Paris, lqnd of screzed up typezriters qnd keyboqrds% zell, qfter eight missed/rescheduled flights (including three yesterday, Tuesday), I got here with the < fingers making quote marks>finished< no more quote marks> version of the film, now officially titled, Souvenir November 2001. Dropped the screening copies off at Cannes Festival offices and the Director's Fortnight. Tomorrow morning I'll take the third copy to the Critic's Week competition; Qs you may know, the Cannes Festival is paralleled by two other events/series, Festival de Cannes being the most easily recognized. For a sense of the odds/competition, there are about 900 films in the pool for Cannes, most of which also submit to the other two competitions. (The others have about the same, I guess, but with some longer films as well; "short film" = <15 min. for Cannes, <60 min for the others. Academy Award category is cut off at 40 min.)
There's a whole story in the final final editing and outputting to video crisis, which will probably only interest someone who gets stuck with the same technical glitches we faced and is trying to overcome them. That tutorial can wait until I get back to a regular keyboard. Suffice it to say, Jonah the editor/DP rocked. rocks. we've still got some audio/music issues to iron out, but those can wait a few days. The last week has been like Groundhog Day, excruciating repetition of the exact same activities until we got it right. And the movie? I think it may not be half bad; there certainly are some really good moments, visually, aurally, or idea/emotionally. Someone else will have to say if it actually succeeds, though. Maybe if there was a big gathering of film experts somewhere, they could tell me...
I plan on falling asleep somewhere in the 3-hour screening of Atanarjuat, the first Inuit-language film, which is an epic masterpiece, apparently (and which was awarded the Camera d'Or for best first feature at last year's Cannes). I'd downloaded their press kit a couple of weeks ago to use as a model for ours. It doesn't open in the US for another three months, and i (obviously) missed it at last weeks' New Directors/New Films in NYC.
