From Brenda Flora in New Orleans:
Venue: Zeitgeist Multi-disciplinary Arts Center
Screening time: 2-5pm
Inspection time: 11am - 1pm
Audience: 11
People bringing film: 3
8mm: 6, Super 8: 5, 16mm: 5
Volunteers: Brenda Flora, Ian Wood, Yvonne Loiselle, Joshua Smith
Press: Blurb in local free paper, alternative events website, radio events calendar, venue website
We didn’t have a huge crowd, but I don’t feel too bad about it since we were competing with the Jazz and Heritage Blues and BBQ Festival (Buddy Guy played for free!), Steam Train Festival, Land of Nod Experiment Music Festival, and October Fest - all of which were free - plus it was the first bearably cool Saturday of the summer. Keeping that in mind, I think we did okay with 11 people in attendance.
We had way more films than last year, and didn’t get a chance to get through the boxes and boxes that were brought. Hopefully attendees will return with them next year!
The highlight was the 8mm films an attendee’s father filmed while in the Navy. He had a lot of interesting footage from all over the world, but the most interesting reel was the one depicting the Navy hazing ritual that happens when they cross the equator for the first time. Lots of crawling and spanking, a man dressed as King Neptune whose tummy the men must kiss, stockades, and something that looked sort of like a pool of urine the must jump into. It made me want to learn more about the ritual, and made our attendee want to speak to her father about it.
We also had 4 films that were shot this year on Super 8 by two different attendees. Yay!! Super 8 lives on!!