November 15, 2005

Well I have been remiss in blogging regularly. I think I just have been stymied about ways to get this documentary more widely screened, plus trying to get interest moving for the organization I founded, Friends of Film, Video and Arts Foundation, a National Heritage Foundation. Spearheading so much at this time may have just tired me. Plus the bizaree politics around me are draining too most days. It can be like fighting a fog.

Everything creative, new or innovative takes so much energy, and sometimes I just run out of it, which seems to have happened this past month or so. I thought my weeks in Canada would provide me a break from thinking, scheming and planning how to make things happen in the documentary/film world, but quite honestly, I did not get recharged the way I had hoped.

Sometimes I just wish I had a clear trade or profession, like being a plumber or a dentist. Then what I had to do each day would be obvious and fairly straightforward. But in independent filmmaking, it seems the ground shifts everyday. Right now the biggest shifting seems around marketing and distribution. There are some fine models being explored like how Robert Greenwald is distributing his documentary "Wal-Mart, the high cost of low price". I'll be hosting one of the over 7000 community screenings across the country this week. I think that is a great way to release one's work, and get the excitement and buzz going. And as a filmmaker, one is in charge of the distribution, in getting others on board, rather than waiting for a large distributor or cinema chain to say yea or nay. It seems the larger, business as usual models aren't in touch with what the viewer wants or needs. And either the system in place adapts or it becomes passe and is replaced by something that fits the here and now.

Funny how just the name of my documentary Why Get Married? is now starting to get me in touch with people I know from my past. Just a few days ago I got an email from a University friend I haven't seen since the late 70's. She'd been doing an internet search for a project she's writing, and found my website. The internet can make the world a more accessible place certainly. That call was a bright spot in my day for sure.