under $10. Anyway, you should go. It'll be fun.

And both of them have music for sale on their respective MySpace pages. Go. Buy it. Be a good person.

Plus, you can check out our videos of Jerome in action. Like this one:



Also, our friends at the Hodgepodge Society have a free show tomorrow, 26 January at 9:30pm at the Backstage Bar at the Cabaret at Theater Square.

Um...I'm sure there's more, but I'm short on time. Later. Oh, and thanks to everyone who saw far beyond frail on their recent tour.

15 January 2008

Notes from Festivus

You know you've been at a festival a long time when on day 3 you say to someone, "You know, I vaguely remember watching a zombie movie, like, a week ago." Such is life in the festival world where you routinely watch films from noon until nearly midnight, drink alcoholic beverages, and talk to fellow festival goers about what films they saw that you completely should have seen. Depending on your level of cinephilia, it's either completely awesome or a bit much.

It helps, certainly, when you've got a film in competition and the badge of honor to prove it. Everyone makes a point of telling you they liked your film (even when they didn't), or how they wish they could have seen it. It's no wonder filmmakers love going.

For the inaugural Festivus Film Festival, we hit Denver around 10am Mountain Time and promptly hit a local micro brew house that featured a beer dedicated to the late, great Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. From there, we hit the festival, housed (for our purposes), at the historic Oriental Theater.

Oriental Theater

The festival kicked off with Wasting Away, a zombie movie about from the zombie's point of view (they see themselves as "super soldiers" and everyone else is infected) and Kill Kill Faster Faster, which looked really cool, but I came in half-way through and was too tired from the jet lag to follow it.

Saturday, we screen bright and early at noon as part of the "Popcorn Matinees" with Maine Story, Taken, In Times of War: The Ray Parker Story (winner for best documentary short), Simulacra, PK-Granny, and Revolver. The screening went well. Maine Story is clearly the best film of the set (or maybe I'm biased because it's set in Maine and the accents aren't all screwed up), but the important thing is that gravida isn't the worst. No one walks out. No one boos. Well, except for these guys:

critics2

Then, a Q&A (that's yours truly on the left wearing a "Debs '08" shirt, even if you can't see it):

"Festivus" Q&A

There were basic questions about budgets and cameras and whatnot, and we got a few questions asked specifically about our film (such as, "Where did you find a pregnant actress?"). And that was it. A number of people came up to me over the course of the day to say how much they enjoyed the film and we were able to make a number of contacts with other filmmakers and pick their brains about the whole festival sequence. Part of the value of going to this festival was to see what other companies do to support their films, and I think we've picked up a number of good ideas we can use for next time.

But there were 2 more whole days of films. Notable films were Avec la Moustache (the best film in the entire festival, I thought), Cabbie, Partially True Tales of High Adventure! (the narrative short winner), Hope Springs Eternal (animated winner), Beauty 24 (a bad documentary about a fantastically interesting photography project, also the documentary feature winner...go figure), Indestructible (a heart-breaking doc about ALS), and Life With Fiona (I didn't see it, but the filmmakers were really nice and helpful).

And that is about it. Don't forget to purchase a DVD or a tshirt. Be one of the cool kids.

un filmeDVD

03 January 2008

a question for our fans, etc.

simply put:

What can we do better and/or differently? What opportunities are we missing? What would you do if you were us?

any and all suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

thanks a lot.

02 January 2008

"un filme" number 5

Daniel Stiker, Pittsburgh, PA

01 January 2008

Jerome Wincek kick-starts your New Year

A Happy New Year from all your friends at your favorite film collective. Some of us are a little, um, hungover, so we'll make this short-ish and sweet.

Last night I was asked if we had any New Year's Resolutions, and we don't, really, only the constant one of making d press Productions cooler and more kick-ass than it was previously. We did a pretty good job of that in 2007, so fingers crossed that we can do the same in 2008.

On to the good stuff...

Recently I was in Franklin, PA to see Jerome Wincek and his band the Old Hats play a show with Matt Reed. Jerome and I had discussed maybe putting together some video of him, so I took my camera and was able to come up with two lo-fi music videos of him playing live.










Enjoy.

Also, Jerome Wincek will be playing a show with Steve Vesolich at Club Cafe in Pittsburgh on 25 January, if you feel inclined to check him out for yourself.