Friday, March 09, 2007

DC Indie Film Festival impressions and thoughts

This past Monday March 5th we were in DC; participating in the DC Indie Film Festival with our documentary on spirituality of twenty-somethings, Case for X. It was awesome to get into the festival that received 2400 submissions and only accepted 139- a totally God-thing the way I see it!

First of all, when we came in and met the director of the festival, she greeted us in a very excited way- "OH, YOU are the CASE for X!".
Then she turned to her team and said, "They are the ones who made this.. this.. SPIRITUAL FILM!" (I personally kind of like this description) Then she proceeded to tell us that atheists usually send films, and oh, don't forget the abandance of porno films, but never did they get a spiritual film like this before. So, Case for X brought them luck and helped them to erase the impressions from the bad porno submissions (Happy to hear that even though I was never greeted in this way before :)) So, they created a category to include our film and named it Looking for Answers. Our film screened first , followed by a documentary on the power of art an drawing; a short film on death and childhood, a documentary on living in the desert; a couple of shorts; and yet another documentary on the outer-space.
Our team concluded that the answers are not in outer-space so do not even bother looking.

The response and questions we got after the screening were very positive, mainly from the people of various faiths or no faiths at all (the place was not swirming with Christians as you can imagine).

Director of Jewish spiritual life from one of the local universities said he saw the description of the film and came because of it. He wanted to know why we chose Christianity to cover this topic of spirituality of two generations and appreciated our honesty when we told him why- (I had to admit my bias and the fact that my true alliance is with Christ- cover blown! :) oh well)

Another filmmaker from TX told us we are doing the most important thing we could be in our lives, and that he felt inspired by us.

WE also had the opportunity to share with the audience and the festival stuff about our next project, SERVE the CITY HD reality series and received a positive response from the crowd.

Overall, the festival environment was interesting and different. Keither Southerland is premering a feature film he is staring in this Sunday as a conclusion for the festival. So we figured, if Jack is on our side, what else do we need?

Seriously, please stay tuned to more updates from Current Pictures! Less than 100 days left till our departure to Brussels

P.S.
hey team before you and I forgot all the cool things that happened this week- and what God did, read this and reply! Add your impressions of the festival in the comments section :)


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great news!
This is what we as Christ-followers, especially those of us who use the media to communicate, need to be about. Stephen and Masha, you're speaking into a culture that doesn't understand the traditional language (Christianese). Because you used their lingo, they understood.
The best news is, now you can sit back and continue to watch God do His thing.
norm

Anonymous said...

Praise God! He is working! I'm so excited to hear what happened at the festival. I have to agree with the Texan, yall are doing something great for God in an area of our culture in desperate need for truth. People are searching for Truth - give them what they want! They want Jesus, they just don't know it yet.

ben clay said...

This festival was absolutely amazing! Being the first Christian film in this festival is like the door has been opened and there is flashing lights and beacons all around it saying come through this door pssst over here!!!
I can't even begin to imagine what God will do next!