Reelworld Networking Night #1

I had the pleasure of attending Reelworld Film Festival's 1st of it's monthly networking series at Harlem Restaurant in Toronto. It's a great idea to get people out on a regular basis and hopefully connect people that can create future works for the festival. Tonya Lee Williams the founder of the Reelworld Film Festival was on hand to launch the monthly event. Each networking evening will feature an artist that will talk about their experiences. The first artist was Music Video director RT who has worked on many of the big Hip Hop artists music videos and has been nominated for MMVA awards. Some of his clients include Cardinal Offishal and Danny Fernandes. He spoke about living life and looking at things differently through the lens of a camera. Something I can relate to. The networking evenings will be held on the 3rd wednesday of each month at Harlem restaurant so I hope you can check it out next month.

Some filmmaker friends in attendance were the talented Charles Officer and Ada Wong and also there to support was filmmaker Suds Sutherland. I met Charles Officer at Reelworld many years ago and run into him every now and then at Reelworld and other festivals and events around town. He is a beautiful man who I am happy to see get some great attention paid to his film Nurse, Fighter, Boy. Although I haven't had a chance to see it yet I hope to see it on DVD soon.

Support Filmmakers and these events and they will return the favour by providing you with some great entertainment in the future.

Worldwide Short Film Festival Wrap Up

Well it's a bit late but this is my quick wrap up of the Worldwide Short Festival. The festival wrapped up last week and this year seemed to be a very successful year even with the recession people still submitted their short films...myself included. They received 3900 festival submissions this year. That's a lot of short films to watch. I wasn't able to see as many films as I would have liked so I won't review them but I can tell you that a couple of films that stuck out for me on opening night were First Floor because of the masterful technical work. It was beautifully shot and the technical expertise of the shots was amazing. On the opposite end was a heart tugging film called Gone Fishing with a surprise ending that was truly sad and heartwarming. I also got to see the celebrity shorts program and saw the legendary Lauren Bacall who is still beautifully graceful.

The fun part of the festival for me was the Opening Nicht Party at C Lounge. I looked around the lovely patio on a warm summer night and realized how connected the film festival industry is and how many people it takes to support the industry. I was a volunteer a few years ago for the festival and I realized how many people I met through the festival over the couple of years that I volunteered. I had the great job of volunteering at the symposiums one year and met so many great industry people at that time who I have run into at many festivals over the years. One of the people I met at the symposiums when I was a volunteer was Jamie White from the Colorado Film Foundation who remembered me from when I was a volunteer and then on to the World of Comedy Film Festival. It was great to chat with him at the fun Quebec Party. I also met Shane Smith who now programmes for Sundance and also works for Spafax but he was the Executive Director of the Worldwide Short Film Festival when i was a volunteer. I met so many great people while volunteering way before I even thought of becoming a filmmaker myself but I am happy to say that I was inspired and learned a lot from volunteering at film festivals and I know I wouldn't be making films now if it wasn't for the experience I got while I was a volunteer.

The wrap up of the festival was the Awards BBQ at the Canadian Film Centre. It was a glorious and sunny beautiful day at the film centre and some lucky filmmakers were awarded some amazing prizes for their work but I think more than the awards I think they made a lot of friends and future connections at the festival so I know that it will generate more fabulous work in the future. Although my films weren't accepted into the festival this year I will keep trying to submit films because it is a great festival with lots of opportunities for Short Filmmakers.

I hope to attend as a filmmaker next year.. and hope to say I went from a volunteer to a filmmaker at the festival one day.

Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett are gone

I wanted to post some thoughts about the passing of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. I will start with Farrah Fawcett. She was a beautiful woman that inspired many hairdos of classmates of mine when I was in high school. Sadly my hair wasn't long enough to do the Farrah Flip. She lived her life with grace and left her life with the same grace. She had the courage during her illness to decided to document her journey through Cancer treatments and I hope that her documentary will help others going through the same terrible disease. She was very strong and had a great attitude and I am sure will be missed by many people. I hope she is in a better place where there is no Cancer or pain. Her spirit will be remembered.

Michael Jackson, I first remember Michael whenI was a kid.. he is only a couple of years older than me so I remember when he was with the Jackson 5 and appeared on the Ed Sullivan show with his brothers. The show immediately caught my attention and I was only a kid but I remember how amazing Michael was and I thought he seemed so professional and amazing at such a young age. I thought he was so cute and talented. I wish Michael had stayed the way god had made him because I think he may have had a different life if he could have accepted himself the way he was. He influenced generations of musicians, Usher, JT and a host of other talented artists were inspired by him. He has a huge fan base around the world and appealed to so many different people. People have been saying that he is on the same level as Elvis was and I think he may have been the King of our generation.
I hope is soul is happy and settled now and if there is a heaven I hope that he is making music in heaven.

It's sad that he wasn't able to do his final shows in London but I think he also went out the way he entered ....With a Huge and Surprising Entrance and Exit the way a showman would.

My heart goes out to his family which is large and close and I am sure are all mourning the loss of Michael. I wish them peace and love.

They will be missed and are both truly loved.

Code Revival and Simeon Ross shows

Last week I had 2 shows I wanted to go and check out because I wanted to support the 2 artists that appear on my latest film Homeless Yoga. Kind of tricky trying to be in 2 places at once though.

First I went to Supermarket in Kensington Market...a bar not a grocery store.... to check out Code Revival. It was a charity event for Eva's Initiative. I ran into my Reelworld film festival friend Sasha Stoltz who was doing the publicity for the event so she introduced me to the other artist playing that night. Matt Black opened doing a solo show and then Code Revival took the stage playing tunes from their new CD Moments in Motion. It was great to see them live again and I now support them 100% because they helped me finish my film with their great music. After Code Revival was Sean Jones who looked familiar but I couldn't figure out why until I found out he used to be in In Essence. He is now doing a solo album/tour with some heavier rock music. He has a great voice and is very charming so I think he will do very well as a solo artist.
So as usual I took a few pics of the event so check them out.

After Supermarket I headed over to the Drake to try and catch Simeon Ross. Unfortunately I missed his show but got to say hi at least. I will go see him at Neutral lounge at NXNE on June 20th.. so come check him out. He also has a new CD so check it out.

TTC shoot wrapped

I finally wrapped the TTC shoot "Rudeness doesn't discriminate" for Tuff

It was a Crazy Train with my cast/crew on board the TTC yesterday.. We had the TTC supervisor laughing all the way. This shoot got rescheduled 3 times.. I was almost ready to scrap it so I am glad we finally did it with a little help from Jonathan another producer that assisted with the insurance so we could do the shoot.

Here's a look at some pics from the set...or should i say TTC subway train.