tae jung choi

IndieWorks: Best of Fest Year 5 Recap

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INDIEWORKS: BEST OF FEST

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Last Tuesday was a special night at IndieWorks! We celebrated the conclusion of our 5th year! Between watching the 10 fantastic films, mingling with the talented filmmakers, and engaging with the wonderful audience, we had a ton of fun! In total, we had nearly 80 people in attendance and it was clear the crowd enjoyed the lineup and the evening as a whole. We hope new connections were made!

THANK YOU. 

To all of the incredible 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 another great year of innovative, local films and filmmakers.

Five years ago, Christina decided she wanted to create a monthly film series for local independent filmmakers to showcase and discuss their work with an audience and connect with their (our) peers in a friendly, supportive, engaging and still encouragingly competitive environment. Sure enough, we made it happen and it has grown into something so wonderful, more so than we could have imagined over the past five years. It's been a real 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 of likeminded, productive & talented individuals. Thank you all for being part of it! We're honored to screen & support your work! 

The full lineup & nominations can be found in our previous post.  

THE AWARDS GO TO...

AUDIENCE CHOICE: "Sibs" (Samantha Slater & Cynthia Silver) - Wins $50 towards a Seed&Spark campaign and script coverage from the CongestedCat team of one future short screenplay.

BEST EDITING: "Runaway" (Harrison Heller) - Wins $50 towards a Seed&Spark campaign and script coverage from the CongestedCat team of one future short screenplay.

BEST ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE: "Chocolates" (Patricia Selznick & Ford) - Wins $50 towards a Seed&Spark campaign and script coverage from the CongestedCat team of one future short screenplay.

BEST WRITER/DIRECTOR: "Cake" (Anne Hu) - Wins $50 towards a Seed&Spark campaign and script coverage from the CongestedCat team of one future short screenplay.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY (DJ Carroll) & GOLDEN WHISKERS (BEST OF FEST): "Madness" (TJ Choi) - Wins $250 towards a Seed&Spark campaign, a 1TB G-drive, 50% Off any a la carte Post-Production Service 4milecircus offers, script coverage from the CongestedCat team of two future short screenplays, and a day of social media promotion from the CongestedCat team.

Our team with all the talented filmmakers of the night!

Photos by Chris Carroll. Video coverage by Kimberly Drew Whiten. Big thanks for their time & talent throughout night! See all the fun we had below! 

THAT'S A WRAP!

Check out the recaps from ALL 10 SCREENINGS of Year 5 of IndieWorks. 

As we take next month as an opportunity to go out and make things, we hope you will too. Our 6th Year of IndieWorks kicks off in June on the 5th, with our Pride-themed screening -- so keep in touch & stay up to date through our social media accounts. We want to see YOU at the next screening!

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Be sure to submit your films on our IndieWork page, and watch episodes of our Insider Series with the monthly Winners from all 5 years to get more insight into their screened films & upcoming work. 

IndieWorks: August Recap

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Last Tuesday was the August edition of IndieWorks, and what a night it was! We screened 4 films and had over 45 people in house despite the rainy evening. It was one of our strongest-quality monthly lineups ever with dramatic films that approached important social issues from nuanced, character-focused, and often incredibly creative perspectives.  All the pieces of the night resonated with the audience differently, and some very thoughtful discussions were had.

Something we're really disappointed in ourselves about though is that one film of the night had a tech issue and only 12 of the 15 minutes could be fully played. In the almost 5 years of holding a screening every single month, we've never experienced this before. We always check the films multiple times, so this was a really frustrating occurrence. We take it very seriously, as we are a screening series by filmmakers for filmmakers. So we assure anyone who was there or reading this that we will be working over the next month with our venue to figure out what happened and make sure it doesn't happen again. Despite this error though, the filmmakers were so understanding and still had a really engaged Q&A! The night was quite inspiring in various ways.

We'd like to say thank you to everyone who came out to support the filmmakers and spend the evening with us & them. We do hope you enjoyed all the films and the opportunity to network with other filmmakers and film enthusiasts, and we hope some connections were made! AND we hope you'll join us again for Web Series Month on September 19th. (Anyone who was there and didn't receive an email with a private link to the film that didn't get to finish, send us a message through our site and we'll pass it along!)

See photos from the evening below:

The Films of the night:

Santi (Directed & Written by Mateo Marquez)
When violence erupts at home, a young man must decide whether to flee or remain by his family's side.

Madness (Directed & Written by Tae Jung Choi)
AEun Ju is the perfect 1990’s Orange County Korean American House Wife, but when her son, drastically misbehaves in front of her Sunday Church group, Eun Ju must confront her own suppressed internal madness in order to protect her son.

Pickup (Directed by Jeremiah Kipp & Written by Jessica Blank)
A compelling film that allows the audience to take a deeper look into the psyche of a woman who appears to have it all. Through her banal daily routine, Megan develops an addiction that begins to unravel her carefully put together life. She is grappling with wanting more , but is feeling tremendously guilty because she already lives the "ideal perfect life".

Fresh Blood (Directed & Written by Richa Rudola)
When a young South Asian girl is forced into the sex trade, she must choose her path to freedom even if it involves a vampire.

Watch our Q&A Recap (shot & edited by Kimberly Drew Whiten). *Please know there are some film spoilers - feel free to look for an opportunity to catch the films at a festival or computer screen near you & then come back to watch!

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 Award 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, along with a nuanced discussion focused on inclusion and originality. The Silver Whiskers winner goes on to screen again at our end of year Best of Fest screening next April. 

The Silver Whiskers winner also receives $50 towards a crowdfunding campaign on SeedandSpark.com should they use the platform and a free Social Media audit ($200 value) from 4MileCircus. 

For the August 2017 lineup, our winning films were:
    Audience Choice Award:  "Fresh Blood"
    Silver Whiskers Award:  "Madness"

Join us next month for our September (Web Series) edition on the 19th!

It's not too late to submit your series. We're accepting episode submissions until August 31st.

One filmmaker of the night, Mateo Marquez, is an alum whose previous short "The Blood in Our Veins" won the Golden Whiskers Award at our Year 4 Best of Fest. He's currently crowdfunding his latest short. Help him and his team hit 500 followers to unlock Filmmaker Awards on Seed&Spark.