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Connecting indies to community – June 2010

Body & Soul: Diana & Kathy will be screening in India in September as part of the 10th Edition of Open Frame sponsored by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust. Visit www.welcomechange.org for more details.

Gillian Fink of The Gillian Film will be participating in the U.S. National Special Olympics competition in July in Nebraska! She is one of 50 North Carolina athletes selected to attend and will be competing in track and field! www.TheGillianFilm.com

The Asian American Journalists Association highlighted AsiaPacificFilms.com’s work in their latest newsletter. Karin Chien – from dGenerate Films (www.dgeneratefilms.com) will be representing both dGenerate and AsiaPacificFilms.com as a panel participant for AAJA on August 7.

American Library Association Annual Conference:

I am attending American Library Association’s Annual Convention to represent AsiaPacificFilms, dGenerate Films, Welcome Change Productions and M.Y.R.A. Entertainment. I am also volunteering at the Video Round Table booth Saturday morning June 26, from 11am – noon. If you wish to discuss these organizations, or independent film in general, I would love to connect!

The ALA and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) presents a new cultural programming opportunity for libraries, the Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women Library Outreach Program. Thirty $2,500 grants will support five reading, viewing and discussion programs about Louisa May Alcott’s life and times. Even if your library does not seek a grant, you can access the program notebook on the ALA website. The collaboration between NEH, the ALA Public Programs Office and producers Nancy Porter and Harriet Reisen is part of NEH’s We the People initiative.” Director Nancy Porter and Writer Harriet Reisen will be speaking about the new NEH/ALA program at the at the Grand Hyatt, 1000 H Street, NW in the Constitution Room C/D, Saturday, June 26, 10:30am-12:00pm. Reisen will be signing books at the Macmillan table beginning at 2:00pm. Online applications for the grants will be accepted at www.grants.gov through July 30.

Personally speaking:

For the documentary I’m working on, Full Body Centric, I’ll be taping at Homeopathy Works – a homeopathy remedy manufacturing plant – on June 29! If you, or anyone you know is interested in, or supportive of, homeopathy and other alternative medicines please pass my information on. You can also donate to the film via PayPal from any page of this website.

You can also now purchase my previous films by visiting: https://www.energizedfilms.com/?page_id=133

And finally, a project I think worthy of checking out…

To use media in an effort to provide youth a voice about important issues is an extraordinary venture and Global Girl Network is a new wonderful initiative. Check out the National Program Director’s blog entry for the Huffington Post at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kamala-lopez/thinking-globally-contend_b_612002.html

and check out the organization while you’re at it: http://www.globalgirlmedia.org/

Categories
Newsletter

Connecting indies to community – May 2010

News First!

Vito After has been added to the library of the USS New York, the battleship forged with steel from the World Trade Center. Check it out at www.dreamslate.net.

Diana Braun from Body & Soul: Diana & Kathy is going to be the keynote speaker of the 2010 Texas Advocates Peer to Peer Project in Corpus Christi on August 7! The conference is also bringing filmmaker Alice Elliott out as well. Check out www.texadvocates.org for more information. Diana and Alice are also going to the AAIDD conference in June in Rhode Island as Diana is part of a presentation on setting up an independent living environment.

New group of films I’m helping – www.dgeneratefilms.com – a diverse group of both fiction and non-fiction films that hail from China but are banned there! Check them out!

I will definitely be attending American Library Association in Washington DC at the end of June so please let me know if we can meet while there and any cool meetings you suggest showing up to.

Opinions Worth Sharing

Recently, one of my brilliant, supportive librarian friends explained his purchasing process for films for his university and, as I’m always answering questions from filmmakers about how their films get used in secondary settings, I think it’s invaluable insight. Thank you, Tom @ UNLV for allowing me to send your thoughts out into the world…

“…most of us who find ourselves working in media libraries are quite passionate about film and, in an ideal world, would love to spend our money with independent filmmakers. Unfortunately, we all have limited budgets to work within and these days many of our budgets are shrinking at an alarming rate. And in many libraries, the media collection does not get the type of budget and attention it deserves to begin with.

Without the option of buying the home version, my decision goes from buying the institutional version or the home version to buying the institutional version or not buying it at all. And with my budget as it is, I’m doing a lot of not buying of things I would love to have in my collection. I don’t like it because their content is still as great as ever, but I just don’t have the money and our collection suffers because of it. Difficult decisions indeed.

I would love to be in a position to be more financially supportive. MY moral objective is to provide the best media collection for our patrons given the limitations of my budget. If that means I have to sacrifice one good $250 documentary to purchase ten good $25 documentaries that will support more students, then I have to go with the later.”

Rachel’s Films

I started a Kickstarter.com fundraising page for Full Body Centric – please visit and, even if you can’t donate, please pass the information to people you know who are interested in health issues as I’m building a mailing list of like minded people:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/612775271/full-body-centric-an-introduction-to-homeopathy

You can use your Amazon.com account for this website. The way it works is that if I make the goal I set for myself – $3000 – by the deadline of June 15, that fund will be released to me, which will assist me shooting at the various places I’m scheduled to go. If I do not collect that amount by the deadline, nobody actually gets charged for any money they’ve pledged.

Secondarily, if you’d like to make a contribution using PayPal instead, you can do so with a link to the “work-in-progress” page I’ve created for the film at my website by going to:

https://www.energizedfilms.com/?page_id=81

There are buttons set up for donating either way…

When I go to Arizona for the American College of Homeopathy (May 22-26!) I will also be taping Dr. Iris Bell, who researches the “proving” of remedies, very excited!

I will also be taping at Homeopathy Works, a manufacturer of homeopathic remedies, on June 29!

You can also now buy copies of my previous films! A shopping cart function has finally been added!

https://www.energizedfilms.com/?page_id=133

Lastly, and the most fascinating to me, is this article about video software possibly conflicting with licensing agreements:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20000101-264.html

Thanks very much for your support of independent films…and if you have an “opinion worth sharing” I’d love to hear it as well.