Blogging - Playing Catch Up 2009

Filmlike Films, Paul H-O & 'The Vixen' Sam would like to wish you a very Happy New Year. We hope you know how much we appreciate your blessings upon us in '08, and in some cases, scorn. We can't stop talking about Guest of Cindy Sherman because we have to keep pushing the damned thing along whether we want to or not.

GoCS has been included in several "best of" lists in the film critic wrap-ups. Here's a link to an IFC Film News article by Aaron Hillis


CORRECTION: An earlier posting mis-credited Aaron Hillis. He wrote for Premiere, and never called us "Shambolic" (that was Michelle Orange for the Village Voice).

2009. We're heading to Sweden for good weather and ample sunshine at the Goteborg Film Festival (SWE) . After that, we're off to Missoula, Montana for the Big Sky Film Festival, and then to Sabastapol, California for the Sebastapol Film Festival.
Where we've been, and where we are going:

2008 Tribeca Film Festival (Premiere) (US)

2008 Provincetown International Film Festival (US)

2008 Rhode Island International Film Festival (US)

2008 Downtown Los Angeles Film Festival (US)

2008 Woodstock International Film Festival US)

2008 Mill Valley International Film Festival (US)

2008 Cucalorus Film Festival (US)

2008 Starz Denver International Film Festival (US)

2008 St. Louis International Film Festival (US)

2008 Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque Special Screening (US)

2008 Berks Movie Madness Film Festival (US)

2008 Ojai Film Festival (US)

2008 Dallas Video Festival (US)

2008 Strasbourg International Film Festival (FRA)

2008 International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film (GER)

2008 Corona Cork Film Festival (IRE)

2008 Bergen International Film Festival (US)

2008 Santa Fe Film Festival (US)

2009 Goteborg International Film Festival (SWE)

2009 Big Sky Film Festival (US)

2009 Sebastapol Film Festival (US)



Best Wishes, Peace & Good Luck,

H-O & GoCS

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