I'm overwhelmed, and other news

I haven't felt so good in a long time.  I work, and work, and work....and where's the payoff?

WELL...

Another festival has accepted A Zest for Life.  This one is in France.  In Cannes, to be exact, but let me be clear about this:  it's not THE Cannes film festival.  It's something completely appropriate, and I'm very pleased.  It's the Festival International du Film PanAfricain.  They've accepted us for their festival in 2013.  (By the time I applied, the 2012 festival entry period had already closed.

And even more good news: Peralta TV, a San Francisco bay area television station wants to screen Two Street and Adela. It will probably screen at the end of April or beginning of May. will try to keep you inform.

And I'm in the middle of planning my trip to Berlin for the festival there, where they'll screen A Zest for Life. I've bought my ticket but still I don't have a hotel. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

And if anyone has even the slightest inclination of helping me out financially in this exiting but expensive endeavor, please go to LINK

OUR NEXT POST

Will be about more filming.

Moving forward on "Domino"

As I reported a while back, we've finished filming Domino:  caught in the crisis in the sense that I'm satisfied with it.  It's now coming in at 45 minutes.

This presents a problem.  It's now too long to be a short, and too short to be a feature.  It's also right in between the standard television lengths for a half-hour and one-hour program.

This means either I have to cut 15 minutes, or add 11.  I'm currently going for the idea of adding 11.

I've mentally created scenes to add these 11 minutes.  There'll be one more scene with domino players.  There'll be a scene in a near-by city called "el Puerto" (actually, Puerto de Santa Maria) with the son and his finacee.  And there'll be one more mini-scene with Luis, in which he and his son have a brief conversation.

On Thursday, I plan to go to el Puerto to check it out.  (Originally I was going to go on Tuesday, but my small camera has to be taken to Sevilla to be repaired, so I'm putting el Puerto off until Thursday.)  I need to find a location that's scenic (not hard) and that doesn't have too much wind (very hard).  Wind is a real problem when it comes to recording conversations with a microphone.

Plus I have to get the scene out of my head and onto paper, since the actors will have to learn their lines.

All things considered, we plan to do this filming in early April.  Plus I've already started to do some heavy duty thinking about background music.

OUR NEXT POST will be about our beautifully revised web site for A Zest for Life.

HOORAY! "A Zest for Life" has been accepted into a festival in Germany.

Ah, fame!  Ah, a little recognition for all the work I've been doing.

It feels nice.

The Black International Cinema festival of Berlin (Germany) has accepted A Zest for Life as part of its upcoming festival (May 2-6).  Do I plan to attend?  You bet I do.  After all, I'm in Spain and Germany is not all THAT far away.

That's not the only good news I have for A Zest for Life.  The material I've been waiting for all these months finally arrived.  I only needed about 30 seconds of it for the documentary, but these are important 30 seconds.  They give the documentary a balance I wanted, plus more of the Peruvian coastal countryside (where most Afro-Peruvians live).

A checo on the vine.

And even more importantly, one section of the video clip I used shows fine, and well-known, Afro-Peruvian percussionists playing the checo, an Afro-Peruvian percussion instrument made out of a gourd.

Now, you probably don't know all that much about the checo, but that's part of the point.  After watching A Zest for Life, you WILL know what the checo is and how to use it.



SO--thanks to the Museo Afroperuano de Zaña (and Sonia Arteaga), thanks to 1 Frame Producciones (and Gisella Burgo Polo plus Javier Exposito Martin), and thanks to the Black International Cinema festival in Berlin.

OUR NEXT POST will be about moving forward on Domino:  caught in the crisis.