PHOTO UPDATE!

DOK Leipzig

Now to the DOK Leipzig. All docs and animation. It's a festival devoted to documentaries and animation so it's got, well, documentaries which favors war, poverty, health challenges, plagues, and then although animation is very sophisticated, it still has a cartoon quality. Then there is us, GoCS, here to add some relief to the shattering news and pathos documentaries favor. We're a kind of tropic island with a cold Corona. So I felt really good about how well things went for us. Two packed houses out of three. Dok is a really well organized and focused film festival that drew thousands of moviegoers, and a surprising amount of 20-30 somethings. Another positive is the town of Leipzig, which is small and modern with enough historic flavor to keep things gemultlikeit*. I would definitely encourage documentary and animation lovers to make the trek to DOK Leipzig.
Report from Paul
(*comfy)

Sell out shows at Woodstock FF, Mill Valley FF, and Oddball Films SF!

Anura, Chris, Tom, and the rest of the GoCS mob had a good time at the Woodstock Film Festival. We had two screenings, and we sold out our second screening, which seems to be a pattern. We want to send out a special thanks to Meira Blaustein (the festival director), Laurent Rejto (Co-founder, director) Nikki Goldbeck (Ceres Press Deputy Director), and Gabriel Meyers (Assistant Press). I want to thank everyone at the festival for making everyone feel so welcome. It was really a great film festival. Special shoutout to WDST Radio (wdst.com) for the superlove interview.


I LEFT WOODSTOCK SATURDAY NIGHT and shot off to JFK for the Mill Valley FF in California without stopping or sleep. Mill Valley is such a beautiful town, nestled in the redwoods above San Francisco so heavenly it's where rock stars go to die. We had two screenings; the first screening at 9:45 on a Monday night was less than capacity, but the Saturday night show sold out. I was taken back when I found out the huge old Throckmorton Theater didn't have seats. They had about 300 plastic folding chairs. Maybe they should have rented beach chairs? The SOLD OUT title is somewhat erroneous but only because that is what the MVFF website stated, that only RUSH seats were available. There wasn't a Rush line so they lost some tic sales. But our show pattern persists; we open slow, usually with a bad timeslot, and close with a full house once the word goes out GoCS is funny. Since I grew up in the Bay Area, Mill Valley is a place where a lot of old friends could come and see the film. That made it a special moment, to go home with a film that the old gang can see and get a good buzz afterword. Though I chide MVFF over the weird stuff, the audience was really cool and even clapped during the film in parts and gave good questions and comments for the Q and A. I came away feeling terrific about the the warmly smart audience.

On Friday night we also had a private screening at Stephen Parr’s Oddball Films. It was also a full house (okay, there were three empty seats at the very front), but I have to say this is one of the screenings closest to my heart because last year we had a test screening of GoCS, and a live telephone feed Q & A after the screening. That screening in particular was a huge help in audience feedback, thus improving our final cut. I’ve been connected with Oddball films since the early 90s when we did GalleryBeat, and they provided us with a lot of free stock just because Stephen has always been a big supporter of every crazy scheme I’ve ever pushed in public. Oddball Films is an incredible resource for real stock film footage. If you need film stock for your production, check out Oddball Films.

Photos - top> Artist Dale Hoyt and Exploratorium's Beau Takahara. next> Stephen Parr. next> Mill Valley. bottom> Tom Donahue and me in Woodstock.
Posted by Paul

On the Brink with Woodstock and Mill Valley FF's

Yes the market is beyond tanking and the US is almost half mentally "special needs", but the show must go on, and we're just trying to do our part to help medicate our stress with the redemptive power of art, love, confusion, etc...
We are just about to depart for Woodstock's Film Festival for screenings on the 3rd & 4th October - Friday at 2:15 TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE - order asap
and Saturday the 4th is SOLD OUT. Tom and I will be on hand for questions, DVD's, bribes, and of course, your emotional needs.
Then I leave for the Mill Valley Int. Film Festival where we screen on the 6th Oct. and the 11th. That is a Monday night show and a Saturday night show - so tell your California contacts to get on down to Mill Valley, a place so sublimely beautiful, rock stars go there to die. Q and A sessions for every screening!

Festival Upate

It is here that I inform you that The Guest of Cindy Sherman groupies are ready to take-off with us as we enter and dominate the domestic and international film festival circuit. We are quite excited that so many of our fans are ready and willing to leave their homes, husbands, wives, and jobs for the greater cause and purpose of supporting this film.

FILM FESTIVAL DATES (Please check back for updated screening times.)

-WOODSTOCK FILM FESTIVAL: October 1-5, 2008

-MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL:October 2-12, 2008

-BERKS MOVIE MADNESS: October 2-5, 2008

-CORK FILM FESTIVAL: October 12-19, 2008

BERGEN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: October 15-22, 2008

-DOK LEIPZIG: October 27-November 2, 2008

-CINEMATHEQUE @ THE CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF THE ARTS: November 6-9, 2008

-OJAI FILM FESTIVAL: NOVEMBER 6-9, 2008

-CUCALORUS FILM FESTIVAL: November 12-15, 2008

-DENVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: November 13-23, 2008

-ST. LOUIS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: November 15-23, 2008

-Göteborg International Film Festival 2008: January 2009

-<STRASBOURG INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2008 : Stasbourg, France. September 11-20, 2009

Screening in LA by Remote - August 15, 2008

I actually feel weird about this one. The Downtown FF website is a bit shy about giving the filmmakers an easy to navigate
description of how's, what's, who's - you know the drill. I couldn't find anything about the theater we're screening in - much less it's location. On another site I googled it looks like an arena that classic rock bands like Mott the Hoople and Spinal Tap play, so it has more seats than the usual venue. Like if there was 500 people they would be a small cluster in front of the stage. If we were the Batman Dark Night movie I'd feel like we had a chance but this? 2000 seats and no PR?

So we hired a writer/blogger on Craigslist to attend the screening and then give us the lowdown on how the show went down, and that is a poor choice of words. I'm writing this on our editing Mac so the writing is very tiny and the keyboard doesn't have letters, only shortcut icons and colored keys. The weirder thing is that someone kept killing our ad to get a reporter to cover the screening. We had to post it three times in one day because some fucking troll kept killing us off. I heard there is an eclipse of Uranus tonight, so that definitely cannot help.

So the whole thing is a squincher. (as in that eclipse you're having, yes) I really don't want to be there but I think I should be there but I can't be there because I'm shooting in the morning and then driving Dona to Vermont to move stuff so she and Brad can go live in Rome because he won the Rome Prize. Simple country folk made to live in Rome, can you imagine? Horrible.

So, there will be a report from LA, from one or two sources, and quite soon. Will I let it slide if the report is a ride with "Death of an Indie"? No fucking way, Jose. We'll have a new updated film fest listaval too because we got the green from Mill Valley. Yah mahn.

Love or mercy,
Paul

Boston Globe Highlights GoCS for R.I.F.F.

A big festival in Little Rhodie
The Ocean State will showcase nearly 300 films
By Leslie Brokaw
Globe Correspondent / August 3, 2008
The Rhode Island International Film Festival may be a little far afield of Boston, but it always offers an impressive lineup and earns its spotlight each year. Opening on Tuesday, the six-day program this year includes 289 movies selected from 3,000 submissions - 33 feature narratives, 67 documentaries, and nearly 60 world premieres. That's a whole lotta movie.

[This quote, complete with a confused synop (leaving out co-director/editor Tom) was front loaded with the few films mentioned. I think we should get a prize for plugs. (gawd give us a prize!)]

"Guest of Cindy Sherman" is director Paul H-O's 15-year project documenting his initial series of interviews with the artist, their subsequent romance, and thoughts from New York art-world big-wigs Eric Bogosian, Danny DeVito, and Ingrid Sischy (Thursday at 7 p.m. at Courthouse Center for the Arts and Saturday at 4:30 p.m. at Cable Car Cinema). "Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio with the Red Shoes" goes behind the scenes at "A Prairie Home Companion" (Friday at 7 p.m. at the Columbus Theatre Arts) "
http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2008/08/03/a_big_festival_in_little_rhodie/

Film Festival as Trial Balloon

Editorial
We're engaged in the process known as the 'film festival circuit' and virtually every indie film travels it, or at least attempts to. I'm learning do's and don'ts as we began the process with the Tribeca FF back in April. I was much better at the do's then because Tribeca is so well organized for filmmakers, and we had Falco Ink as PR and those gals just told us where to go and what to do without telling us what to say. I'm not saying that I'm making more mistakes now without Falco to manage me, but I do see where I could have managed things better in the ensuing Provincetown FF, where we had afternoon screenings on a Friday and Sunday in a RESORT BEACHTOWN and that was it. The little schoolhouse for our first showing with one of those home movie screen-on-a-tripod was sweltering and had 12 people. Good people. Really good people. Like John Waters. But imagine the pressure of having Mr. Waters sitting right up front with a lot of empty seats around him and Tom and me sitting in the back. Somewhat humbling since we'd SOLD OUT 0VER 2000 seats at Tribeca in five days.
I'm not going to list the things I'd do differently, but it's long, and so is the list of festivals we'll be doing until at least February 2009.
Paul H-O

GoCS Hits Right and Left Coasts in August

August ५-10

The very established and large Rhode Island International Film Festival http://www.film-festival.org will feature GoCS in two screenings, and we’re very happy to be put into good venues and showtimes।

Thu, Aug 7 2008, 7:00 pm | Courthouse Center for the Arts
	Sat, Aug 9 2008, 4:30 pm | Cable Car Cinema

August is a really prime moment to get that beachtime in during the day and an humongus choice of new films that, frankly, will be hard to see in any other way।

We wanted to alert our friends and foes to the film festivals we have coming up in August. We’re in the Downtown L.A. Film Festival at www.dffla.com

Feature Film: Guest of Cindy Sherman
9:30 pm, Friday, Aug. 15th
L.A. Center Studio

What’s significant (one hopes) is that this is the first year of a new festival that is part of the ongoing facelift of the downtown area of Los Angeles. We’re very flattered that DFFLA made a strong pitch to us to include GoCS. Whether the reclamation and new urban development is a good thing is yet to be determined. We think the showing of Guest of Cindy Sherman though, is an improvement to the cinematic offerings presently found there! Only one screening so get on it.

Film Festivals

To keep you updated on where we have been, and where we will be going within the film festival circuit, here is our present list. For all those Guest of Cindy Sherman groupies out there who want to pack their bags, and follow us on the road, the exact screening dates and times are on their way.

WHERE WE'VE BEEN:

Tribeca Film Festival: April 23-May 4, 2008
Provincetown Film Festival: June 18-22, 2008

WHERE WE'RE GOING: (so far)
Rhode Island International Film Festival (RIIFF): August 5-10, 2008
Downtown Film Festival-LA: Aug 13-17, 2008
Ghent Film Festival: Oct 7-18, 2008
Woodstock Film Festival: October 11-15, 2008
Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque - November ७, 2008
Denver Film Festival: November 13-23, 2008
St. Louis Film Festival: November 15-23, 2008
Torino Film Festival: November 21-29, 2008
Goteborg International Film Festival (Sweden): Jan 2009