Revolution received an official nomination for Best Short Film at the 2008 Arizona Black Film Showcase. 40 short, feature, and documentary films were screened this year, a record in AZBFS history. Revolution was one of three films selected for Best Short Film, and received a a roaring applause when a clip from the final scene played in the awards ceremony in Phoenix on the evening of Saturday March 29th.

Revolution will be screening again at the LA United Film Festival on Sunday, April 20th at 8:10pm at the Fine Arts Theater - 8556 Wilshire Blvd. Beverly Hills, CA. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, come for the screening and stay for the after party!

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You know when they say, “and the nominees for Best Short Film are…” at the Oscars? Well, this time they said, “Revolution!” and there was a little clip of our video that played while everyone clapped. I admittedly had high hopes for our video, but seeing the nominee clip play at an awards ceremony solidified my faith in our work. From there, I was hoping to hear, “Re.. Rev.. Revolution!”, but instead this other film, Hollywood Jerome, won Best Short Film, and worst of all the creators weren’t even there… they ghost-robbed me of my acceptance speech!

It’s all good though. I had hella fun at the Arizona Black Film Showcase. I saw some great films, met some amazing folks, and had a chance to talk to all different types of people about our film and the message behind it. I realize that that’s why we do this… we love the experience of people feeling what we do. It makes it all worth it, for me at least, and best of all, it encourages me to keep making videos.

I found out that How To Build A Rapper will be screening with Revolution at the Sweet Auburn International Film Festival, so hopefully we’ll have a chance to link up with the guys from Anacost Productions again. Everyone uses Withoutabox, so my guess is that I’ll start seeing even more familiar faces within the coming months. I’m also hoping to run into some of these cool folks from Phoenix again. I had never been to Phoenix, and they really showed me love down here. I came down here expecting to do a lot of forced “networking” and made some friends instead.

This was a great experience, and I made sure to tell the event staff repeatedly. Everyone here was so friendly that they felt like family; I’ve got an excuse to come back now… Phoenix has my vote and I’m down to come back whenever it’s not 115 outside. I hope we get accepted to this festival next year, and I’m excited to see how things go for us at the LA United Film Festival on 4-20.

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Woke up this morning and headed back downtown to the AMC theater for a full day’s worth of screenings.

I had a chance to see a romance drama feature titled, Second Chance, which follows a father seeking joint custody of his child. This was definitely one of the better independent black romance films I had seen a while… the production quality was good, the script was unique with occasional hints of comedy, and the actors certainly did it justice. Our screening followed directly after the Second Chance talk back.

Watching your own video on “the big screen” is a trip. This was the first time I had seen Revolution at that size, and it definitely felt much different than the video I had edited in my bedroom a few months ago. After the screening, during the “talk back” I had a chance to explain the process of making our video and answer some audience questions. I actually had a chance to talk with the facilitator the night before, at length, so I felt like she knew how to ask all the right questions. She also made it a point to let everyone know that our video was more than just a music video repeatedly stated that it was “deep”… glad it wasn’t just “cool”

One audience member asked if I had ever considered casting children in any of our videos. When we were planning the video, we wanted to have the class made up of actual high schoolers, but felt that we wouldn’t be able to get them to stay at a shoot all day and be patient… especially if we couldn’t pay them. So now she’s got me thinking about how we could cast 10 - 20 high schoolers for our next shoot. Sure, people do it all the time, but it’s not as easy for me to do it if I can’t just include them in a mass text message… “Please come to our shoot today… and bring high schoolers with you!” She and some other 40+ audience members spoke with me afterwards, and it was so rewarding to hear them say that they felt like we were speaking directly to them with out video. One of them even asked

A mockumentary, titled How To Build A Rapper screened right after our video. I won’t bother to give the break down, but if you like rap music and you like comedy, check it out.

After leaving the theater, I did some more interviews with the TV and documentary crews here. The first interview was a longer interview with BigTv1.com. The host was real cool, and she had been outside doing interviews all day, but still had great energy. I’m really impressed with their production setup too… they had scheduled me in ahead of time (last night at that) and everything. I walked over to the filmmakers lounge right after that and did an interview for the documentary on the AZ Black Film Showcase. Again, the host was real cool, but she kept having trouble pronouncing my last name… she finally got it though after a few takes… I’m curious to see how all these interviews come out, so stay tuned for some video clips… I’ll get them up here eventually.

The awards ceremony is tonight, so we’ll see if we can get our first award at our first festival!

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The first day of the Arizona Black Film Showcase proved to be a great start for the list of film festivals we’ll be attending in the next few weeks. This is my first time in Arizona, and the first time I’ve had a music video in a film festival, so this first day has been full of firsts… I’ve been really curious to see how everything plays out.

After registering, and near scare that our film was not listed on the schedule, I went to a discussion with Producer/Director Lee Daniels . Lee Daniels is most notable for directing Monster’s Ball, but got his start working with Prince back in the 80’s. It was great to hear his perspective on independent filmmaking, considering that he’s had a lot of exposure to the more “mainstream” Hollywood scene. He explained that he’d rather do his films “guerilla style”, spend his own money, and call his own shots, instead of working on a big budget project where his talents and vision would be compromised. It was funny to hear that he auditioned for Director of Dream Girls, but was instantly turned down when he insisted that Effie should be featured with a “boogie” in her nose.

The next discussion I attended was with Actress Lynn Whitfield, who’s most memorable to me for her role as Martin Lawrence’s crazy wife in A Thin Line Between Love & Hate. She was also the “evil” mother from Madea’s Family Reunion… It was good to see that Lynn was not actually crazy and evil when she interviewed. She was a lot of fun and shared a number of stories about her career, how she got started, and how she managed to climb out of Hollywood’s crab barrel. She made me want to go and rent the Josephine Baker Story again…

The evening consisted of film screenings. I saw a good variety of features, shorts, and documentaries from all over the country. All of the films were on two screens in the AMC Theater, so it was a good opportunity for me to meet other filmmakers. I even had a brief interview with Phoenix based tv show, BigTV1.com about our video. I was hoping to see a documentary on the Good Life Cafe (birthplace of Project Blowed) titled, This Is The Life, but found out it had been canceled. I was about to head home, when someone suggested that I check out the other documentary titled, Second Chance Season. Initially, I was as interested in what seemed to be another Hoop Dreams, but this doc really blew me away! It followed a high school basketball star, Nick Young, whose family was still suffering from the murder of his older brother in 1991. You should check it out for yourself… and that’s all I have to say about that.

Our film screens today, Saturday, at 1:55pm at the AMC Theater in downtown Phoenix.

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Revolution has been accepted to four film festivals in the past two weeks. We’ve submitted to over a dozen festivals and haven’t been rejected from any so far.

We’ve been using withoutabox.com to submit to all of the festivals and it has worked out really well so far. The setup process is pretty quick… and from there you browse through the listings, select festivals, and send in your application fees and discs. They also send regular email announcements about popular festivals.

Here’s our current acceptance list:

Arizona Black Film Festival: March 27th - 30th in Phoenix

LA United Film Festival: April 18th - 20th in Beverly Hills
Rincon International Film Festival: April 22nd - 26th in Puerto Rico

Sweet Auburn International Film Festival: May 7th - 11th in Atlanta

Check back to see if Revolution is accepted at a festival in your city.

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