BU Production I Screening May 7

Three selected films from my section of Production I at Boston University will be screening their final projects along with twelve other films from the course on Monday, May 7. It's always amazing to me how students go from basically zero knowledge of filmmaking to being able to direct, shoot, and edit their own short fiction films in a matter of months.

The screening is at the George Sherman Union auditorium, 775 Commonwealth Auditorium, at 7pm on May 7, and is open to the public.

RIP Amos Vogel

I was at the Balagan screening of The Castle by Massimo D'Anolfi and Martina Parenti last night (a good film, though I think the concept might have been more consistently adhered to through the piece), and programmer Jeff Silva shared the news that Amos Vogel had just died at age 91.

Vogel, a native of Vienna who fled from the Nazis in 1938, was one of the leading figures in avant-garde cinema.  He founded the influential Cinema 16 film club in 1947 to screen "films you cannot see elsewhere," and co-founded the New York Film Festival.  Jeff mentioned that Vogel's curating work was one of the big inspirations for the Balagan series.

He also wrote the best-selling book Film as a Subversive Art, which I still enjoy 20 years after Juan Mandelbaum gave me a copy upon leaving my first job at WGBH-TV.  And I hear that he also wrote a children's book called How Little Lori Visited Times Square, illustrated by Maurice Sendak.  I'll have to check that one out.

Earth Day Sneak Previews

My Louisiana Love, a film I co-produced and edited with Sharon Linezo Hong and Monique Verdin, is seeing its first audiences at two sneak previews in association with Earth Day.  The first is at the Environmental Film Festival at Earth Day Mobile Bay at Fairhope Pier in Mobile, Alabama on Sunday, April 22.  The second is at Loyola University at 7:30pm on Monday, April 23.

Hear an interview by reporter Ben Kreimer with Monique and Sharon here, or another interview with Monique on the Bridge the Gulf website.