Saturday, March 24, 2012

Lost Film Masterpiece Weekend

Eye acting heaven

Next weekend is looking to be one freaking amazing weekend for film nuts.  Saturday night, at UC Berkeley (Zellerbach Hall), Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 film The Passion of Joan of Arc will be screening. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, with the UC Choral Ensembles will be performing Richard Einhorns' Voices of Light to accompany the film.  This is a beautiful, beautiful film which gives me tingles every time I see it.

Suck on this, VistaVision

On Sunday (for me anyway, the film is screening four times: 3/24-3/25 and 3/31-4/1), in sweet, sweet Oakland, at the Paramount Movie Palace, will be a once-in-a-lifetime event:  a 5 1/2 hour screening of a British Film Institute restored print of Abel Gance's Napoleon with live orchestral accompaniment performing the score by Carl Davis.  This is literally a piece that is the product of decades of effort, finding and restoring the film to Gance's original version and composing a score to accompany it.  The final act will be projected with multiple projectors in accordance with Gance's original vision.  This may be the last time this work is screened in film in the United States (a digital restoration is in the works).  People are literally flying in from all over the world for this.  Read about the films fascinating history here.

Cruelty, madness,  beauty and over-acting

If you care about fast disappearing film, these are rare opportunities to see once "lost" masterpieces projected in film with live orchestral accompaniment.  If that's not enough, it will also be the chance to see every art kid's hero, Antonin Artaud, on the big screen in each film.  I'll be there, in the dark, dreaming.

Living, with your neck placed firmly in the noose

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Project Updates

 Lucky me

We have finally finished the short project that we created for Projeto Saúde & Alegria, a Brazilian NGO in the Amazon.  It is going to be used to help promote their new ecotourism project, one of their sustainable development initiatives.  It was a real privilege to go down there and actually meet the people in the communities and experience it all firsthand.  We also shot additional footage (interviews with elders, a walk in primary rainforest describing the plants and their uses, etc.) that they will hopefully be able to use in the future for documentary purposes.  This project was edited by Gustavo da Silva, who also edits a TV program Planeta Brasil and is my first producing credit.



I also just found out that the documentary short I recently color graded, The Alley Cats, will screen on April 06, 2012 at the Oakland International Film Festival.  It is small film (in the best sense) that looks at a slice of Oakland, CA, the Alley Cat piano bar (open since 1934) and its family of patrons.  This film was directed by Cary Virtue and edited by the very talented Carlo Kamin.

The Alley Cats

There are several other exciting developments in the near future, including an iOS app, about which I will be sharing details.