Category: Seder-Masochism

The Seder-Masochism Book

Graven-on-demand copies available here! Transparency: I get about $6 per $35 order. Hopefully by next year some publisher will have them offset-printed in hardcover with sewn bindings, but until then, graven-on-demand is it.

It’s a Haggadah! It’s an Anti-Haggadah! It’s coming soon! It’s almost 200 pages, in full color! Here are some pictures of the proof I just got.

IMG_0791 IMG_0815 IMG_0814IMG_0812 IMG_0811
IMG_0809
IMG_0807
IMG_0805IMG_0804IMG_0813 IMG_0803IMG_0802IMG_0801IMG_0800 IMG_0799
IMG_0795
IMG_0793 IMG_0792

Share

Fall 2018 North American Festival Tour wrap-up

In the last month I traveled to Ottawa, Vancouver, Mill Valley, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and Los Angeles, to attend numerous screenings of Seder-Masochism, including the festivals below:

0F9rL

This is a LONG post with lots of photos, so start after the fold. Continue reading “Fall 2018 North American Festival Tour wrap-up”

Share

Seder-Masochism festivals, September-October 2018

Festivals marked with * and Bold are ones I’m attending in person!

 

Athens International Film Festival
Athens, Greece
September 19-30

AnimaSyros
Syros, Greece
September 26-30

* Ottawa International Animation Festival
Ottawa, Canada
September 26-30 2018

* Vancouver International Film Festival
Vancouver, Canada
September 27-October 12 (SM screenings October 3 & 4)

* Mill Valley Film Festival
Mill Valley, CA
October 4-14 (SM screenings October 8 & 9)

* The Goddess Animated
Capitola, CA
October 14

* Animation Is Film
Los Angeles CA
October 19-21 (SM screening October 19)

Fredrikstad Animation Festival
Fredrikstad, Norway
October 25-28

AniNation International Animation festival
Jerusalem, Israel
October 24-27

Big Cartoon Festival
Moscow, Russia
October 26-November 3

 

Share

DCPs

10+ years ago, when I was preparing Sita Sings the Blues for film festivals, I had to make heavy, unwieldy, and expensive 35mm film prints. Thankfully I don’t have to do that any more. Instead, today’s cinemas use DCP (for Digital Cinema Package) hard drives. These take advantage of advances in digital technology, as fucked up by a film industry that can’t cope with advances in digital technology. Thanks to the insane and byzantine encoding protocols designed by Hollywood to thwart what computers are inherently best at – copying – making DCPs has long been shrouded in mystery and prohibitive costs.

Since I’m cheap and have practically no income these days, I didn’t want to use a DCP-making service (called a “lab,” as if). Instead, after begging around for favors, and doing much research online, I made them myself.
logo

I used DCP-o-matic. It’s Free Software, created and maintained by Carl Hetherington, to whom I and many other small filmmakers owe a debt of gratitude. I can’t recommend it enough. Apparently many screening venues now use it themselves. I used it to make 2K and 4K DCP files, and English and French “version files” for subtitles. I also burned in English subtitles over “Paroles, Paroles.”

New-DCP-Verify-05

Once I made the DCPs, I had to get them onto portable hard drives, which is no small task. You can’t just drag-and-drop copy them like normal files. Fortunately I found DCP Transfer. It’s not Free, but it is affordable – $25 a month (ugh, subscriptions) plus a $25 initial charge. Today my subscription auto-renewed, just in time for me to be gone for a month, so I contacted the company to cancel and they refunded it. That’s good service! The software works great, too. I had no problem formatting and copying DCPs onto most external hard drives. The exception was flash drives, aka thumb drives; these overheated and usually failed. It’s a pity, since flash drives are so small and convenient. But I found some relatively inexpensive 320GB USB3 portable hard drives, and made enough DCPs to satisfy film festivals.

Whatever my complaints about DCP, it sure beats making (and distributing!) film.

Share