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Friday, February 16, 2007
I love the Wilma! It's one of the oldest buildings in town, the largest screen in Montana (1100 seats) and is fabulously shabby chic from the faded red leather seats, the flock wallpaper, the chandeliers and the cherubs on the wall.
Barely 2 hours from getting off the plane it was time for the world premiere of Teenland. It didn't all go smoothly - the projector auto reset so it screened in 4:3 instead of 16:9 and a last minute discussion with the programmer Dru meant that I made the decision to show the un-subtitled version of the film instead of the subtitled one. I'm still not sue whether it was the right decision but to be honest I was so tired I took Dru's advice on it. He was mortified about the 4:3 thing but it really didn't look that bad.
The film went down really well - the Q and A was great - intelligent questions and a very engaged audience. After the screening I had a lot of positive feedback and talked to a distributor about it's potential for USA sales.
Dru gave me an interesting insight into the programming of the festival telling me that when he unpacked the film he saw BBC and 60 minutes and though - oh here we go, made for TV doc but said that it really was the opposite of that and that the opening shot (tracking up to a bedroom door) set it up really well and told him 'hang on, there's something good here'. It's so good to get such direct feedback. As the film has been seen by relatively few people it's hard to gauge audience reaction.
I then stayed for drinks, the big event opening night film - an audience of 1100 for the startling HBO doc Montana meth about the meth problem in the state and dougs film - 'silver spur'. Silver spur is a great film, following the residents of a country and western residential care home for the mentally ill in Missouri. The relationships between the characters unfold beautifully and the surreal setting - all (same family) staff dressed up as cowboys fades into the background with the strength of the stories. I think the festival is going to offer another kind of education into America. As Gareth said it really is like 51 different countries.
I headed out after the screening in search of real food - I'd had hor d'ourves coming out of ears but couldn't find anywhere open apart from a garage store. This town does sleep!
posted by Jeanie Friday, February 16, 2007 | 0 comments
