Returning From VisionFEST

Hey everyone, it's almost 4am and I'm finally unwinding from all the festivities that just happened a few hours ago.

I'm literally falling asleep at the keyboard (occupational hazard #23) so I'll make this one short.

So once again...a big thanks to Sean Hood for the invites. His film Melancholy Baby closed the night, which is fitting for the best in show. Nice work, Sean! Also thanks to Filmmakers Alliance for putting together such a fun ****ing night.

Kevin Smith was cool as always, he was honored with this years vision award. The man is a phenomenal public speaker. Kept me entertained through out his entire speech, which lasted about 20 minutes.

I'm also going to say that during the screenings, I feel asleep twice. There was only about 3 that I really enjoyed. There was this film, I can't remember the name and I'm too lazy to reach for a program...but it was ten minutes of WTF? I can't even tell you what it was about because there was no narrative and sound for that matter. Ugh! I get the whole independent artist thing, ya know? You can be obscure for the sake of art because, I guess it's cool. But geez, this film was really dumb and way too pretentious for it's own good. UPDATE: The name of that film was Removal.

Films selected for screening:
Too Loud A Solitude by Genevieve Anderson (might of been asleep???)
Birthmark by David Woods (it was okay)
Putting A Cigarette Out With Your Feet by Carlo Pangalangan (funny)
A Nice Day For An Earthquake by Antony Berrios (so-so)
Removal by Donal Foreman (wtf!)
Dada by Brad Jones (funny)
Conflicted by Beth Dewey (wtf!)
Melancholy Baby by Sean Hood (great)

The best part of the evening, of course, had to be the after party in the DGA lobby. Free food, booze and a ton of beautiful women to gawk at. Ahhhh, great night!

On a side note: I ran into some familiar faces tonight and let's just say, I'm glad I re-connected with them.

Tags:sean hood, visionfest, 2008, kevin smith, awards show, dga, directors, promo, filmmakers aliance, mike figgis, terry gilliam, wim wenders, allison anders, alexander payne, david o. russell, werner herzog, john darko, coverege, events, director's guild, melancholy baby, after party, gala, fun night