IndieWorks: Insider Series W/Dani Tenenbaum

Part of our effort for IndieWorks is to feature & support indie filmmakers outside of our monthly screenings. We bring our winning filmmakers to your screen for a chat with IndieWorks co-host Lauren A. Kennedy in our series titled "IndieWorks: Insider Series".

Dani Tenenbaum screened his film "Guides" with us in November 2013 and not only won that month's Silver Whisker's Award, but also the exclusive Golden Whiskers Award at our 1st Best of Fest in 2014. To see "Guides," is to remember it. It's truly a visceral film that stays with you. We invited him over to chat with Lauren about the inspiration behind his film and what else he's got going on.  

Dani Tenenbaum
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wiwuproductions
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/wiwu 

IndieWorks: Best of Fest Recap

Thank you.

To all of the amazing people involved in this community who submit their work, attend our monthly series, follow our content, and spread the word of anything IndieWorks... we truly thank you. It's been a great year of fantastic films and talented filmmakers.

Last year, Christina decided she wanted to create a monthly film series for local independent filmmakers to showcase their work for an audience and connect with their (our) peers in a friendly and supportive environment. Sure enough, she made it happen pretty quickly. It's been another passion project from our team, and we hope it has stayed true to the ideals of helping independent filmmakers find an audience and build a network & community.

Last Thursday, we celebrated our Best of Fest by screening 10 winning films from our first year of IndieWorks. Naturally, it was hosted at PEOPLE's Lounge in the Lower East Side, whom we truly have to extend a great deal of gratitude. They have been so very helpful over this past year, giving us this venue each month to host the series and sponsoring prizes for Best of Fest.

The event brought an audience of nearly 90 guests to commemorate our first year; new faces and plenty of familiar. All audience members got 250 Sparks from SeedandSpark.com and we had 2 free raffle winners (both of them filmmakers who have previously screened their films at IndieWorks). The first of whom was October Audience Choice winner, Hannah Leshaw ("Fictional Me, Fictional You"), who came out to support the other filmmakers of the night, and April Silver Whiskers winner, Shahir Daud ("La Loteria"), who's film was screening that evening. They both received a copy of Bright Ideas (Seed&Spark's exclusive independent film magazine) and a Seed&Spark t-shirt.

The Awards Go To...

Audience Choice Award

Shahir Daud - "La Loteria"

Sponsor Prizes:

PEOPLE's: an evening of bottle service.

Seed&Spark: a copy of Bright Ideas & $200 toward a crowdfunding campaign if funded on Seed&Spark.

Indiewood_Hollywouldn't: film review & sharing of any future film or crowdfunding news via social media this year.

Golden Whiskers Award

Dani Tenenbaum - "Guides"

Sponsor Prizes:

PEOPLE's: 1.5 TB hard drive.

Seed&Spark: a copy of Bright Ideas; $200 toward a crowdfunding campaign if funded on Seed&Spark; "Guides" will be streamed in the Cinema on Seed&Spark's site.

Indiewood_Hollywoodn't: film review; interview on website; sharing of any future film or crowdfunding news via social media this year.

We had an amazing time with everyone who joined us Thursday evening, and every other evening in which we celebrated filmmaking during IndieWorks this year. As we take next month as an opportunity to go out and make things, we hope you will too. Our second year of IndieWorks is coming back better than ever in June -- so keep in touch & stay up to date through our social media accounts.

And be sure to submit your films on our IndieWork page. 

Discover Shorts. Find an Audience. Build the Community.

IndieWorks: November Recap

Last Wednesday, we held our November series of IndieWorks at PEOPLE's lounge. It was a fun night with a great blend of filmmakers. Check out the winning filmmakers & photos from the night below.

The awards go to...

At the end of the evening, we announced our winning filmmakers for both Audience Choice Award & Silver Whiskers Award. The Audience Choice Award is voted upon by all those in attendance, and the Silver Whiskers is judged by the CongestedCat Team based on a system rating 8 categories of Story, Dialogue/Writing, Direction, Acting, Cinematography, Sound, Editing, and Production Value. It goes on to screen at our end of the year Best of Fest event.

For the November 2013 lineup, our winning filmmakers were:
    Audience Choice Award:  "Do It Yer'Self" Written/Directed by Mike Dimitroulakos.
    Silver Whiskers Award:  "Guides" Written/Directed by Dani Tenenbaum.

So long, 2013.

We'll be taking a break from IndieWorks this December, picking back up in the new year! We'll have three screenings at the start of 2014 leading up to our Best of Fest screening in April featuring all our Silver Whisker winners of our first year of IndieWorks, hopefully at a more theatrical venue, before picking up with year 2 back at PEOPLE's lounge in June. During our downtime for the rest of 2013, we're going to be working on what's next for IndieWorks & CongestedCat altogether. We won't be hiding at all, though; in addition to our bi-monthly episodes of Kelsey & updates about Summit, we'll be bringing you content like our Insider Series and new #StrictlyIndie Film Views.  Ah, what's that last thing, you say?

#StrictlyIndie Film Views 

We're supporters of Independent Film & try to draw attention to what up-and-comers are working on. As such, we've decided to add a series to our blog where we'll be reviewing independent features. Ryan Kramer is our primary author behind this project, and you can read the first of his series now on "Kill Your Darlings." 

Be sure to check it out and reach out via twitter @ryankramer.