Some reactions to A Zest for Life

We held a private screening of A Zest for Life last weekend and were delighted that all the participants liked the documentary.  Some had seen it before, and were very enthusiastic about the changes we´ve made.  Those changes include, most importantly, adding more photos, adding a video clip of the dance Hatajos de Negritos as performed in Peru, and adding more voice-overs to give more explanations and more depth to the documentary.

When organizing these screenings, I´m not really able to take photos, but I did take one snap-shot which shows some of the people who came.

Three participants in the screening:  Rossana Silva-Craig, April Wakeman, Vivian Pisano.

I also really appreciated the specific comments the participants made.  Other than the positive, people also gave me pointers on the subtitles so that I can make them easier to read, comments led me to add a little more information about the musical instruments, and so forth.

All in all, these screenings are very helpful to me and hopefully, a pleasure to the participants.  Any readers of this blog who live in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area who would like to be invited to these screenings can contact me here to let me know.

NOTE:  In the near future, I plan to start a blog specifically devoted to A Zest for Life, Afro-Peruvian music and dance, and that music´s relation to Latin jazz.

OUR NEXT BLOG will be about the "checo," an Afro-Peruvian percussion instrument made out of a large and very special gourd.   It will appear simultaneously on THIS blog and on our new blog, Afro-Peruvian.blogspot.com.