docublog

Detroit Windsor Film Festival

I just heard 1000 Journals is invited to screen at the Detroit Windsor International Film Festival, and they have wonderful plans for our screening: People in the audience will receive a small journal, decorated with an image from 1000 Journals on the back cover, so they can create their own front and fill the journal or pass it on.  I hope they send me one of these for our collection of "inspired by" pieces.

       

Here are the screening details:

       

Friday June 27, 2008, at 7:00 PM
            
            Law School Building - Theatre 3
            Wayne State University
            471 West Palmer Street
            Detroit, MI 48202
            map
       

       

Tickets are available online.

Best of Fest

In May, 1000 Journals screened one last time yesterday, at the Victory Theater in Burbank, California, in the series Best of Fest presented by Indie Express. Indie Express' Shane and Mark, this time without Kiyomi Emi, who had interviewed me during the AFI Fest, were setting up sound and projection, wine, cheese and fruit when I met them just prior to the screening in this fabulous and intimate space. It was my special joy and treat to find Pat in the audience. She had seen the film at the AFI Fest, sent me encouraging emails, alerted friends of our Burbank screening, and came in person… Thank you, Pat. Also attending was my friend and former neighbor Jimmy who was in town all the way from Thailand. Jimmy and Enrico were around at the very beginning, when I started to think and breathe 1000 Journals, and among the first to hear the ever developing storyline.

Jimmy and Pat...

... and Shane and Mark.

Adda Dada

One of the amazing discoveries in San Francisco is found-art collector and photographer Adda Dada, also known as Joseph Leonard. He came to and covered all our screenings, posted many photos on his Flickr-Page, and on the last day gave Someguy, Erin and me a framed photograph of the memorable return of Journal 270. Adda Dada allowed me to update our photos here with plenty of shots of audience, journal contributions, and wonderful memories of SFIFF51.

Delray Beach

Red-eye across the country, early morning arrival at Fort Lauderdale airport, and straight into the welcoming hands of Delray Beach Film Festival topper Michael Posner. A few hours later 1000 Journals was playing at the Public Library, where programmer Ginny Laird, who had come from Newport Beach, made sure everything went smoothly.

On the way out, a woman grabbed me and said, "Everyone wants to write a book. And with 1000 Journals, we can start by filling a page."

Ginny Laird, and NBFF print traffic mastermind Tom Nolan, who had come to Florida as well.

May First

On May 1st, 1000 Journals screened three times: once in Indianapolis, and twice at SFIFF. The first screening in San Francisco was exclusively for students and teachers, organized by Schools at the Festival program. Keith Zwölfer of the Film Society introduced the film and ran the Q+A's, and more kids got to see and add to the journals. An hour later, our last screening at SFIFF was underway…

KCBS Interview

Tim Etheridge, publicist at the San Francisco Film Festival, met Someguy and me at the KCBS studios just in time to get on the mid-day show of anchor Rebecca Corral. News, sports, traffic update, a few words from our sponsors, and in between, 1000 Journals… Great fun. Here's a link to the interview.      

      
Tim, and KCBS News Programming and Web Producer Connie Kim.       

       

Rebecca flips through Journal 526.

Journal 270 comes back

Just as last week in Indianapolis, during the Q+A session after the Monday night screening in San Francisco, another "missing" journal came back to life. It felt like the film continued seamlessly, from the "send the journal on" end credits sequence on the screen, to live-action in the cinema.

Erin, the keeper of Journal 270, emailed this a few days later:

"I'm glad I could have sent #270 back on its way and the other night seemed the perfect opportunity. I actually received the journal from Someguy himself back in 2001. I had initially given it to a dance friend of mine, with the concept that it would stay in the dance community traveling to different workshops all around the world. But I guess that didn't pan out, and he gave it back to me. Then I gave it to a friend of mine (Eman, who is mentioned on the site), who had some grand artistic scheme for it which never came through. Quite a bit later I dated him for a while and when we broke up I took the journal with me. I ended up moving back in with my parents for a couple of months and journal #270 sat in a box over there for several years. There were times when I considered digging the journal out and passing it on but after so many other journals got so lost I was afraid to let #270 suffer the same fate.

I haven't seen Someguy for several years but I heard about the documentary and knew I wanted to see it, so it seemed like a good time to send #270 on.

I currently work with children and families in San Francisco inner city, it's a pretty troubled population and can be very discouraging at times.  Before returning #270 I opened it up to have a last look at some of the things in there, and ran across the story and picture by Kahled, which is actually pretty precious to me. Kahled was one of the first youth I ever worked with when I was doing mostly creative writing tutoring in a middle school in the outer Richmond district of San Francisco.  Even though the job was only part time back then and the pay was totally crappy and I had no benefits, that was the first time I fell completely in love with my job. Although I didn't know it then, that period of my life was really the starting point of what I now see as my lifelong "career." I think I had assigned him to write about me and my dog being superheroes as a way to keep him quiet while other kids worked on their homework. Looking back at that story all of a sudden brought back for me all this nostalgia for a time when I was young, maybe a little green and anxious to make a difference in the world.  It reminded me of why I do what I do every day.

One of the hardest things about my job can be pouring your heart and soul into a young child, a teen or even a family, being there for them when they need you building a bond and then having to walk away when you take on a new position.  Kahled (who introduced me to Ramadan) and so many other youth who have touched my life are no longer in it, and each of those goodbyes have been extremely difficult. But in the end, just like with the journals you have to trust the work you've done while that person was in your life and send them on their way.

We can't hold on tightly to everything that is precious to us, be it a journal, a person or project you've worked closely on or sometimes even someone you've loved.  Letting go of things can be an act of faith (like I sure hope no one pastes over that story) and it can also be bittersweet, but clinging on to things prevents growth. And besides no one wants to be the crazy cat lady who collects everything!
That's my 2 cents."

Journal 270 was passed on that night to Anna Lis. She had interesting plans, but more on this as things develop. I'm hoping to receive the scans of Journal 270 to add them to this post…

SFIFF - Scoop du Jour

A few minutes prior to our Monday night screening at the SFIFF, the Scoop du Jour team of the festival caught up with Someguy and me for an interview...

I've seen Errol Morris' SOP at the Berlinale -- check it out if you can.

Jefferson High

A special treat and highlight of our time at the San Francisco International Film Festival was a visit at Jefferson High School in Daly City, organized by Joanne Parsont at the S.F. Film Society's program Schools at the Festival.

We spent a couple of hours with several classes of 9th graders, and their teacher Ericka Olson, who had seen 1000 Journals, and were asking Someguy and me a ton of questions. Then the real fun started: Someguy opened his box with journals and art supplies, and everyone had a go at it…

PS. A few weeks after the festival, I got an email from Paulina who wrote our visit inspired the students to start their own journal. She was hoping we could come back to see what they've done so far… Here's Paulina, adding a poem to Journal 526.

In the heat of the O.C.

I stuffed my backpack with  journals, postcards, and camera, and took a cab to Oakland airport to get on the morning flight to Long Beach, some 20 miles south of Los Angeles. From the cool of the Bay Area to a heatwave in Southern California, triple digits! The Newport Beach Film Festival picked me up on the curb, and off we went to the Fashion Island Mall, where filmmakers and film fans mingle with shoppers. Ginny Laird, Senior Programmer and our "mum" at the Newport fest, gave me the warmest welcome and introduced me all around, and then brought me to the Edwards Island cinema, to meet our composer Stuart Balcomb. Outside, waiting in the sun, was a long line queuing up behind a 1000 Journals sign. These people were great: it took a while to get them all out of the heat into the theater, but they waited patiently. I ran into Adrian Windsor, the Program Director of The Inside Edge, and several people who were at our early morning session on Wednesday at UC Irvine. And ever so briefly I chatted with the director of Cubefreak, Erika Speed, and Sweet Mike of the Delray Beach Film Festival. When we were about to start the film, the projectionists alerted us about a slight HD tech glitch and asked if I had a backup Digibeta on me... I did! It's one of these moments that makes you sweat bullets. At this point in the life of our film, I still think I can control a few things, for example, the quality of the projection. From my perspective, the switch from HD to Digibeta feels huge. I tried to talk myself through and out of this -- so many people watch films on their computers, even on their iPods, and what counts is the story. We tweak all these frames (in our case, 29.97 frames per second of film) to make them look perfect, but then we have to learn to give it up and trust the whole thing works. This was a good lesson for me. 1000 Journals is growing up.

After the packed screening and a great Q+A session: Ginny Laird, and Paul and Naomi's Sundance friends,  Ernest and Dimetria, with Journal 878.

Photo call for Stuart and me.