After the drought comes rain, after the silence comes ...

I haven't written any blog posts for quite a while. That's because I've been busy doing things filmmakers have to do that some filmmakers, myself being one of them, really hate to do: writing funding requests, finding distributors, doing publicity for events. First, the announcement of the event:


                

Then, moving right along: I got off a major funding request last week; took me about 10 days to do it with some of the major parts already roughed out. No fun, but done.

I also learned that one of my documentaries, A Zest for Life: Afro-Peruvian Rhythms, a Source of Latin Jazz (revised 2015), will be listed on the national server maintained by NETA (National Educational Television Assn.) so that educational stations nationwide can pick it up for broadcast.

The fact that it's available does not, of course, guarantee that it will get lots of air time. I will have to do some heavy duty publicity work to actually get station managers to check it out. SIGH.   But it's still an honor.

And by the way, yes, I realize the title is, well, a bit long.

Here I am doing something I like better:  directing.

There are also several distributors that are offering to carry some of my work. Some want exclusive contracts, some are happy with non-exclusive contracts, and some are still reviewing individual titles after having them in hand for more than a month.

Once a distributor does decide to carry your titles, for each title you have to prepare "deliverables:" publicity packets, digital versions of the program (and different distributors want different forms of digitizing), and so forth. It's time-consuming and once they have everything in hand, they will take one to two months to actually get your title(s) up on their system.

Some of these distributors will do publicity for the titles they are taking, others will not. They'll just make it available on their server and the filmmaker gets to do his/her own publicity.

Oh, and I needed to get a publicity packet off to a festival that will be screening one of my shorts;  a small but very nice festival that I enjoy participating in.  It's called the Shortz Film Festival.  They are people with a sense of humor.

Then, there's that event coming up on August 22.

Without boring you any further, I'll just point out that I have been pretty busy. Hasn't everyone?