Keepers of Tradition exhibit

The National Heritage Museum in Lexington, MA, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council open a major exhibition called "Keepers of Tradition: Art and Folk Heritage in Massachusetts" on May 18, 2008. The exhibition will feature over 100 works by 70 Massachusetts artists who preserve and revitalize deeply rooted traditions. We'll see everything from Native American basketry to Yankee wooden boats, Armenian lace, Chinese seals, Puerto Rican santos, and Irish music and dance.

A clip from my documentary "Monkey Dance" will be shown in a kiosk accompanying costumes from Lowell's Angkor Dance Troupe.

Snow Removal in Montreal

I was in Montréal the last few days shooting a new video project and had the opportunity to observe the snow removal strategies there. It's like a military operation, with a $120 million annual budget and 27 sites around the city where they dump mountains of dirty snow to get them off the road.

I left just in time to miss a storm expected to drop 15-20cm of snow, followed by a dose of "ice pellets" overnight. Whew.

Changes at IFP

At Filmmakers Workshop last night we were visited by Milton Tabbot, Senior Director of Programming at IFP (Independent Feature Project). We were first to hear about some exciting changes in the IFP Market as it approaches its 30th year. These changes will be officially announced in March, when applications for this September's Market go online. Some of them include:

• only 60-75 documentary films will be accepted (with a roughly equal number of narrative works), continuing IFP's push to be more helpful to filmmakers and industry professionals and less of a "circus"
• documentaries will only be accepted as works-in-progress, and narrative films only at the script stage

We really appreciate Milton making a special trip to Boston to meet with our thriving filmmaker community - thank you, Milton, and keep up the great work!

Beethoven DVD Completed

Pianist Mia Chung and I have just completed an exciting DVD project called Notations: A Composer's Response to Crisis. Designed for piano students and classical music enthusiasts, the DVD explores the creative process behind two of Beethoven's best-loved piano sonatas (Opus 53 and Opus 110). It includes wonderful straight-through performances, pianists' commentary, background lectures, and technical demonstrations.

The project took a year and a half to put together, and involved a team of about 15 people including sound engineer Joel Gordon (who has his own interesting project called Art of the States) and DP Thomas Danielczik. Check back soon for information about purchasing the DVD.
 

FILMING CULTURE Screening Fri. Feb. 1

Short pieces from my FILMING CULTURE class at Mass. College of Art (through their great Continuing Education program) will screen on Friday, Feb. 1 at 7pm. The screening will take place in the screening room called Film 1 in the North Building at Mass Art (621 Huntington Avenue, Boston). The class looked at the capabilities of video to document, convey, and critique culture. Light refreshments will be served. All are welcome!