SCREENING
WINNER
PUBLIC AWARD FOR THE BEST FILM
DIRECTED BY A WOMAN OF COLOR
fuel for the panel
First up, Oren’s Daily Roast — the best coffee I’ve ever had away from home, hands down! And can we just note that:
Tanzania is Coffee of the Day
(to commemorate Tanzania’s 50th Birthday??)
Love the description: “sweet berry fragrance, medium body, good clear acidity…” With that much care given to balancing the bitter with the sweet, they might as well be describing our movie!
Teacher's College, Columbia University
Next, on to Teachers College for the African Diaspora International Film Festival panel discussion on “Monetizing Independent Cinema.” What a huge topic!! As Renee Conly (the panel moderator) put it, this conversation could just as easily be called “Hey, I’ve finished my film! Now what??!”
(Sound familiar?)
I’m grateful that ADIFF videotaped this discussion, because it covered a lot of ground. Each panelist examined this issue of how to monetize the post-completion phase of a film’s life through their own unique lens. And while I could never do justice to the entire conversation, here are a few tasty takeaways…
Milton Tabbott (IFP Senior Director, Programming), Caitlin Boyle (President, Filmsprout), myself, Maria Breaux (Director, Mother Country), Diarah N'Daw-Spech (Co-Director, ArtMattan), Renee Conly (panel moderator)
view from my window
view in my window
life in the balance
with moderator Veronique Doumbe (NY Women In Film & TV) and Diarah N'Daw-Spech (ADIFF/ArtMattan)
The screening event was fabulous. The picture/sound quality was phenomenal–which was particularly impressive when I realized they were projecting from my preview DVD (turns out their DVCAM deck had died a gruesome death only a few days earlier. I can only imagine how much better it would’ve looked in DV/HDCAM!)
with Rachel Johnson (Dir, The Dream Team) and moderator Veronique Doumbe
The post-screening Q&A was moderated by Veronique Doumbe from NY Women In Film & TV, and was as engaged and lively as always.
One person asked about the make up of our creative team, and wanted to know if I was in fact the boss, or if someone else was calling the shots. To which I answered, “Oh, I was most definitely The Boss! I just surrounded myself with the most amazing teachers.” Felt like the truest description of our creative team to date…
Sitting down w/BBCWorldService in 2hrs. Hoping to clear my jetlagged head with some writing & a tepid cup o'watery joe.
Met with Leslie Goffe (BBC World News) at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library prior to our screening. We had an intensely engaging conversation that covered a lot of ground in a very short period of time. But I must admit to still being so green at radio–it’s SUCH an odd bird. Hard for me to gage if he got all the info he needed. I guess we’ll just have to see how it turns out.
Goffe pointed out that the timing of our screening was falling on the 50th anniversary of Tanzania’s Independence. Yet another serendipitous screening date!! It offered an interesting reference point – a chance to reflect on where we’ve come from, where we’re heading…a beautiful echo of our film’s theme of cultural inheritance and legacy.
BBC wants to run the interview this weekend, before the end of the festival. I’ll be sure to forward the link as soon as I get it.
12/16/2011, 6:26am: This just in–i’ve been told the BBC plans to air this interview during the holiday week of 12/25-1/2. promise to share the link as soon as it comes my way!
my love of seinfeld is blatantly displayed in the film. so breakfast at monks/tom's this morning was a given.
Gale force winds met us as we approached the airport. You could literally hear and feel the plane bending. That was by far the bumpiest landing I’ve had in a long while.
Diarah N’Daw-Spech, the festival director, picked me up at the airport. It was well after midnight! On the drive to the hotel, she told me about some exciting NY press interest in our film. We’ll have to see where that goes…
I checked into my room at Columbia University Teachers College – nice setup, and very centrally located.
Thanks to the African Diaspora Film Festival (ADFF), we’ll be screening A Lot Like You at the Schomburg Center in Harlem Thursday, December 8th @ 8:30pm. Our film will be featured as part of “Women Indies Night” and will be screening together with The Dream Team. Please join us for this screening, and be sure to stick around for the Q&A and a catered reception following the screening. Tickets & info here.
And I’ve been invited to speak on a panel about “Monetizing Independent Cinema“, which will be taking place Saturday, December 10th @ 2pm at Teachers College, Columbia University (Tickets here). Panelists will include:
Milton Tabbot, IFP Senior Director, Programming
Catilin Boyle, President Filmsprout
Maria Breaux, Dir. Mother Country
Eliaichi Kimaro, Dir. A Lot Like You
Diarah N’Daw-Spech, ADIFF Co-Director
If you’re in town, please come join us. We’d love to see you (and your friends) there!!
So you’ve made a film. Congrats!! That’s it then. You’re done, right? Time to move on to the next project…
Well, yes — thanks to all the people who helped you realize your vision, your film is now complete. But you soon discover that all the collective time and energy that went into finishing your project was just to get you to the START line. And so the journey of finding your audience begins…
As we consider the outreach and distribution potential for A Lot Like You, I realize that our timing could not be better. In the old-school model of distribution, movie studios were the gatekeepers between filmmakers and their audiences. But the tides are turning. The digital age is radically dismantling this old model, offering filmmakers much more control over how their film makes its way out into the world.
With venues ranging from film festivals, theatrical screenings, educational distribution, international market, cable, PBS, video-on-demand, digital downloads, webisodes–you are limited only by your time, imagination and resources. And this “new world of distribution”, as Peter Broderick calls it, is as liberating as it is daunting.
When our creative team met earlier this year to discuss our vision for how our film would find its audience, ideas started pouring out–joint screenings with non-profits, campus screenings, facilitation guides, skype-ing in to classroom discussions, speaking at conferences, and creating online spaces where our audience, filmmaking team, and activists could connect directly. And as we talked, our priorities started to emerge.
Our primary goal is to harness the power of our story to ignite dialogue and invite deep introspection. We’ve all experienced the ripple effect of truth-telling that this film is bringing about. What we need is a way to harness this momentum effectively so it can contribute to the groundswell that leads to change. What we want is to create as many opportunities as possible to engage with our audience directly.
And we discovered the key to realizing this vision lay in my activist background. Over the past 20 years, I have built relationships with local and national non-profit organizations, particularly those working within underserved communities to address social and economic justice issues. These connections are now coming full circle as we look ahead to how we can maximize our film’s reach and impact.
So for those of you wondering why on earth I’m still writing grants when we already have a finished film…here’s a brief overview of the future we envision for our film: Continue reading →
