festivals Archives - Page 5 of 14

Meet Aseem Chhabra!

In addition to being a professional journalist, desi cultural maven, and all-around entertaining guy, Aseem was the voice of “Shadow Puppet #1” in Sita Sings the Blues. He’ll be representing the film at some upcoming Southern California screenings*:

Monday, Oct. 13, 8:30 pm
RedCat Cinema
631 W. 2nd St., Los Angeles CA

Thursday, October 16, 7:00pm
with sound designer Greg Sextro!
ArtPower at UC San Diego/The Loft
9500 Gilman Drive #0078, La Jolla, CA 92093

Have a great time, you crazy kids!

*which I’m sitting out due to illness

Best Script in Athens!

Sita Sings the Blues won Best Script at the Athens International Film Festival. It’s an honor I credit to Sita’s talented collaborators, especially Manish Acharya, Aseem Chhabra and Bhavana Nagulapally, who improvised all the narration.

Sita also received an Honorable Mention for “Best Animated Feature Film” at the Ottawa Animation Festival.

So the film is in excellent health, even while I am a quivering wreck.

I Be Illin’

OK, so I’m not in Athens right now. I left Israel early. I got sick, is what happened. A little food poisoning, a little irritable bowel syndrome, a little appetite loss and not eating for days, a little nervous breakdown, and next thing you know I’m back in New York trying to recover in a friend’s apartment, because I lost mine to bed bugs in July – not that that could be contributing to my stress or anything.

Unfortunately airports and airplanes and trying to sleep in different time zones are kind of killing me, so I’m canceling personal appearances for the next few weeks. It is a serious bummer, because I love meeting audiences and doing Q and A’s; and also because some of my upcoming lecture gigs actually pay, and I need the money. But my body and brain apparently can’t take this much travel, and I’m really sick.

On a bright note, the Rehovot International Women’s Film Festival was amazing – really excellent films, and excellent women. I also met some wonderful animators from ASIFA-Israel.

Where in the World is Sita Sings the Blues?

Please check the ever-growing show list. Sorry it’s not better organized; you have to scroll down in chronological order from past to future. It’s just me and my Momz trying to keep track here.

I’m leaving on Sunday for these two:

Rehovot Int’l Women’s Film Festival (Israel), Sept 16-21, â€˜08
Athens Int’l Film Festival (Greece), September 17-28, â€˜08

Sita and I will be bopping around other parts of Israel too, according to the US State Department (!), who is sponsoring my trip (how that was arranged I do not know). I’ll be in Athens Sept. 25-29. Whee!

Am I a Criminal?

Naturally I keep up on the latest grim developments in copyright law. The new Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act, which unsurprisingly “is strongly backed by the music and movie industries,” would “(allow) for the Department of Justice to bring civil suits against IP infringers.”

Continue reading “Am I a Criminal?”

“Review Copies”

Look what arrived today! Thanks to Gillian and Sylvie at Elektrofilm for the professional authoring in both PAL and NTSC formats that hopefully won’t crash like my home-authored version, and especially to my genius Momz for managing what turned into a more complicated logistical challenge than any of us imagined.

~~These aren’t for sale, of course – that would be illegal. They’re just festival screeners and review copies for, like, reviewing and screening in a festive manner.~~

Update: That said, it has some, ah, glitches. Glitches that apparently some people won’t notice, or think I did on purpose, but watching them feels like knives in my heart. Glitches which I must correct on the “next” version. Glitches which were in my HD master. Oh boy.