Seder-Masochism at the NY Jewish Film Festival Sunday January 13 at 9pm & Monday January 14 at 3:45pm. I will be at both screenings! Buy tickets here.
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.
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:
This is a LONG post with lots of photos, so start after the fold. Continue reading “Fall 2018 North American Festival Tour wrap-up”
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
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.
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.”
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.
Ten Plagues Illustrated
I illustrated the Plagues with videoclips in 2015, but never assembled still images before. Again, thinking about a book…
Blood
Frogs
Lice
Flies
Murrain (cattle disease)
Boils
Hail (and fire)
Locusts
Darkness
Death of the Firstborn Egyptians