Still in Motion

Eau de Vie, Or: Self-Transformation Through Raki

I don't visit too many places where I meet a third-generation carpenter carrying on the work his grandfather started refurbishing the wooden staircase that leads up to the bell tower in an Orthodox Cathedral.  This particular church is in the center of the town of Prizren, Kosova and is guarded by armed policemen.  It was badly damaged during the ethnic riots of March 2004 and is almost fully repaired, but is still not open to the public.  However, they let me in to take a look in a casual, friendly manner. 

I don't visit too many places where I, and my young, female guide, can interrupt three ancient men engrossed in conversation on a bench in the garden of a mosque (one of several in the town) to ask if they will let us inside the locked sanctuary.  (Oddly, there is a modern LED display board on the side of the building like the ones you see at train stations and airports that informs passerby of daily prayer times.)  With a slight downward tilt of his capped head, one of them shuffles to the front door and unlocks it, gesturing for us to slip off our shoes, but not concerned that our heads aren't  covered or that our arms and legs are bare.  He leaves us to take in the beautiful and peaceful interior, caustics of soft sunlight bouncing on the walls that reveal the private spaces where men meditate and pray.

I don't visit too many places where a waiter in a restaurant that I frequent becomes a friend, someone I look forward to seeing every morning.  He calls me Miss Pamela and I call him Mr. Love, not because his name is Ashkan which means "my love" in Turkish, but because he just is Mr. Love.  A small group of us adopts him as our Balkan mother and he feeds and fusses over us several times a day, only asking for a bit of sympathy when his hands go numb from carrying too many hot, heavy plates of food.  He tells us next week is Ramadan and people in the town are celebrating in a frenzy--several wedding processions pass by every day, there is much eating and drinking, and much promenading in the streets, disco music thumping everywhere.  The place pulses like Ibiza, but it is calm, calm, calm.  I have never met lovelier people.  (Pictured, Ashkan serving breakfast to grateful filmmaker, Rowland Jobson, director of the outstanding short fiction piece, A Girl Like Me, filmmaker, Michael Palmieri, who served on the Balkan jury, still sleeping behind his RayBans.  Unbeknownst to their owner, said shades fell under the table one night, but were found and returned by--you know it--Mr. Love.)

I don't visit too many places where I stay up until 6:00 a.m. every morning, the recorded call of the muezzin at a bit before 5, when the sky's black starts to turn a deep violet, announcing that a new day has begun.  We find ourselves still glued to our chairs around a table in the town square engrossed in conversation, eyes sparkling, faces smiling, nonstop laughter, the proprietor patiently bringing us glass after glass of homemade raki and, occasionally, something to eat--bread with cheese, a plate of spicy meat, pommes frites with lots of salt--nary a sign indicating that he wishes us to get the hell out of his place so he can go to bed.  Instead of stumbling off to our own beds, we slide by our hotel to grab our cameras and go exploring, no one awake in the still-sleeping town except the occasional baker pounding dough to the accompaniment of Arab pop softly playing from a small radio, or the wild pack of dogs that roam the streets, occasionally stopping so that a couple of them can hump for a few seconds before the group moves on.  We refrain from retiring just yet, not because we're that keen on taking pictures (although we are), but because we simply aren't ready to give up one another's company.  Not just yet.  It feels like the beginning of a love affair when you can't stand to be out of someone's presence for a moment. 

Okay, raki, or "rakifuel," as Miss Sonja calls it:  we're puzzled.  Normally, when one stays up all night drinking alcohol, especially something as pure and strong as this anise-flavored spirit quaffed in Turkey, Bosnia and the rest of the Balkans, also known as Lion's Milk (!), one gets completely blotto, right?  Barely able to speak, let alone climb a steep hill to the fortress overlooking the town.  (To be honest, we were a bit wobbly when we reached the top.)  But because we fortify ourselves regularly with food, a local assures us that yes, one can stay up for days drinking raki, carrying on one long, rambling conversation, a mad dialog that fuels the imagination and the soul, that makes everyone as witty as Dorothy Parker, as wise as Socrates--a regular gathering of geniuses, I tell you.  At least that's how it seemed to us.

I don't visit too many film festivals, like Dokufest, which staged its ninth iteration this year, that marry both its program and its surroundings so perfectly.  Executive director, Aliriza Arënliu, and artistic director, Veton Nurkollari, presented an amazing program of international feature and short documentary work, one of the best I've encountered.  And Samir Karahoda's short fiction program was a revelation.  Ironically, since there are no cinemas there besides the ones created specifically for the festival, you can see audiences grappling with how to watch a movie.  They, literally, don't really know how.  So there is usually a lot more going on than movie-watching.  But, somehow, because of the open air venues--on the river, up on the fortress wall, the big outdoor amphitheatre in the middle of town--it only adds to the celebratory quality of the proceedings.  The directors of Hamburg-based A Wall Is A Screen used this to glorious advantage and presented a fantastic shorts program that floated through the town one evening, projecting films on the walls of a bank, a mosque, a restaurant, a residential building, to great effect, a large crowd following along for the 90-minute program.  

It was a very special week and I can only offer up these quixotic and scattered impressions to describe the spectacular experience it truly was.  What I can offer up in a more concrete fashion (more or less) are future posts which talk about some of the films.  In my next installment, I'll start with the stand-outs in the Balkan competition program, some selections from the international competition which I was privileged to jury along with AJ Schnack, Doug Block, Sonja Henrici and Adriatik Kelmendi, and other fare that played in the five competitions, as well as in other special strands.  Stay tuned.

SXSW 2010

Well, the general thing I can say after my first SXSW experience is that I feel like I've gone through a blender.  I am, undoubtedly, spoiled by kinder, gentler nonfiction festivals, with manageable programs, a highly-navigable experience (meaning convenient to get from place to place, preferably on foot or plenty of free transportation to get a visitor from hotel to films, parties, etc.), and easy access to everything, especially film screenings.  (Pictured, the ultracool Highball--restaurant, bowling alley, karaoke lounge--modeled on the spot in the Coen brothers' The Big Lebowski, adjacent to the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, a main festival venue.)

I would say that I spent about fifty percent of my time at this festival waiting on line.  For coffee, for food, for films, for parties, for rides, everything.  Even as a first-timer, I knew this was due to growing pains.  The staff and volunteers were trying their valiant best to accommodate the floods of people at their festival, and I mean floods.  I almost fainted when I saw the line at registration which was about a mile long.

In her intros to films, festival producer, Janet Pierson, after the event had kicked off in earnest, took to asking audiences if people were having trouble getting into films.  After hearing a resounding yes!, she courteously suggested people make an alternate plan and to really make space for line-standing time into their schedules.  Not all of the cinemas suffered from this glut, but the smaller main venues certainly did.  "A good problem to have," as Pierson said, but hard going when one is trying to see as many films as possible every day.  After desperate suggestions from guests that have been attending for a while to provide a shuttle service (which they charged for), there were only two vans making the main loop, which meant waits of up to 30-45 minutes to get to another spot in town.  The only other option was a taxi ride and a few of those a day really add up and make your pocketbook empty out pretty damn fast.

Anyway, enough bitching, it was fun and fabulous and a great new experience.  With enough sunshine, margaritas, great Tex Mex food, loads of parties, friendly, hospitable Austin-ites, music pouring out of every orifice on 6th Street, and lots of lovely programming comrades on tap, it wasn't half bad.  I'm sure they'll be better prepared for next year and I hope they get the same kinds of crowds they did this year.  It was heart-warming, I tell you, to see lines snaking around the corner for films nobody knew anything about except from a description in a catalog or on the web site.  A personal thanks to new programmer, Jim Kolmar, (also film conference coordinator and web content), a man with great taste, for including The Living Room of the Nation in the SX Global section for its North American premiere. 

I, admittedly, didn't see as much as I had planned due to above-described circumstances, but I tried my best.  And as at most festivals, I did see one film, in particular, that no one's ever heard of and that played exactly once at the smallest venue there (thanks, Mark Rosenberg)--and it's my fave, oddball that I apparently am.  I also attended panels and conferences, the trade show, etc., so I wasn't a total slacker.  Although I did spend a lot of time in the sun drinking beer and munching on chips and salsa.  I've been living in Finland; I was overdue for some sol.  So, without further ado, a few cinematic things worth mentioning:

Futurestates:  ITVS commissioned eleven filmmakers to make short narrative films that examine current events by extrapolating them into the future.  SXSW world premiered six of them, including films by Greg Pak, Garret Williams, Ramin Bahrani, Tze Chun, Aldo Velasco and Annie Howell.  Standouts were Bahrani's Plastic Bag with Werner Herzog as the rapturous, yet ultimately disenchanted, title hero; Tze Chun's Silver Sling about a struggling career surrogate--a woman who is hired to produce babies for high-ranking female workers of a corporation--who has to decide to give away yet another child or keep it, her last chance at motherhood; and Annie Howell's Tio & Marco, about a pregnant border patrol agent who finds an illegal immigrant child hiding in her house.  See more Season 1 selections here.

Tiny Furniture: This was the only film I manged to see in the narrative competition of eight films.  It also walked away with the jury prize at Tuesday night's ceremonies.  As well, its creator was bestowed with Chicken & Egg Pictures' Emergent Narrative Director award.  There is no doubt that 23-year-old filmmaker, Lena Dunham (fellow Hammer to Nail contributing writer) has a very bright future.  This accomplished feature which Dunham wrote, directed and stars in, had one of those crazy lines where not one pass holder got in since the badge holder line was so long.  Meaning the audience consisted mostly of industry supporters and friends, so there was a lot of excitement.  The story is about the recently college-graduated, heartbroken and very confused Aura, played by Dunham, returning to the nest and trying valiantly to live comfortably in the (very antiseptic) family homestead, a giant loft in Tribeca peopled only by her mother, Siri (played by Dunham's real mom, renowned photographer, Laurie Simmons in a fine performance) and her sister, Nadine (played by Dunham's real sibling, Grace).  Taking a dead-end job as a day hostess in a small restaurant around the corner from where she lives, she meets and courts two ne'er do wells, Jed (played by filmmaker, Alex Karpovsky in a sly, subtle performance) who moves into her house and refuses to touch her, and Keith (David Call who gives a superb and, oddly, endearing performance) who fucks her in a huge pipe in a playground.  Dunham creates precocious characters who interact with one another in that numb, detached way people do when all, to a person, are disaffected and lost in some way, their own pain or preoccupations making them only partway "there" for their loved ones.  Or they live a life completely in an alternate universe, like that of her "best friend" since childhood, Charlotte, played by the luminously beautiful and very quirky, Jemima Kirke, in the film's most charming performance.  Dunham has the writing chops for good television and the film has a patina that isn't really conducive to dark and depressing themes.  This left me somewhat emotionally detached, but perhaps I could also say that this is possibly the film's strongest point.  Like Woody Allen, she can easily find humor in painful angst and presents her plump, misshapen body and hangdog expression to great affect.  The scene where she sits on a deflating mattress staring off into the middle distance says it all.  You do want to cuddle her and tell her everything will be all right.  But you also want to slap her pretty hard.  Jody Lee Lipes steps in as DP and does his usual glorious work--he shot the whole film on a still camera.  This might be one of those festival breakout films that will do decent box office given the right marketing spin.  I just hope it doesn't take a bloody year or more--get it out in theaters this summer would be my recommendation.  It's a great seasonal film and millions of graduating college seniors will find the movie that speaks directly to them.

More from SXSW in a bit.

Mertes at Doc U, THIRTEEN at DCTV, WITNESS, Hungry Filmmakers and More

I offer a post of interesting (at least to me) miscellany before holiday party madness starts in earnest.  I hope you all have a bright, shiny season ahead of you filled with laughter, love and good cheer.  And latkes.

First off, if you'd like to watch the New York Film / Video Council presentation and panel discussion I moderated at DCTV last month with PBS' Channel 13, UnionDocs and 12films12weeks, you can view it on the Thirteen Forum here.  The actual panel discussion that follows the different participant presentations starts about 45 minutes in.

In Los Angeles on Monday the 14th, the International Documentary Association hosts an evening with Sundance Institute's Cara Mertes at its last Doc U session of 2009 at the Kodak Screening Room in Hollywood.  Don't miss this opportunity to engage with one of the most knowledgeable, charismatic and eloquent speakers about international independent documentary.  Mertes has a truly global perspective and is incredibly passionate about nonfiction storytelling.  I always am so inspired after listening to her.  She also plans on bringing a sneak peek of an upcoming Documentary Film Program project scheduled to screen at the Sundance fest next month.  Click here for event details and to reserve yourself a spot. 

Monday night here in New York brings a very special program courtesy of the Flaherty Film Seminar.  Join them as they present films produced by WITNESS and discuss the impact of some recent advocacy videos produced by grassroots international human rights defenders.  Founded in 1992, WITNESS has empowered many ordinary citizens to use a video camera to shine a light on those most affected by human rights violations, transforming personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for change.  Join several filmmakers and representatives from WITNESS at 7:30 at Anthology Film Archives. 

Never let it be said that we have lack of choice in our fair city because also on Monday evening, Shooting People will host a screening at DCTV of HomeGrown by Robert McFalls.  Annie Kovak (voted cutest farmer on Huffington Post!) will host a Skype Q&A with the founder of the homegrown revolution project on which the film focuses.  Click here for more info.

And speaking of organic-osity, at Anthology on Tuesday night the 15th at 7:30 p.m., is a really yummy event.  The Hungry Filmmakers collective will host an evening featuring excerpts from six upcoming food-oriented films followed by a Q&A and panel discussion moderated by food activist and author, Anna Lappé.  Then join in an after-party with hors d'oeuvres served from local and sustainably-minded food and beverage purveyors at the Good Beer Seat bar, Jimmy's No. 43.  The films featured will be What's Organic About Organic? by Shelley Rogers, Big River and Truck Farm by Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney (the hottest thing on a dance floor since John Travolta), The Greenhorns by Severine von Tscarner Fleming, Grown in Detroit by Manfred and Mascha Poppenk, Faces from the New Farm by Liz Thylander, Kat Shiffler and Lara Sheets, and an untitled film on climate change and food systems by Sara Grady.  Proceeds from the evening will be donated to nonprofit, Just Food, which works to promote access of fresh, seasonal, sustainably-grown food for all NYC residents.  How lovely of them.

That same evening on the west side at the IFC Center, Thom Powers screens the documentary of the astounding story of Dimitri Mobengo Mugianis created by Michel Negroponte called I'm Dangerous With Love.  Both director and subject will be there for a post-screening Q&A with Powers followed by the regular post-STF schmooze at 99 Below on MacDougall Street. 

Lastly, I'd like to give a mention to The Hunger Season screening on Thursday, December 17 at 7:30 p.m., hosted by Working Films and Chicken & Egg.  They invite people to come join them at Story Leads to Action--a monthly series at the 92YTribeca Screening Room.  The Hunger Season is a feature documentary directed by Beadie Finzi (Only When I Dance) which asks why, despite the massive UN food aid program, we still haven't figured out how to solve the hunger problem in this world.  The film, shot over the course of a year in Swaziland, the US and Europe, follows young teacher, Justice, and the children in his care in southern Africa, while also investigating the system of international humanitarian food aid, charting the chain of decision-making involved in how food aid is distributed, and to whom.  You can purchase tickets by clicking on the first link in this paragraph.

Fa-la la-la la, la-la la laaaaa.

40/40 Vision

Still a week away but this will give you plenty of time to get your tickets to the first of a series of cocktail events in support of Rooftop Films called 40/40 Vision.  These fundraising evenings are hosted by Rooftop and one of their advisory board members, Tad Barnes--at Tad's place in the BK.  (Note: this photo is not a pic of Tad's place.)

There will be five parties that will feature the best of Rooftop's programming and will probably prove to be a key networking spot to boot.  Each evening will begin with your $40 admission price (all tax deductible, BTW) for a full cookout and all the Radeberger beer you can drink.  (Well, maybe half of what you can drink.)  There will be a screening and a chance to mingle with Rooftop staff and featured filmmakers in an intimate setting, Tad's terrace in Williamsburg.

The 9:00 p.m. Saturday night parties will be on September 26 (Benh Zeitlin's exquisite Glory at Sea will play); October 10 (Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher will show excerpts from October Country, their award-winning feature doc); October 24 (Yoni Brook and Musa Syeed's highly-entertaining Bronx Princess will play); November 11 (Jesse Epstein's 34 x 25 x 36, the latest short work in her body image series will be featured); and November 21 (Carlin by Brent Green; the screening will include a live musical performance by Green). 

Click here to choose a date and buy your tickets in advance.

UP AND COMING Benefit for Film Project on Female Immigrant Artists

This Tuesday evening, September 1st, I and Nancy Wong of 011 Design Collective, will be hosting a small fundraising benefit for a project called Up and Coming at DCTV.  The evening will begin at 7:00 p.m. with cocktails, music and schmoozing, and then at 7:45 p.m., we will be showing the first 10-minute installment of this multi-part, multimedia project followed by a Q&A with director, Eliane Lazzaris, and artists Priscila De Carvalho (pictured working in her studio) and Lina Puerta. 

Following the Q&A, author Charlotte Noruzi will discuss her design collaboration with Eliane Lazzaris on her book, Urban Iran, profiles and perspectives of independent Iranian artists.  There will be signed copies of the book available for purchase.  The event is a benefit to raise funds for a new microphone and for production costs on the next installment of the series, featuring Puerta. 

Up and Coming features film portraits of emerging female immigrant artists living and working in NYC today.  Each artist will tell her own story in a stand-alone segment that will focus on the strategies she has found to continue to seek to define her cultural and artistic identity in her adopted country.

Lazzaris is a multimedia artist residing in Long Island City, Queens.  She came to New York from her native Brazil in 2004.  Her book and design credits include projects for DCTV, the Inaugural Cinema Eye Honors (2008), Urban Iran and Translating Hollywood, a book by Sam Sarowitz on movie posters.  This project is her film directorial début. 

Lazzaris says that, "The art world continues to be dominated by men and immigrant rights continue to be debated in Congress, so I devoted this project exclusively to female immigrant artists as an opportunity to further recognize our important artistic and cultural contributions. 

"The idea for the project began shortly after I arrived in New York in '04 when I realized the difficulties I would face, as both an immigrant and as a woman, as I continued my commitment to sustaining an artistic practice in my life.  Looking for support and inspiration, I became increasingly involved with other immigrant artists. 

"This documentary series presents film portraits of female artists from around the world as they face the challenges of uprooting themselves from their home countries and relocating to the US.  To document their lives and work, I will follow each individual for a period of about eight months, focusing on the strategies they adopt as they seek to define their cultural and artistic identities on their own terms.  Each artist will be featured separately in an individual video. 

"I plan to further expand on the perspectives provided in the film series through a companion book project that will explore new directions in the material and offer more in-depth bios of the artists."

Please join us Tuesday evening to meet the director and the artists. We are asking for a suggested donation at the door of just $10 and there will be other opportunities to offer support throughout the evening with a raffle of items donated by some generous sponsors.  DCTV is at 87 Lafayette Street in Tribeca; we'll be in the big back room on the ground floor.  You can RSVP and/or send donations to [email protected].  Hope to see you there!

Let's Party Like It's 2009

It seems like it just gets rougher and rougher to be an independent artist and keep your antlers above water, but man, we know how to party. 

This Friday the 28th, in fact, Shooting People and DCTV are hosting the Endless Summer Party at the Firehouse in Tribeca.  From 8:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m., at 87 Lafayette Street, there will be reveling and drinking and snacking and dancing.  Meet some folks who could become your next creative partners-in-crime--or just new friends. 

There will be an open bar for the first hour courtesy of Stella Artois, and drink specials all night long; DJ Miss Modular from Mondo will be rocking the house; Renegade bakery project Sweet Tooth of the Tiger--cupcakes!; discounted memberships to join DCTV on offer, and more.  Admission is FREE.  See you there!

Why I Love New York, Reasons #849 - #854

Because you get to wake up in a Polish neighborhood in Brooklyn that's a throwback to 1978 Krakow, but with better shoe stores.  On the carpet in front of you are the two biggest, fattest, laziest cats to greet you with a blank morning stare, which uncannily matches their blank afternoon stare and their blank evening stare.  One of them (the female) has woken you up at some ungodly morning hour by trying to pounce on your head, but you've found the spiritual space in which to forgive her.

You then shuttle your way into the city with a coffee of Stumptown in your hand from the Variety Café on Graham, and arrive early enough at your first meeting point to breakfast alone with your book--a brioche and a cup of coffee, both the approximate size and heft of one of those aforementioned cats.

About an hour later, some absolutely lovely woman, who has taken a chunk out of her busy day to talk with you, sits across from you, orders some food and beverage and we then proceed to have the most wonderful conversation, gabbing like we chicks do.  That interview, with Cactus Three's Julie Goldman, will be posted here soon, so that's something to look forward to.  I learned a lot; I hope you will, too.

Then on to visit some of my favorite peeps in New York and get my bag filled with DVDs to view--the good, the bad, the ugly.  Again, I learn lots.  And sometimes, I'm lucky enough to see an entire film, finished by the grace of whomever,  a year after my last viewing of said film when it was just a few minutes long, dubbed a "work-in-progress," but, nonetheless, wrenched my sensibility around pretty good about my naïve relationship with history and the repercussions of what that naïveté might entail.  I'm obsessed with history right now for some reason and have luckily been asked to expound upon those thoughts for some articles--I'll keep you posted on that.  But suffice to say, that this imperative of nonfiction filmmakers today seems to be, not unsubtly stated, that we must take over where the world's corporate media stops short.  And it's stopping shorter and shorter lately, have you noticed that?

Then I met up with a filmmaker with whom I'm working who makes it possible for me to have a living, breathing model of what a graceful creature a human being can be.  That's a good thing to aspire to, I think; especially when I'm twisted up like a pretzel in all kinds of ways about my life right now.  It'll all be okay; we'll get through this.  Sentiments not spoken out loud, but expressed in the ways that she trusts you and has confidence in you and sees the worth that's hiding under a bushel.  I'll stop here 'cause I'm welling up.

Suffice to say that I did the pretentious, incomprehensible art opening bullshit and then went to have a lovely meal in a French outdoor bistro (where actual French people eat) with two of the most interesting people I've met in awhile, most interesting because they're so open and so enigmatic, simultaneously.  If the company you keep is any indication of your view of yourself, then things are looking kind of okay. 

KING CORN Releases on DVD

The Boston Globe called director Aaron Woolf's King Corn "a moral, socio-economic odyssey through the American food system."  This very entertaining and eye-opening doc feature has its DVD release tomorrow.

We follow best friends (and the film's co-producers), Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, as they move to the heartland of the US to learn where their food comes from.  They plant and grow a huge crop of corn on just one acre using genetically modified seeds and strong herbicides.  As they track their product through the food system--traveling through 30 states and Mexico--what they find raises important questions about how we eat and about how we farm.

Last year, the film had its domestic premiere at South by Southwest and its international one at Hot Docs one month later.  Last September, they had a theatrical release in New York at the Cinema Village and this month the film had its broadcast premiere on PBS' Independent Lens.  King Corn is also programmed into the current season of the Sundance Channel's The Green as one of thirteen featured docs.  Click here to order your very own copy.

Let's Get It On--Re-Creating Marvin Gaye DC-Style

Eric Hilton of Thievery Corporation has a beautiful new restaurant/lounge dedicated to Marvin Gaye in the heart of DC.  My friend, Brian Liu, and his partner, Nick Pimentel were commissioned by Hilton to design something spectacular for the restaurant's centerpiece.  Here's a time-lapse film documenting the installation of their 6' x 10' masterpiece.  Check it out.

Sex, Love and Hot Fudge--A Sneak Peek for Valentine's Day

My friend, Sarah Feinbloom (yep, that's her pictured at left), makes pretty hard-hitting, intense documentaries and lots of fundraising videos for good causes.  Based in the Bay Area of California for many years, Sarah's been a long-time member of the distribution collective, New Day Films. Her film on the religious lives of teenagers, What Do You Believe?, screened on PBS, and her beautiful piece on child trafficking in Thailand, Daughters and Sons, was featured on NPR.  It also won for Best Short Film on Child Advocacy at the 3rd Annual Artivist Awards, which I produced in the fall of '06 at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood.

Shortly after that, Sarah told me that she was working on something a little more light-hearted (and delicious!) and that her work-in-progress film, In Search of the Heart of Chocolate, would be more of a sensually-conscious journey rather than the socially-conscious fare that is her normal bent.  It centers around her search for the origins of her chocolate obsession.

On February 12th, a couple of days before that day where everyone's supposed to do something romantic for his or her sweetie--like buying chocolate!, there will be two screenings at the Delancey Street Screening Room at 600 Embarcadero in San Francisco.  This "chocumentary" features Bay Area chocolatier, Jack Epstein, who runs Chocolate Covered in Noe Valley, and some of his die-hard chocoholic customers, all consumed by the discovery of the perfect chocolate experience.  An all-chocolate reception will follow the later screening.  I saw an earlier cut of this and it is, indeed, quite a treat!

If you live in the area, or are planning a romantic weekend in the city by the bay, you can reserve a spot by emailing [email protected]. 

Wanna Go to a Really GOOD Party?

GOOD Magazine is one year old!  And they're celebrating their anniversary by having a series of parties in various cities, New York being one of them, natch.

Join in the celebration on Saturday night, September 29 from 7:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m.  The party is being held at the beautiful Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.  Performances by Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys, A.D.J. (Aaron, Didi & Jesse of the Brazilian Girls), Tim Sweeney of Beats in Space/DFA and Sam Valenti IV of Ghostly International.

You can RSVP here.  The event is for subscribers only.  So subscribe!  It's a great mag filled with tons of useful and inspiring information on how to be a better citizen in your neighborhood, in your community, in your city, in your country, on your planet.

GOOD's anniversary party in L.A. (on the eastside) is happening on October 12 at the Natural History Museum.

Cute Name, Nice Site

Still reeling (har, har) from my long weekend at Sundance (even though it's Tuesday already) and am taking my time to digest, for a change, before I post something about that--in fact, other things by me about the Conference will be published sooner on other sites, probably, than on here.  Too many new things have been whizzing past me, I'm a bit on overload these days.

So instead of writing and finishing various articles, writing assignments and postmortems, follow-ups, etc., etc., etc., I was just aimlessly site surfing and came upon Gimundo (I think it's supposed to be said like the Australians say "gidday," meaning Good World.)  Like in Patti Smith's song, "Cartwheels."  Anyway, saw it advertised on The Daily Reel site.  (And that's awesome that Patti Smith has a myspace page.)

So wanted to share--go there, read, contribute, spread it around.

Or maybe just the California sunshine's got me loopy.  I could use some loopy.  Like someone said shortly before the Conference this past weekend was over:  "I could use some Dumb and Dumber."  No aspersions cast, I assure you.