The 2010 Atlanta Film Festival will open at the Carter Center at One Copenhill, 453 Freedom Parkway on Thursday, April 15, 2010 with Stanley Nelson’s FREEDOM RIDERS and will close on Friday April 23, 2010 at the 14^th Street Playhouse at 173 14th Street with the Southeastern premiere of Barr Weissman’s SECRET TO A HAPPY ENDING, a terrific behind-the-scenes documentary portrait of the Athens GA-based band Drive-By Truckers.   

The seven days in between are a movie-lovers’  paradise as the Atlanta Film Festival invites everyone to See, Experience, Think, Laugh, Connect, Feel, and Do MORE as over 160 independent, international short, classic, documentary and animated films are show cased at the Landmark Midtown Art Cinema, surrounded by a host of daily conversations, celebrations, educational demos and receptions.

Tickets on Sale Soon.  Passes Now On Sale 

The Atlanta Film Festival 365 Staff discusses the 2010 Oscar nominations, including the effect of 10 nominees for Best Picture on the ceremonies, the lack of respect for comedy at the awards, Hollywood’s Biases and the continued strangeness that is the documentary category.

That headline is a bit of hyperbole, but not by much. Although I was always watching movies I didn't really start curating my movie experience till my sophmore year of college.

By 1993, Friday night at Blockbuster had morphed from a ritual I enjoyed with my family to one I then enjoyed with my boys. About 8 or 9 PM, it would be five of us piling into one car to spend an hour browsing Blockbuster's aisles building our weekend playlist.

That list always had to be strategic. Some weekends we'd be ten folks or more deep and one wrong pick could soon be driving people out of the room and effectively ending the night early. And spending 6 hours straight watching films in a cramped dorm room, with the lights out, was a perfect excuse to invite women over.

Fortunately, our love of everything from Shaw Brothers to Disney to Blaxplotation to Comedies (romantic, stoner or otherwise), generally made finding movies easy. Then there's the fact that we had jokes and no matter how bad, or good the movie was, there would be entertainment. Oh, and that love of all things involving the moving image, plus being a funny group of brothas--we had to make up for our lack of a smooth game somehow--made us standout among guys on campus. As an aside, best weekend ever, watching the same set of Disney flicks back to back on two separate nights, with two different groups of women...man I miss college.

Because we watched so many flicks, we were always discovering new actors, new directors and new genres that we could burrow deeper into. By the time we moved into an apartment off Buford Highway in 1995 our lists became less aimed at pleasing everyone and more focused.

Our weekends would often be mini-retrospectives of John Woo or Pedro Almodovar. It's on one of those nights Chow Yun-Fat became a cinematic god to us (to watch him in THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS three years later remains one of the top 20 most disappointing moments in my cinematic life).

It's also on those weekends we discovered that beyond the repetition of actors and directors, it was a company called Miramax that was always making our playlists. Consistently, they had the most interesting films and often the most fun films.

Looking back on it, it's strange I never made the connection of how our change in movie watching habits (and even move) almost perfectly coincides with Miramax's rise in the 1990s. Just as we're seeking out new and even challenging cinematic experiences, there appears Miramax.

By 1999, most of us had moved into our own places or gotten jobs in other cities, but Miramax had already made an impression on us with films lke CLERKS, CHASING AMY, IL POSTINO, BEAUTIFUL GIRLS, TRAINSPOTING, FLIRTING WITH DISASTER, SWINGERS and THE GLASS SHIELD. 

For me that's a time when I not only learned how much I loved film and filmmaking, it's when I realized I wanted to be a screenwriter. It's also when my friends, watching those same movies, wanted me to be a screenwriter too.

There were so many stories we cooked up amongst ourselves and we wanted to see them on the big screen. We especially hungered for those films we imagined, because we wanted to have our own SWINGERS featuring 20-something Black guys fumbling through life. We wanted our on IL POSTINO (which played perfectly into being hyped for LOVE JONES). The hope was I would be the conduit for our ideas to have life.

That never happened, obviously. However, here I am working for the Atlanta Film Festival and working as best I can to support interesting filmmaking and filmmaking in Georgia. Would I be here without Miramax? As the Miramax we know it ends its 31 year run, it's a fascinating question to ponder.

The other day a letter from Harvey Weinstein to Errol Morris popped up on the interwebs, lettersofnote.com to precise. It's a fascinating note on how to sell oneself from one of the most successful and powerful distributors and producers of all time. Even in 1988, it was probably an anathema to receive a letter like that, in 2010 it's all part of the awards season gaming.

What really caught my notice on Letters of Note, as I was looking at past posts, was a letter from Otis L. Guernsey to Alfred Hitchcock. In it, Guernsey effectively relinquishes any rights he has to the idea of a man being mistaken for a master-spy who only exists on paper, a concept that Guernsey himself pitched to Hitchcock years earlier.

NORTH BY NORTHWEST is the resulting film and it's easily in the top 5 of greatest Hitchcock films and in probably at least the top 20 of greatest and most influential American made action-thrillers.

While the economic realities have changed since 1957 (there are a multitude of ancillary and merchandising rights that didn't exist then) the fundamental soul of production hasn't changed. A good idea will always remain a good idea, yet it takes great execution to create anything tangible from that idea.

Read up on the history of Hollywood and you'll find story after story of well-known directors, writers and actors turning down projects--even their own--they know they are an ill fit for. You'll also discover stories of financial and critical flops, which with the benefit of hindsight, the producers and creators will freely admit they should have handed over to someone else--or even just stopped production all together.

It may be hard to let go of an idea because it could be loss revenue or because it's a dream project. But, to not let go when there's the possibility that someone can take that idea and produce something memorable, something that has impact, is sometimes silly and just plain hubris. 

I'm not saying you should give up your rights, as much as I'm suggesting you should keep in mind that film is a collaborative medium that excels when the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts.

Recently, someone purchased a gift membership to ATL365, accompanied by a thoughtful dedication.  While I sit here in Atlanta (not at Sundance on a late January morning), working on grant applications and planning for an amazing April event, this dedication serves as my inspiration.  It epitomizes why we do what we do. 

I wanted to share it with you so I've cut the proper names to protect the innocent:

Dear Son,

Earlier this evening I was talking with your mother about your birthday, and she brought up the times we had gone to the Sundance Film Festival and how she expected those times to be great memories for you.  She then added, "Now don't go getting him a trip to Sundance."

So, understanding your love of film, and with the warm memories from those shared experiences, I did a little research and discovered the Atlanta Film Festival.

While this is not a pass to the Festival or even tickets to some of the movies (the schedule has not yet been set), I hope you are able to take advantage of this membership to the Atlanta Film Festival, and you never know, maybe we can catch a few of the movies during the Festival from April 15th through the 23rd.

With Lots of Love from Dad and Mom

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