Recent Updates.

Hey all,
things have been going crazy well since Silverdocs! Thanks for all the support and opportunity everyone is giving us. Soon we'll be on the next leg of our US and European festival run. Check the news section for updates.

Meanwhile, as Mike has been plotting world domination film festival style, I've been pretending to be a writer.

On August 3rd I'll be reading from my essay about representation, The Excorcist and making October Country included in Life As We Show It: Writing on Film (City Lights Press), edited by Masha Tupitsyn and Brian Pera. Richard Grayson and Masha Tupitsyn will also be reading and film clips will we shown.

August 3rd 7pm.
McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince St.
(b/t Lafayette & Mulberry)
New York, NY 10012
212.274.1160





Also,
My review of Dennis Cooper's "Ugly Man" is now online at http://www.thefanzine.com/articles/books.

Latest Review

The latest review of October Country:

"I watched it. It's good." -Donna Mosher.

Sterling Prize, Silverdocs!!!

It's been a hectic coast hopping week. We flew to Silverdocs to reunite with all the wonderful doc folks from previous festivals. After receiving a warm welcome and being astounded at the quality films and filmmakers in the program, we flew to LA for our premiere. Once again, we were give the warmest welcome by the festival (during the filmmaker retreat and afterwards) and
again floored by the diversity of the films and filmmakers in the fest. After our premiere and party, we went to bed around 3AM woke at 4, and climbed back on a plane to Silverdocs. Our plane was late. Our cab was slow. We arrived 15 mins before the awards ceremony and made it just in time. 20 mins later we found that we'd won the Sterling US feature prize. The pictures floating around the internet (yikes) can attest to the state of shock we were in. The jurors were Cian Smyth, David Kwok, and Margaret Brown – that October Country received the prize, and more so such deep consideration from this respected and talented group still has us reeling. Thanks again, again, again, to Sky Sitney and everyone who has given us love and support so far.
(However, all y'all who knew we'd won and hid it so well - we'll never trust you again!)

Family Update:

Since the announcement, my family have been following the reviews. They are all a little astounded that people are taking an interest in their lives, though my mother did say over the phone, " ...sometimes disfunction functions." Desi recently told me
that "According to the reviews, I'm the one who will make it out." (look out world when that happens) Daneal is doing well, keeping stable and has a blog about her life as a young mother:
http://homewithlife.blogspot.com/
Chris is doing on-line college courses and trying to find a job, despite his jail record.

All together, everything is stable and better than it has been in a long time.

TRUE/FALSE

(photo by Ingrid Kopp)

Confessions of a Film Festival Virgin

What a special kind of madness this festival was – arriving in the dead quiet airport – a 2 hour shuttle ride through what should have been Missouri but was only a dark road light by billboards for chain restaurants, chur, and adult bookstores. In town we meet and greet with only our films and a few drinks to open up communication. But it works and works well. The next day we get up, walk the bright and friendly town, go into darkness to watch the horrors and joys of life compressed and flickering, then come out to give praise and talk business. At night, after negotiating the shifting ground of the documentary film world and the flux of emotions brought on by the films themselves, we drink and happily deprive ourselves of sleep. By our last screening I was so raw from everything I’d seen that I could barely speak, let alone speak about our film. Seeing my family’s story among such work and appreciated by such a caliber of people split me right down the middle –it’s crazy to be so happy because your family is so sad. To complicate all this, there in audience were Genevieve and Logan who I haven’t seen 12 years and whose love I thought I’d lost. In the midst of all the loaded images, all the talking of film, there I was, held by Genevieve, warm and strong as ever. Thanks again to Paul Sturtz and David Wilson for an experience beyond anything I’d expected.



(March March Parade)




















The Award Goes To…

It’s pointless to give a “best” list since I missed half the films I wanted to see and became pals with most of the filmmakers whose films I did. Instead I’ll give my 1st annual Completely Biased Appreciation Awards to some of the folks I met:

First of all the Tough Love Awards go to Esther Robinson, Debra Zimmerman, Jess Search, Heather Croall,Matt Dentler, Kirby Dick, and Rachel Rosen who took on our film like social workers considering the future an at risk child. Many folks helped but these guys really outlined our probation period. Heather also gets the “Why Am I Hearing Chains In the Room Next Door?” special prize.

Family Ghost Awards go to Rick Minnich and Matt Sweetwood (Forgetting Dad)who are not afraid of confronting emotional ambiguity. Also to Kimberly Reed whose bravery and intelligence are matched only by her elegance. Her Prodigal Sons looks at the complications of memory, identity, family love, and violence with sharp sight and unflinching tenderness.

Teen Spirit Awards go to the Brits – Ingrid Kopp, Nick Abraham (The Posters From the Walls) and Jamie Jay Johnson whose Sounds Like Teen Spirit shows us a Europe whose borders are drawn in glitter –a substance that bridges the gap between heartbreak, victory, and national pride. This film made me sure that my inner child is a 13 year-old girl (not just an immature drag queen.)



The Laugh At A Hopeless Cause Awardd goes to The Yes Men Fix the World. It’s delightful as always to see Andy Bichlbaum in action, shifting his persona from a self effacing Clark Kent to would be Superman. Splashing close behind is John Maringouin and Molly Lynch’s Big River Man – which is also the only film from the 4th dimension I have ever seen.

The Quiet Dignity Prize goes to Jean-Pierre Duret, both for himself and the quiet dignity he reveals in his young subjects. Because We Were Born is without doubt the most beautiful of all the films I saw at the festival.

The “Damn son, How’d You Get So Good!” Award goes to Darius Mardur whose Loot has one of the most powerful moments I have ever seen in a documentary and whose charm and inclusiveness make it apparent at first meeting how he got his astounding story.

The Balance Your Profession With Your Cocktail Glass Award goes to Brian Brooks
For serious engagement with the filmmakers and the parties.



The Best Live Performance In Front of A Camera goes to Kimberly Chew, the newswoman who interviewed us live. Seeming to pull a private TV signal into her body she transformed from a soft spoken woman focused on her lines into a full blown television personality –an impressive and frightening skill.

(Before and after)












































The Dance Floor Award goes to me - an honor bestowed by Jamie Jay Johnson, who has seen Miss Junior Ukraine in action, (and because jumpin’ around to New Order got me hit on.)


Finally the Life Together Award goes to Mike Palmieri, but I’m the lucky one.

True/False

October Country is going to the True/False Film Festival.

Check It Out
http://truefalse.org/

More posts coming throughout the week.

In other news

October Country made the SF BAY GAURDIAN's end of the year critic's picks – Larry Rinder's top ten!
Donal's photos have been nominated for the Baum and Godowsky Awards.
Disjecta artspace in Portland will be presenting a October Country multimedia show in Nov. Curated by Sam Gould, including original and recent photos by Donal, film clips, stills and more by Mike, as well text and installation components.

Screening at Rooftop Films and for the family

We made it through a week of film meetings, film parties and conferences. All those introductions. All those quick eyes scanning badges. One area where filmmakers went behind a curtain to give quick pitches to funders resembled an STD clinic. A woman with a clipboard came out, a filmmaker went in. Soon the filmmaker came out either grinning (rarely) or with the defeated look of someone who was off to get that prescription filled and give all their partners the bad news. For us however,
it was a buzzing productive week. And we met some awesome folks.

Party highlight ! we got into a film society party at the Dakota- a very quiet, sincere occasion, a very tasteful cheery, if ornate apartment. No whiff of Brimstone anywhere. Everyone talked in low voices when mentioning Rosemary’s Baby, afraid the hosts would over hear, weary of that business, think us crass. Cheers to John and Yoko, and God bless message of peace, but with it’s gargoyle light fixtures in winding halls, iron gates, high dark walls and gothic rooftops, the Dakota seems rather to say give Satan (or at least Ruth Gordon, satanically gaudy) a chance.

"They're witches every one!"




The Screening

To top all this off, we had the work in progress screening of October Country, for an audience of 300 on a school rooftop in Manhattan, with the September moon above and graffiti images of immigrants workers, hip hop superheroes, peering children, and ghosts and skulls on the brick walls all around.A chill came on halfway through the film, matching Halloween on the screen. The reaction was as everything we hope for (how often does that happen?) But I stood answering questions, thinking how strange it was to be so happy when the lives in the film are so fucked. Thank you Mark Elijah Rosenberg and all at Rooftop Films for a night of the most mixed emotions I’ll ever have.

















Home Viewing

On the train and it’s dark outside now, just my own reflection and the flicker of town lights through trees. As we head toward the Mohawk valley, the film becomes my family’s life again, the life they don’t deserve even though most of them make it for themselves. An abandoned brick factory glides past the window, flood lit and seemingly built on dark air. October Country here we come again.

mom and dad and ?

The film finished. Credits rolled. Not only did they like it. They’re proud of it.
Nothing could have been better, nothing more to say about it.



NEW PHOTOS
Daneal, age 4
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Desi


Desi



mom in the pool


archery target in the neighbors yard


Donna's T-shirt


cigarette machine

OCTOBER COUNTRY - a sample of the original photos and texts.

The Valley

Signs at the toll exit read “Welcome to the historic Mohawk Valley. To the historic Township of Herkimer.” This is the outstretched toe of Fennimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking country, and the towns that crouch along the banks of the Mohawk are sites of original colonies and revolutionary battles. Colonial graves are hidden in the woods. Barbed wire sags under blackberry thickets at the edge of the Reservation. Every country road has its tumbledown barns and skeletal silos, the rural gothic testaments to the dying agricultural economy. Industry hardly fares better. In the town of Ilion, the smokestack of the Remington Arms, the valley’s first and possibly last industry, stands like graveyard monument at the center of town. Though nearly all the life has been sucked from the valley’s dour brick factories, death continues rolling in bits and pieces along the Arms’ conveyer belts. How many lives has our local industry claimed? How many restless spirits has this factory produced.

Aside from weapons and a shabby bit of history what is there to sell here? Tough lives on tough, tired land. Motels and vacation cabins molder in lines along the highways like boxcars a train has abandoned. Tourists drive through but do not linger. The summers are short, the river water cold, and though every farmhouse and trailer park has a storage shed converted into a craft shop, there is a terrible shortage of real antiques. There is in fact a shortage of real past and real future. The kind of daily struggle that happens here makes own, cyclical present tense – a gritty unappealing one that goes unseen, unvisited. The Valley and the lives within it exist as ghosts.

But this is where I came from, where I left, and where my family still lives. We haunt each other. In the logic of haunting, memory, and photography, a fragment of time becomes unmoored from the greater flow and turns in on itself, producing phenomena that contain both presence and absence. The ghosts here in the valley are my ghosts, just as I am a ghost, there but unseen, in the pictures I take of them.