Blackbird Film Festival Recap (2021)

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I haven’t written a festival recap in over a year! I did write this blog post with highlights of our Q&A’s from Affliction’s virtual run; and I did write this twitter thread about the good side of my virtual fest experiences over the last year. But last weekend screening Game Brunch at Blackbird Film Festival was my first time screening in front of a live crowd since November 2019, so here I am back to recapping! (Thanks to vaccines!)

I don’t want this post to be too long because I feel like it could turn into a stream of consciousness about 2020 and the pandemic we’re still living in. Plus, I’ve talked about my love for Blackbird in my 2018 and 2019 recaps. So I’m just going to share the highlights of my 2021 experience under these pics from the weekend.

  • The festival was held in person from Thursday, June 17th through Sunday, the 20th, via outdoor tent screenings during the day and drive-in screenings at night. It then went virtual from the 21st through 30th. I really appreciate the festival sticking with an outdoor setting because of the concerns I expressed in my IndieWorks Update regarding venue staff safety, an ambiguous honor system in terms of being vaccinated/going maskless, and potentially more contagious variants. I also appreciate the fact that the fest chose to continue offering a virtual option as well, to give more attention to the films beyond the small group of people able to attend in person.

  • I attended with Kelsey, Dani (who acts in the film), and my husband Justin. Because it was being held at a beautiful lodge instead of at the typical university, we decided to make a real vacation out of it - spending time eating out (for the first time in over a year) and enjoying nature (also for the first time in a year), instead of binging films - as I tend to do at festivals. I loved the weekend for this reason, but it also meant I didn’t get to watch as many films and participate in filmmaker meetups as much as I would’ve liked. (Thankfully, I was able to make up for that via the virtual version over the last week. The program was very strong and thoughtful, as usual!)

  • We were able to attend the evening kick-off party and morning movie trivia and we had a blast with the trivia especially.

  • Screening in a tent was fun and felt comfortable for going maskless but also not ideal for picture and audio quality. A white tent kept it cool in the sun but also kept the room pretty bright, so “Game Brunch” didn’t look the way I’d hoped for the audience to see it. And the tent let some noise pollution in, which thankfully wasn’t traffic since we were in the woods - but there was music and chatter from people exploring the (cute but too close) craft fair the festival had also organized. So I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed. However, it was still so nice to be able to experience the film in front of an audience. It was not only my first time doing so in general in over a year, it was the first time seeing “Game Brunch” with strangers at all. I had forgotten how nerve-racking that experience is! But once people started laughing, I was loving it. There were 30 people there; it seemed to be primarily other filmmakers and their families. Considering the volume issues, it’s hard to say whether or not all the context leading to the punchline communicated, but the film got a lot of laughs in all the right places.

  • It wasn’t until I was standing up in front of everyone that I realized it had not only been a year since I last spoke live in front of a crowd, but it was my first time talking in person to even more than a handful of people at a time (and just a month a earlier, it had been a year since I spoke to literally anyone in person other than Justin)! So I was unsurprisingly anxious and realized while awkwardly introducing myself that I need to work on finding my public speaking groove again. (I had definitely grown comfortable in my zoom speaking & teaching zone, where I could be seated in lounge pants and surrounded by my cats and all the various beverages I could want.) Despite my initial unease though, the Q&A was nice. It was moderated by IndieWorks alum Stacey Maltin, who did a great job picking up on the nuances of each of the films. I look forward to finding my groove again and doing more speaking at other live festivals later this year.

  • I got a few nice comments about how amazing the cast chemistry was; and one guy told me it was exactly his type of humor and his favorite of the festival. Also, an elderly woman told me she didn’t understand my film but she thanked me for seeing my vision through - which was endearing and oddly sweet.

  • I was excited to experience my first drive-in but it unfortunately got rained out the night we planned to go. The festival was able to quickly pivot and secure a screening room inside the lodge to screen the night’s films, though. We ended up grabbing dinner while that was being organized, but it looked like a major success from their photos. Overall, the festival staff did a wonderful job making this strange year easing back in a success. They provided a lot of opportunities to safely connect with other filmmakers and experience other local artists through live music and things like the craft fair I mentioned. It was a lovely weekend “in the sticks” (as Upstate-born Justin would say).

  • This post was still pretty long - sorry!

-Christina

Local Vegan Treat:

  • Everything at Brix is delicious!

Catch the film next at:


Busy June for Game Brunch!

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You have three opportunities to see our short film “Game Brunch” this month: Blackbird Film Festival, Queens World Film Festival, and Chattanooga Film Festival!

  • First up is always fun Blackbird Film Festival in Cortland, NY, which is happening via drive-in & tent from June 17th through 20th, and then online the following week. “Game Brunch” is in the Making Friends block in both, which screens at 10am on Saturday the 19th in-person, and then available on demand in their virtual cinema all week.

  • Then our local favorite Queens World Film Festival kicks off on June 23rd and runs through July 3rd. It's also doing a hybrid model with simultaneous online and in-person screenings. “Game Brunch” is in the Horrible Happenings block, which screens virtually on July 1st at 9pm and then in-person on July 2nd at 9pm.

  • And finally Chattanooga Film Fest in Tennessee, which runs during that same window, June 24th through 29th and will be happening completely online. “Game Brunch” is in the CFF Salutes Your Shorts blocks.

Each fest has a different vibe with a variety of panels and extra events beyond the screenings, and have put our film in a different thematic block. Take your pick for which suits your interests best!

"Game Brunch" at Chattanooga Film Festival

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We’re excited to have “Game Brunch” as part of Chattanooga Film Festival this year! We’ve heard it’s a ton of fun to attend. And though they’re keeping it safe this year by only hosting a virtual version, we heard they were able to bring a lot of their fun in-person vibes to their 2020 virtual version; so we’re looking forward to experiencing that this year, from June 24th through 29th.

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IndieWorks 2021 Update

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August 21, 2022 update: Read the blurb at the bottom of this new post.

August 3, 2021 update: NYC announced a vaccination mandate today, which felt like a good prompt to update this post. Everything we original wrote below still holds true; however, we’re thinking our return in February no longer feels feasible. We were already second guessing that estimation as the delta variant and breakthrough cases were on the rise through July. And while this new mandate addresses our concerns about the reliability of an honor system, the potential for further mutations and continued breakthrough cases are still a major concern. We think it’s wisest to observe how the mandate affects infection and transmission rates indoors through the winter, and make an informed decision about our future in the spring. Fingers crossed things will look different by summer 2022!

Original post:

June is almost here, which means we’re at the one year mark of having IndieWorks on hiatus. Last June, we decided to skip our 8th year entirely because we didn’t feel we could accomplish our goals of facilitating conversation and connection amongst our peers and audiences through a virtual series, especially since we were only 3 months into living and working remotely and already experiencing zoom fatigue ourselves.

As of last week and the CDC's lifting of indoor mask requirements, NYC is now allowing individual businesses to decide how they'd like to approach masking and social distancing moving forward. We're seeing a lot of eagerness from patrons to get back out to business as usual. And we feel that desire too, to start socializing and celebrating independent film and artistic discussion in person again. However, we don't want to lose sight of all that we learned over the last year, nor do we want to pretend the pandemic is over when it is most definitely not. With over half a million people dead from COVID in the US alone, and hospitalization & case numbers still looking somewhat bleak in NYC and other highly populated cities, we'd rather be safe than sorry. Our team is vaccinated, but we understand that not everyone is for various reasons, and there's no real way to tell the difference; and the last thing we want to do is put the service workers in our venue at risk in a space where it's nearly impossible to have both a decent sized crowd for the screening films & filmmakers and a safely social-distanced environment. So instead of jumping right back in to our in-person monthly series, we will watch & learn from the once-per-year festivals that are choosing to ease back into live screenings over this summer and fall, while observing how the vaccine continues to hold up against potential variants, and while hopefully seeing cases dwindle. Then, when it feels right, we'll plan our return.

We also want to be cognizant of our team that runs IndieWorks, who screen submissions and organize each month as volunteers. Many of us have suffered losses in literal and figurative ways, and most of us work full-time and are still experiencing burnout from being asked to maintain (or even increase) productivity despite the various stresses of the past year. We've been discussing as a team what our individual bandwidths look like for a return and have been considering slowing down to possibly every other month, or even quarterly, so that we can maintain the care and quality of the work we put into the series without sacrificing our personal needs as humans and creators. We haven't decided exactly what may change when we're back, but we do know that our annual calendar will shift for sure (since we typically run from June through April). As of now, we're anticipating opening submissions back up in October, and having our first official screening back in February. We need to make some decisions as a team and discuss with our venue, of course. But that's the tentative plan. If 2020 taught us anything though, it's that plans change and sometimes we need to make big pivots or pauses in order to prioritize everyone's safety and well-being. And so, we remain flexible and cautiously optimistic, and will continue exploring ways to keep supporting our peers and the local indie film community in the meantime.

Wishing you all well through the rest of the year!

-the IndieWorks team