Simone does the PR at 1001 Production House Last week was a pretty hectic one. Our submissions for the Sundance Film Festival and IFFR were finalized and we hoped that our dvd would arrive savely in LA. The deadline was yesterday and this morning Nafiss got a text that the dvd was delivered right on time. Fingers crossed that the programmers love the film!
But after these two entries we’re looking further in the future to other festivals we would like to be a part of. And when I first started working for 1001 Production House I already made a festival list, but this one wasn’t up to date anymore. So I decided to do some research today and make a new list with all the information we need. And you can’t imagine how many festival there are in the world. There are the regular ones everybody knows: Sundance, IFFR, Nederlands Film Festival, Tribeca, Cannes and many other that sound familiar. But within the depths of filmfestivalworld I found some very very strange ones. I would like to thematically share them with you. First strange themes: So is there the Equus Film Festival with the caption: An equestrian film festival dedicated to horse and human relationships. Sound like a perfect festival for horse lovers. A little niche within the film industry. Secondly genre related film in another country: I would like to bring the Japanese Short Film Festival in Serbia to your attention. Of course there are a lot of short Japanese movie lovers in Serbia, so this festival makes total sense. Then the festivals with badass names (don’t really care about the content): the Shorts That Are Not Pants Festival in Toronto, Canada. I would like to crop Dance Iranian Style into a short film just so I can send it over there. And last but not least, the festival with a connection to home but you can’t really wrap your mind around why: The Amsterdam Festival of New Cinema in Los Angeles. No connection to Amsterdam or the Netherlands what so ever. I. Don’t. Understand. Loved the research of today, made me smile a lot and giggle. But now I have to make a beautiful Excel sheet out of the information, with accurate dates and links so it is not only fun but also helpful. And maybe think of a short film project about the horse/human relationship.
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Simone does the PR at 1001 Production House The entry form from Sundance Film Festival is way harder than it looks. They asked me all kinds of questions, technical but also content related. And because air travel is not to be trusted, and we want to be sure we have a chance we gave ourselves until this Friday to finish everything. And that’s the trickiest period, because when you think you’re almost done all these little problems and loose ends come popping up. Where they were hiding all this time, I don’t know, but we have got to fix them. But the technical part of the entry form gives me a lot of information I didn’t know about our film or film in general. I never really looked at all the technical stuff during a project, to be honest I never really got the hang of it. I just didn’t get it. Now, I have to get it because otherwise the Festival will think we’re crazy for filling in the entry form all wrong. But with the help of Farshad and the guys from Redline we’ll get there.
So that’s basically it for this week. The only thing that’s on my mind is getting that DVD at the programmer’s desk by the 29th of September. All my positive energy goes to the airplane with our precious cargo and to the trucks that have to bring it to its final destination in LA. So if you have any positive energy left? Send it to us. Or to our DVD. It’s signed, sealed and not yet delivered, but it is definitely almost on its way. Now the only thing we can do is hope. Hope that the people at Sundance love our DVD and the whole journey wasn’t only for ourselves. Simone does the PR at 1001 Production House So today I did something we anticipated for a very long time. I pressed the send button! After contacting dozens of distributors in the beginning of August we were left with a couple of very interested ones. So I sent the latest version of Dance Iranian Style to several of these distributors today and it felt wonderful to finally have something to offer them. They started downloading immediately and we are very curious what they think of it. Hopefully we’ll hear something within the week and can talk about further collaborations.
We hit another milestone today because I started with filling out the entry form for the Sundance Film Festival in January. The video file has to be at their desk in Los Angeles at the 20th of September so we have to hurry! And the entry form is nothing to think litely about. They want to know EVERYTHING. Every little detail, every date of birth, camera setting, genre… It made my head spin. But it is slowly coming together, and we’re starting to take the future to the present. No talking about things we should do when the film is ready, but now! And we are finally showing our project to the world. This 9th of September is a busy day, there is also a meeting with graphic designer, Joost Waardenburg, this afternoon. We will be talking about posters and more graphic design stuff, to make everything appealing and coherent. We, and with us a lot of people, were very pleased with the results of the press kit so we are looking forward to the ideas of Joost on the poster, dvd cover, etc. So this time is pretty fun, because we are living the dream of finishing the film. Next week: probably all the distributors love us and we can choose which one fits us the best! Simone does the PR at 1001 Production House In this reclaimed summer period (or late summer week) I’m confronted with stories about the horrible experiences of refugees in Amsterdam and other parts of the Netherlands. With hideouts like the Vluchtkerk, the Vluchtmarkt and Vluchthaven closing up or being labeled unsafe they have literally no way to go. Before my work at 1001 Production House I did noticed these news items, but since working with this film and with Nafiss I’m more aware of this situation. In our film Roya lives on the street, doesn’t have anywhere to go, doesn’t have any money or food, no shelter, no shower, nothing. She is all alone in a city with so much resources. That’s why I think the resolution of bed, bath and bread (like Amsterdam does with the homeless) is a good starting point with giving the refugees a human existence. It’s not like they like to live on the streets and choose to live in unsafe buildings.
With that in mind I’m thinking about the universal character of this project. This is of course not a Holland-bound problem. Refugees will always have these struggles, especially when their asylum is denied. What to do if the country you ran off to sends you back to the place you fear the most? Would you make the same decision Roya and so many others made? Staying in a city with no place to go, with no place to call home and no possibilities to build a new life for yourself? I’m intrigued these questions keep haunting me after working on this project and seeing the final version of this film. What would I do if I were in Roya’s shoes? Would I run? So together with the fact that this film is beautiful and the images are magnificent, the theme questions your view on refugees and the way they make decisions. Dance Iranian Style made me appreciate my situation even more. I have a house, a love, a family and more than one place to call home. One more reason to make this film a success is for all of those refugees with no place to stay. With this project we want to give them a voice, of at least we try. Next week: making festival plans and sending the last edit to 4 distributors. Everything is slowly coming together! |
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