ATA’s 4th Annual Film & Video Festival kicks off next week and there will be free workshops and not-free film screenings during the fest. Best of all, we have a free pair of tickets to give away. So, leave a comment with your best story remotely surrounding independent film and if we like it, you’ll get the tickets.
In the event no one tells us a story, the first person to comment “I’ll take the tickets if no one enters the contest” will get ‘em.
Artists’ Television Access celebrates original, independent and underground film & video with the 4th ATA Film & Video Festival on October 21, 22 & 23, 2009.
The festival will begin, Wednesday October 21, with a free workshop on experimental film exhibition and distribution, hosted by local experimental filmmakers and distributors.
On Thursday and Friday, October 22 & 23, ATA will screen two programs of short films. Both programs offer unique representations of the myriad facets of life and feature the work of local talents including Paul Clipson, Kerry Laitala, and Tommy Becker, and international filmmakers such as Maarit Suomi-Väänänen, Chris Kennedy, Laida Lertxundi and Martha Colburn.
The screenings will be followed by musical performances and the announcement of ATA Audience Awards.
Video installations will be displayed in the ATA store front window all month long and in the gallery during the festival!
ATA is at 992 Valencia at 21st Street in San Francisco. Doors open at 7pm every night. Screenings start at 7:30pm. Tickets are $7-$10.For complete information, including interviews with filmmakers visit http://festival.atasite.org/2009
Two weeks ago at the Scary Cow film fest I met a dating coach who was in one of the films. I asked him about his work and he spun me a tale of how him and the other dating coaches “go out EVERY night”, laying waste to the women of San Francisco. Then he rode away on a motorcycle, a motorcycle powered by drunk Hi-fives.
The tickets, my good man.
2 words: heavy metal parking lot
A few years ago, my friend Colin (Kat knows him) and I went to see Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everyone Talkin’ About Him)? at the Roxy. There is a part in that documentary where John Lennon and Harry team up at a bar, get wasted on Brandy Alexanders and heckle the preforming band until they get kicked out. This is also the reason that Nilsson’s voice got ruined, but that’s a different story. Anyhow, now anytime Colin and I are out and he wants to get rowdy, he orders Brandy Alexanders (brandy and milk, gross, i know), and the bartenders always look at us like we are assholes.
I was about 13 when my dad took me to see the Al Pacino film “Cruising.” The Roxie was showing the movie and when we showed up there were people protesting the movie as it depicted gays as the hedonists they are not. So anyway, I had no idea what the movie was about, and my dad could not possibly have known just how detailed the depictions of gay night life was as he was an uptight postal worker from back east (yeah yeah, insert your joke about how my dad is gay here). Long story short, I had to sit through a scene where a guy gets fisted with an obscene amount of Crisco, not to mention other pretty hard core sex scenes, all while sitting next to my dad. Before that moment I thought gays were mythical creatures, not unlike the unicorn. Turns out there is a Santa Claus and he likes leather, sweat and cigarettes. Not really sure if it was more awkward for him, me or the fact that I’m telling this story on the internet.
A year or so ago I submitted this film at one of the ATA open screenings. I couldn’t make it to the screening till after it showed ’cause of work & stuff, but when I showed up all my friends told me that everyone booed my movie. None of them ever backed down and told me otherwise, so I have no reason not to believe them.
Not too long ago I met a bum selling a mask that’s pretty much an exact duplicate of the one in the movie. I bought it. Now that I have two I think I’m going make a sequel called “The Ghost II.” It will feature two guys showering and two “ghosts.”
I’m gonna use the name “vlarney” and let me make sure you know I still respect the guy even though we haven’t talked in a long time.
So I busted my ass to go thru animation school, 3 years in canada. I’m american. I can’t work there.
My friend vlarney from school says, hey, come live on my mom’s farm and we’ll make a TV pilot for a comedy show starring me, my brother, my country friend and my girlfriend. We do it for 3 months. It’s a fucking blast. I get to finish my student film and swim in pools in canadian resort country, eat farm eggs and shoot guns. We have no money but that’s OK. The comedy sketches make no sense which is their strength- stuff like a farmer who shoots santa claus out of the sky because he thinks it’s a commie spy satellite.
I go home to my nowhere bumfuck town and don’t have a job or know anyone in the business here. I’m living in a rooming house with a garbage man, his pot dealer brother, and an alcoholic cougar who all watch porn and fox news together. I work at a gas station and 2 other places to save a few grand and put on a show. It’s vlarney’s stuff and some “low brow art” and rock and roll, stuff that a hick town doesn’t deserve, naturally I lose a few grand. What are you going to do when you live nowehere, wait for pixar to come knocking?
A few months later vlarney calls me and says hey, we’re making the show for real now. Quit your job and move up here. How do I get paid I ask him, am I gonna live in a tent? We have “sponsors” he says, they’re gonna let me pay you a few hundred a week, bare bones but you’ll love it right?
I do it and 6 months later I’m home with a check for total $300 I think. And nothing else but a ball gag. Vlarney negelected to tell me they were still “pitching” the sponsors and the only one they got was a porn store who paid us $500 and ball gags to feature them in a comedy sketch.
Canada kicked me out too… expired student visa.
Since I don’t get along with the parents this means I’m homeless for a little bit. I also have an apartment deposit which leaves me $700 to spend on a beater van or a new place. I get the van. Sleeping in a van in dead winter up north is no fun let me tell you. And the cops are dicks if they catch you.
Back to vlarney. Of course I can’t blame someone else for my failure to make sure he actually had money… fact is I woulda quit my shit job and gone anyways. Having his brother, girlfriend, and best friend who normally saws wood for a living write the show was the dealbreaker however. You should have seen the screaming arguments. The 3 month pilot was cool and looked like it might get better, but this got worse. 6 episodes I wouldn’t watch, sadly. But hey he got them made, right? They were on TV. He didn’t just talk. He got a functioning studio together. It’s still there.
How did we get by for 6 months you ask. Well besides the people I mentioned there was a rotating cast of school people and friends he wrangled into joining until they got sick of it and so a show was made. Now, 8-12 people took some feeding. There were farm eggs, but we were all crashing in furnace rooms and illegally inside an office studio space that vlarney got donated from a real estate company for cost of utilities, cuase they couldn’t rent it and it was wasted space. I gotta say that sleeping in a bunk bed in a closet with forklifts grinding on the other side of a few sheets of drywall is not good sleep. Vlarney’s dad installed plumbing and a sink- we had a fridge- a hot plate- but no shower. (Used the sink.)
Vlarney’s dad was a crazy american who moved to canada to be a backwoods surviving, no-brakes truck driving farmer who built his own house and funded everyone by being a super talented cabinetmaker and all around whiskey swilling frontier pioneer.
Back in school vlarney had told me about going out dumpster diving with his dad and their ancient frankenvan that had all the parts on it replaced for about 3 generations. I took this idea and ran with it. I started diving every grocery store and warehouse in that little backwoods canadian city and soon we were up to our ears in food. There was a lay’s chips factory a mile away. One day I borrowed that old van and brought it back with the entire cargo space filled up to the window with crates of lay’s BBQ chips. Hundreds and hudnreds of bags. Man those got old. Vlarney wouldn’t let me serve them at the show’s premiere party when the mayor came. My favorite hauls were when these little town grocery stores emptied the specialty goods- stuff like delicious soy milk and vegetarian products. Ice cream, sometimes- still frozen, kept well up north. It was all sealed and only just expired so we feasted well.
The whole experience helped me get an animation job later, working on stuff for disney and mtv, after I got back to the US and lived super poor for a while. I also started a seperate business by dumpster diving salvage from wasteful corporations and college kids.
One day I decided I was sick of the northeast and my mad max survival skills would let me get by in san francisco, and they did so here I am. I work at home self employed and am now using it to fund personal creative work, my new cartoon is due in december. Gotta call vlarney one of these days.
Okay, we can all agree that Pat just won the tickets, right?
detail- apartment deposit I mentioned after that 6 month stretch- it was from the rooming house with the trashman, pot dealer and the alcoholic cougar. I have more stories like this, don’t know if anyone cares.
Thanks, you guys are awesome and have a happy reader! Looking forward to the festival.