IndieWorks

IndieWorks: March Recap

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Hey, filmmaking friends! 

We had our March IndieWorks screening last Wednesday at our usual venue, PEOPLE's Lounge. It was a more intimate crowd this month with the rainy weather we had, but it was still a great time for everyone who came. We had an excellent lineup of films, as usual, with two thoughtful Q&A sessions following. A big thanks to our friend, Sean Mannion, for taking photos throughout the night, since our resident photographer, Chris Carroll, was out of town!  It was our last monthly series before the upcoming 'Best of Fest event,' one week from tomorrow on April 3rd! 

For the March 2014 lineup, our winning filmmakers were:
    Audience Choice Award: "Las Mananitas" written/directed by Gabriella Moses.
    Silver Whiskers Award: "Worlds We Created"  written/directed by Nicholas Santos.

'Best of Fest' next Thursday, Apr. 3rd.

Like we just mentioned, this was our last one before Thursday's event, our first 'Best of Fest' series. The evening is a collection of the nine "Silver Whiskers Award" winning films, as well as 1 to-be-announced "Audience Winner" from the first year of IndieWorks. If you haven't already, go ahead and cast your vote to help solidify the film to be added to our evening's lineup. Voting will continue throughout the week, until 8pm EST Monday night. 

Admission to the event is free and we'll have a free audience raffle for everyone throughout the evening. Seed&Spark, in addition to sponsoring prizes for the winning filmmakers, has agreed to giveaway 250 Sparks (enough to watch a feature film on seedandspark.com for free) to every person who attends!  So you have no excuse not to be there. It's going to be a fun night, and we can't wait to spend it with you! 

 

Vote for the 'IndieWorks: Best of Fest' 10th Film

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Last night concluded our monthly screenings for the first year of IndieWorks (recap coming next week), and our Best of Fest is just around the corner on April 3rd. The event will feature the 9 Silver Whisker Award winners of the year, plus one other (details below). Thank you to everyone who submitted and attended the screenings all year. We can't wait to celebrate with you at the Best of Fest.

Since there are 9 films, we decided to have a public vote for a 10th film that will screen along with the others. We've selected 3 films that did exceptionally well in the Audience Choice voting at their respective screenings and received an above average rating by our Scoring System. We also feel that they reflect the diverse variety of genres and stories that we aim to support and showcase at IndieWorks. Please watch all 3 films and VOTE BELOW for the one you'd like to see screen out-of-competition with the Silver Whisker winners of the year at the IndieWorks Best of Fest Finale.

Future Perfect

Fictional Me, Fictional You

Concrete Jungle 

Voting has ended!

*The winner is 'Future Perfect!' We're so excited to have this film and Director Liam Billingham as part of our Best of Fest line-up. We want to thank the filmmakers behind 'Fictional Me, Fictional You' and 'Concrete Jungle' for participating. We're big fans of Hannah Leshaw and Steven Cartoccio, and definitely hope that we'll be given the opportunity to continue supporting their work. We screened 65 films in total this year and we're so honored to have had the opportunity to meet and connect with so many of our talented peers. We would like to thank everyone who voted and/or attended our screenings all year, and hope you'll attend on Thursday to celebrate with us and support the 10 winning filmmakers!  

You can still sign up for our newsletter below.

 

 

*The winning film will not be eligible for the Golden Whiskers Award or the prizes associated with it. But will be eligible for the Audience Choice Award and its monetary prizes. The winner will also be interviewed for our Insider Series if he/she hasn't already. Our sponsors for the Best of Fest are Seed&Spark, the People Lounge & Indiewood/Hollywoodn't.

IndieWorks: February Recap

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Hey, filmmaking friends! Were you at last Wednesday's IndieWorks? Pretty good lineup if you ask us. We screened seven films this month, and each seemed to be just as good as the next.  

It was also our first event with the films playing on two screens! Our friends and indie film supporters at the PEOPLE's Lounge Installed a new 42 inch flatscreen in the back for our audience to have two options for where they'd like to sit and watch the films. Thanks to them, our other wonderful supporters and talented filmmakers like yourself, each event just gets better and better.

Click through to see photos from the night.

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 Annual Best of Fest event in April.

For the February 2014 lineup, our winning filmmakers were:
    Audience Choice Award:  "Das Fest der Liebe" Directed by Anna Kirst.
    Silver Whiskers Award:  "La Loteria" Co-Written & Directed by Shahir Daud.

Our next IndieWorks event will take place on March 19th at our usual venue, the PEOPLE's Lounge in the Lower East Side (163 Allen St), New York City. Speaking of which...

 Two Months Until Our 1st Annual 'Best of IndieWorks'

It's been almost a year since we first started hosting IndieWorks, a new monthly film series intended to help indie filmmakers have an audience to showcase their work, network with other artists in the field, and offer their own insights and experiences to filmmakers. We have one more series before we bring back all the winners of our Silver Whiskers Awards for the end of year event. On April 16th, we'll be hosting the event on both floors of the PEOPLE's lounge to showcase all 10 winning filmmakers and their films. 

Because we are completely non-profit and aim to maintain an environment where we mingle and network with our peers, not profit off them, we're currently looking for sponsors to donate prizes to the returning filmmakers or our audience. We've already got Seed&Spark, another indie film supporting site all about #FairTradeFilmmaking, on board as one sponsor. We're so excited to be partnering with them for IndieWorks, and look forward to finding other likeminded sponsors. For anyone interested in helping with that search, shoot us an email at social@congestedcat.com -- let's hand out as many goodies as we can!

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