Zach here. Last Saturday was the hometown premiere of Bummer Summer. It happened to fall right in the middle of the afternoon on one of the nicest days of the year thus far, so I’m impressed that anyone showed up at all. The theater told me that they counted a bit over 100 attendees, and indeed as I stumbled through one of my clumsiest, most at-a-loss-for-words introductions ever, I was humbled seeing the turnout from up front. And then this played:

It was the world premiere of the newest and full-bodiedest trailer for Fresh Starts 4 Stale People, and it was weird.

And then the movie played. In a way, this was the audience that had caused me the most anxiety. It wasn’t just a festival crowd, a mass of anonymous faces. Almost everyone there was either family, a friend, or associated with at least one of the two. They weren’t necessarily “film people”, either. They weren’t there to say “oh, how very reminiscent of so-and-so that scene was” or, “what an interesting reference to such-and-such, I wonder if it was intentional.” They were there to see a movie, not unlike Hot Tub Time Macine (which played later that night), and to see what this guy they knew had been investing all of his time and Facebook activity into. My closest friends from way back were there, people who had been around throughout the entire production, and yet they really had no idea what to expect and I was sure that if they didn’t like it then they wouldn’t want to be friends with me anymore.

I didn’t stay to watch the movie, but I did spend almost the entire time putzing around the lobby with the exception of a brief lemonade-inspired trip to a cafe across the street. At around the 35 minute mark, I listened in on a scene that’s generally pretty useful for feeling out the audience. I was surprised, it was the loudest, most enthusiastic reaction to the scene I’d ever heard. There were cackles and guffaws. I even heard a single, stray clap, which warmed my heart.

What I’ve been getting at, in a very roundabout way, is that the screening went well. Not to cheese-out or anything, but I was reminded of a beautiful, prophetic Truffaut quotation that I found on someone’s Myspace profile last year while screwing around on the internet in lieu of pre-producing my movie:

“The film of tomorrow appears to me as even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession, or a diary. The young filmmakers will express themselves in the first person and will relate what has happened to them: it may be the story of their first love or their most recent; of their political awakening; the story of a trip, a sickness, their military service, their marriage, their last vacation…and it will be enjoyable because it will be true and new…The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure. The film of tomorrow will resemble the person who made it, and the number of spectators will be proportional to the number of friends the director has. The film of tomorrow will be an act of love.”

Finally, the Kickstarter page for my new movie has come to a sort of a standstill as of late. The big thirty-day push is coming up fast. Please help spread the word! E-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Tumblr, telemarketing, whatever… It all helps.

Nandan here. I just realized you are all probably wanted an explanation for Rob’s post below.

Here’s me tying his tie for him:

Zach here. Do you remember when Bummer Summer screened at that festival in Athens, OH about three weeks ago? Me too.

Well, I just found out via e-mail that we won third place. I don’t think it’s very commonplace for festivals to award a first, second, and third place. But since we won it, I’m glad that this festival did. I wonder how many other third places we may have won and not even known it? Or fourth places? Or seventh? Seventh place is what I scored in the local skateboard contest in 2003 I think it was.

After the previous post, you may also be wondering why the blog seems to have been hijacked by a fucking nutcase. You wouldn’t be the only one. Thank heavens tomorrow is casual Friday.

Hey there.

Rob here.

I just wanted to beat Zach to the punch by posting this brand new photograph of me wearing a tie.

Zach here. Something like three weeks ago I mentioned impending news of yet another festival screening, as well as a hometown premiere. Let’s tackle the latter first.

That’s the trailer for the hometown premiere in question. It’s really just the regular trailer with a series of sweet looking title cards at the end dishing out the details. If you’re in the Pacific NW, come to the Capitol Theater in downtown Olympia on Saturday July 3rd to see the movie. It starts at 3:00pm, but the doors open at 2:30 and you’d better believe that you’ll need to get there early if you want to get a good seat. I’m pretty excited/nervous about this one. A lot of the people that’ll be coming know me from way back, but they don’t necessarily know me as the artsy, cinephilic type (more likely as the down-n-dirty homeboy) and I’m not sure if everyone knows quite what to expect. At the same time, I know that a lot of the kids ’round here are excited, and will bring the good vibes no matter what I screen. I love them for that.

And now for our next festival:

Nice poster, right? I feel that it’s pretty dead in line with the tone of Bummer Summer, so everything should go over great.

But really, I’m so super psyched to go back to New York to screen the movie there. In a way, it’s almost like another hometown premiere. And to make things even spicier, our old friends the prom king and queen of Cinequest will be screening their masterpiece Gabi on the Roof in July on opening night! Meanwhile, we didn’t get such bad screening times ourselves. You can check out all of the details here. The venues, while modern and plush, are also ridiculously tiny. If you want to come see the film, pre-ordering tickets will almost certainly be a must.

And that’s all from me for now. Because I’ve got work in the morning and I have to be up like thirty extra minutes early just to figure out how to put my tie on. Check back in a few days and maybe I’ll have posted a photo of myself wearing a tie. Rare treat.

Nandan here. Last week I went to Athens, Ohio. We were accepted into the Athens Film and Video Festival, and when I told the festival director Ruth Bradley that I would come out for the screening, she offered to fly me out for the festival. I couldn’t help but doubt that it could possibly be financially savvy of them to offer this to me, but I was more than happy to accept the invite and come out. I think I had had a good impression of Athens as a town, but not one that was in any way defined. My new impression: Awesome.

Athens was really a beautiful town. First of all, the state is gorgeous, at least the drive from Cincinnati where I flew in, to Athens. I stayed with a few couchsurfers, Lauren, Damian, Trevor, and five other kids that lived with them who I either never met or met too briefly to remember names (although they seemed like people worth remembering). I think I had had a good impression of kids that would be living in Athens, but not one that was in any way defined. My new impression of kids living in Athens: Awesome.

The festival looked like this:

We had one screening, to which people actually came, which is always exciting. While in comparison to other screenings this one was fairly intimate, it’s still weird to me that anyone would read the description and want to come see the film. Not that the description’s bad, I just can’t feel anything towards it. It’s weird how my feelings about the film are slowly become more and more based on how others react. I mean , during and after we shot and edited the film I knew quite consciously that I was not able to watch it as an actual film and doubted that I ever would be able to. It was therefore impossible to form an opinion about it as a film from watching it. I see a collection of scenes that have a long history of memories. But as I hear from more and more people how they reacted to the film, my opinion slowly becomes more and more just what they tell me. I didn’t intend to get into that at all, but I’m excited to see how my thoughts on this sit in relation to Zach’s thoughts below. I’m not excited to see how self-absorbed these thoughts are in relation to the world.

After our film we saw a locally-made film called Skatopia. Which was a documentary about a super-insane skate-haven, and the atmosphere in the crowd was super-appropriate. One of the kids that introduced the film was throwing up in the back rows after the credits rolled.

P.S. I’m hyped about the projects we have coming up in the next year. Especially the Bummer Summer sequel.

Zach here, apologetically, because I just spent ten days at a world-class film festival on another continent without so much as a thought about blogging. To make up for it, I’ll try to recount my experience with a little bit of detail, rather than just mentioning that I went.

I took this super-risque self portrait yesterday as I scrambled to get dressed and pack my bags before the hotel’s noon checkout. It’s a picture of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The cool arch-y building is the Abasto shopping center, home to the festival’s main venue – a Hoyts multiplex. I got into town last Friday morning. I was expecting temperatures in the mid to upper fifties, and had thus packed accordingly with a fresh assortment of flannels and sweaters. Wrong. It was stupid hot and muggy out when I arrived and I was dying because of it. I spent the first half of the day overwhelmed, and the second half in some weird nostalgic/meditative state on account of all the city’s sights, sounds, and extra-sensory sensations that I hadn’t experienced in two years. It was a trip.

The most frustrating part about the festival is also what makes it so cool. It’s a super popular event in the city, and a lot of screenings are almost impossible to get tickets to. Just because you have a really cool customized badge…

…doesn’t mean that you can just waltz into any screening. You have to pick up tickets in advance, you are only allowed two free tickets per day, and your free tickets must be for a screening on the day you get them. The festival treats its filmmakers real well (I mean, they flew me there), but the movies are for the public first and foremost. I quickly gave up on seeing the most hyped stuff and developed a day by day strategy in which anytime I felt like seeing a movie I would just open the program and see what sounded good that wasn’t sold out. It led to some solid finds, like the first thing I saw. It was called Do It Again. It’s a documentary about a guy trying to re-unite The Kinks. I really liked it.

Sometimes I abandoned this strategy when hyped movies sounded too good to miss. After failing at a third and final attempt to score tickets to the Argentine documentary El Ambulante, I was feeling glum. Super friendly programmer Leandro approached to see what the matter was. When I told him, he arranged to meet me outside the theater later that night and personally escort me inside to see the movie. And the movie was great. It’s about a guy who travels from village to village in the most beat car ever making films on a VHS camera starring all of the townspeople.

I didn’t really feel like I was in festival mode until Tuesday, which was composed of three screenings, a dinner, and a party. First was the Portuguese film A religiosa portuguesa by New York born expatriate Eugene Green. There’s plenty to be said about the movie but I’m not feeling up to it. But I will give it a thumbs up, even if for nothing other than stylistic audacity. Next was the hotly anticipated Go Get Some Rosemary by the world famous celebrity brothers Josh and Benny Safdie. I really liked it. I had written to them a couple of weeks back to see if they would be attending the festival and never received a reply. However, as I approached them after the screening they asked if I was Zach (which I was) and were apparently well aware of my e-mail and its contents. Nice guys, but I’m like 83% sure that they switched their names around for fun when introducing themselves. [NOTE: I've since learned that the names they gave me were correct, which is a relief.] After that came a dinner for the filmmakers in competition. Delicious, but I felt a little out of my league with all of these people who already seemed vaguely acquainted because their films had screened together at either Toronto or Berlin. “Any of you guys check out Cinequest this year? No? Oh…” Dinner was followed up by a wine-drunk cab ride to the main venue with the aforementioned Safdie bros. during which I explained to them what Lady Gaga was. Apparently everyone is under a rock over there in Cannes or Sundance or wherever. Then I saw Somos Nosotros by what seems to be my Argentine counterpart, the superyoung skater/filmmaker Mariano Blanco. The movie was choice, I was very impressed. The night ended with an underwhelming party at the festival headquarters.

Wednesday was the first screening of Bummer Summer at 23:15. I arrived about ten minutes prior with my interpreter (yes, my interpreter) to a pleasant surprise, the movie was sold out. After a fine, eloquent introduction by festival director Sergio Wolfe, I gave my own brief fumbling intro in Spanish in an attempt to appeal to the audience. I think it worked. A ton of people didn’t stay for the Q&A, but I chalked that up to it being so late. The questions were pretty standard issue. Overall it was a so-so screening. Here’s a picture of the theater, just imagine it full.

The next night was our second screening and it was just about the same. Both nights people came up to me afterward with Simpsons-related questions, which I think is worth mentioning. At this point I kind of lose track of the days and what I saw.

On Saturday afternoon I saw what I’m going to name my favorite movie out of all that I saw: I Went to the Zoo the Other Day, a 68-minute narrative/documentary/experimental fusion by Toronto-based nice guy Luo Li. Congratulations, Luo. Later that night was Bummer Summer’s third and final screening. Interesting note, my introduction that night was by a programmer named Diego. I spoke briefly with Diego beforehand and he told me that there had been some debate about whether or not to actually include the film in the international competition. Apparently some programmers were hesitant to include a third US movie. He told me that he had fought to include it. Wow, thank you Diego. The screening itself was by far the best – sold out, seemingly enthusiastic crowd, my old host-family in the audience, unprecedented Q&A attendance, and my favorite question asked. Thanks (or no thanks) to the festival guide, there had been a whole lot of comparisons being drawn between my film and early Jarmusch. Someone in the audience raised their hand to ask me what I thought of that. Good question, I think I answered well too. Later on was the closing night party. I had been looking forward to getting my socialize on, but the music was blaring and I left before long in exchange for good company in a quieter bar. Oh yeah, the party looked like this:

So anyway, I had a really solid time. It was amazing to go back and revisit the city and some of the people I met there (including one with whom I’m totally in love, not to get too personal). We got some nice reviews, the nicest of which you can read here, here, and here. It was also a great opportunity to meditate on and make a few contacts for my next project, which I’ll now officially blog publicize: here it is.

Finally, and long overdue, I’d like to announce a screening of Bummer Summer that will take place IN EIGHT DAYS on Wednesday, April 28 at 10:00pm, conveniently located at the Athena Cinema in downtown Athens, OH. For more information about the screening and about the festival in general, check out http://www.athensfest.org.