Launch Party
Last night was our Launch Party at Jimmy's Lounge in Hollywood, which is the first chance that the programmers who reviewed and debated and fought for the films that ultimately make up our line-up get to meet the creators of those films. At least the ones that live in Los Angeles - and it's actually encouraging to me that locals don't comprise the majority of our filmmakers. We're from all over, baby.
Of course, even our locals aren't typically from here. Like director Candela Figueira of competition narrative feature Under the Snow; she's originally from Spain, but was representing last night with her DP, Rob Webb.
We concentrate on the films themselves when programming, but I can't lie - I love it when they turn out to have lady filmmakers. Makes me feel all progressive, like I live in the future. (That might be the most depressing thing I say today.)
As with all of our hip happenings, sponsors have a lot to do with the smoothness of the event. The lovely ladies of The Post Group were bringing the thunder... which was probably inspired by our other Launch sponsors, Dos Equis and Jagermeister. Less thundery and more rainish (I know, I know - that was painful even to me) was Fiji. Programmer (and alumni filmmaker) Kent Osborne, demonstrating how it works.
Not to get to testro-festy, but I have to put up this next pic... it's programmer Dylan Kussman; Paul Forte, editor of competition narrative film Fix; 2007 filmmaker and current programmer Daniel Casey; some guy named Ben that came with Daniel; the head of some guy that I think was named Emmanuel that was there with a crazy filmmaker from the Czech Republic; and Nat Dinga, producer of Fix.
Come on?! How could you not want to know these guys? I even like the ones I don't know. It's possible I like them best...
