Assisted Living
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Sat Mar 5, 2022 – 2:30 pm | Domenico’s #1
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Assisted Living
Directed byMitchel Allen , Kasey Engle
Narrative Short
USA | 20 min | 2021
A shy, comic book-obsessed young man finds an unlikely hero when forced to room with a cranky, older man in an assisted living facility.
Director Statement
I”m not to blame for the crimes the generation of my grandparents caused, but it is my duty to absolutely everything that this can never happen again. The story about the fictional character “Anna Friedrich” gives me the freedom to tell the story in a completely creative way that hopefully brings remembrance in film to to a new level. People sadly start to get tired, but we should be more awake than ever before.
Mitchel Allen , Kasey Engle
Director
Film Information
Director: Mitchel Allen , Kasey Engle
Country: USA
Year: 2021
Language: Englis
Runtime: 20 min.
Rated: PG-13
Credits
Writer: Mitchel Allen
Producer: David Jurney
Director of Photography:David Jurney
Editor: Nehemiah Knox
Key Cast: Ben Richardson, David Lee Anderson
Connect With This Film
Principal Cast
Gatecrasher, The
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Sat Mar 5, 2022 – 2:30 pm | Domenico’s #1
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The Gatecrasher
Directed by Siamak Kashefazar
Narrative Short
Iran | 15 min | 2021
The story revolves around a late-night party of some young boys and girls which turns into a disaster after a transgender person joins them.
Director Statement
LGBTQ people do not be known as normal people in the middle east and fail their citizenship rights.
This film is a small effort to illustrate and announce them.
Siamak Kashefazar
Director
27years of artistic activity since 1994, which includes 1 year of theatrical activity in the fields of acting, costume design, playwriting, and directing … 7 years of activity as a stage manager in cinema and television … 3 years of activity as Assistant director, programmer, and actor in cinema and television and participating in three film projects with the position of director and deputy producer, Named “The Last Man”, “Copal” and ” rohen”
FILMOGRAPHY:
WILL OF THE FATHER, Kids, And Teenager, 2006
THE CAMERA, Kids, And Teenager, 2008
HANA, Documentary, 2009
HANNAN, War-Drama, 2010
THAT WOMAN, Trailer, 2010
WATER, Documentary, 2011
ADDRESS, Documentary, 2011
TURQUOISE HANDS, Documentary, 2012
BROKERS, Social-Drama, 2018
WATERCOLOR GIRL, Romantic-Drama, 2018
HAUNT, Social-Drama, 2019
The Gatecrasher, Drama-LGBTQ, 2021
Film Information
Director: Siamak Kashefazar
Country: Iran
Year: 2021
Language: Persian
Runtime: 15 min.
Rated:
Credits
Writer: Siamak Kashefazar
Producer:Siamak Kashefazar
Director of Photograph:Arash Sadeqi
Editor: Manouchehr Sanei
Music: Hadi Rahmani
Key Cast: Kimia Khalaj, Alireza Mirzamohammadali, Odin Roshan, Pourya Mohammadzade, Elham Salari, Mobina Tabaee
I Want Him Dead
NO TICKETS WILL BE SOLD AT THE VENUESYES! Filmmaker(s) Attending for Q&A
Sat Mar 5, 2022 – 2:30 pm | Domenico’s #1
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I Want Him Dead
Directed by Daniel Pico
Narrative Short
USA | 17 min | 2010
When Ursula (Leslie Connelly) is cheated on by her boyfriend Kalvin (David Bianchi), she tries to move on from him only to see him on every billboard, TV commercial and magazine cover. In order to rid him from her life, she has no choice but to kill him.
Director Statement
For what looks like a lot of whimsy on screen was one of the single most difficult and complex productions I’ve ever helmed. With dozens of locations, practical and visual effects, as well as the worst run of luck ever with weather in Los Angeles made for purely miserable shooting conditions. But for all the struggle it is still one the best films I had the pleasure to be involved in. I learned a valuable lesson on this production, a film is not made by one person, most of my crews to this point had been very small productions even my feature “Farewell Darkness” never had more than 25-30 people on set at any one time, IWHD had over 100 on the day we filmed the climax and everyone of them had a job to do and did it well they did.
Daniel Pico
Director
Daniel is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago with a BA in directing and screenwriting. He has been shooting films his entire life having made his first movie at the age of 8.
Dan has directed two theatrically released feature films “Common Senses”, and “Farewell Darkness” which won three best feature film awards in the international film festival circuit. Additionally, Daniel has directed more than 85 short films, music videos, commercials and documentaries, including 11 episodes of several popular TV and web series, garnering over 40 independent film awards and nominations for his work.
Daniel is the founder of Pico Blvd Entertainment, a production company who’s core is focused on independent cinema. Not only is Dan a maverick director, he is an accomplished editor and has worked in several major capacities in film, from producing multiple feature films, to first assistant directing several multi-million dollar features films around the world.
Currently he is developing his third feature film “Wounded”, an adaptation of the critically acclaimed play written by award winning playwright Kerry Kazmierowicztrimm.
Film Information
Director: Daniel Pico
Country: USA
Year: 2010
Language: English
Runtime: 17 min.
Rated: R
Credits
Writer: Daniel Pico
Producer:David Bianchi
Cinematographer: Jeffery Siljenberg
Editor: Ryan LeMasters
Principal Cast
Ian, A Moving Story
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Sat Mar 5, 2022 – 2:30 pm | Domenico’s #1
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Ian, A Moving Story
Directed by Abel Goldfarb
Narrative Short
Argentina | 9 min | 2019
Ian was born with cerebral palsy. Like all kids, he wants to have friends, but discrimination and bullying keep him from his beloved playground. Ian won’t give up easily, accomplishing something that will surprise everyone.
Director Statement
For what looks like a lot of whimsy on screen was one of the single most difficult and complex productions I’ve ever helmed. With dozens of locations, practical and visual effects, as well as the worst run of luck ever with weather in Los Angeles made for purely miserable shooting conditions. But for all the struggle it is still one the best films I had the pleasure to be involved in. I learned a valuable lesson on this production, a film is not made by one person, most of my crews to this point had been very small productions even my feature “Farewell Darkness” never had more than 25-30 people on set at any one time, IWHD had over 100 on the day we filmed the climax and everyone of them had a job to do and did it well they did.
Abel Goldfarb
Director
ABEL GOLDFARB (Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA, 1979). Estudió Dirección de cine en la Universidad del Cine (FUC), se especializó en dirección de fotografía en el S.I.C.A y montaje con cursos independientes. Sus trabajos en cine (largos y cortometrajes) recorrieron los festivales del mundo. En 2010, ingresó al mundo de la animación de la mano de Juan José Campanella y desde entonces trabaja en su estudio de animación, MUNDOLOCO CGI, creadores de la multipremiada METEGOL (Goya, NY Children’s Festival, entre otros). Es profesor de cine y hace 14 años da clases en ORT.
ABEL GOLDFARB (Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA, 1979). He studied Film Direction at the prestigious University of Cinema (FUC) in BA. At 17, he won his first screenplay contest. Since 2010 he works with Oscar winner Juan José Campanella and since 2004 he’s a lecturer at ORT.
Film Information
Director: Abel Goldfarb
Country: Argentina
Year: 2019
Language: N/A
Runtime: 9 min.
Rated: G
Credits
Writer: Gaston Gorali
Producer: Mundoloco, Gaston Gorali, Laura Plasencia
Cinematographer: Juan Elias
Editor: Abel Goldfarb
Music: Pablo Borghi
Animation: Pablo Lorenzo
Ourselves, in Stories
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Sat Mar 5, 2022 – 2:30 pm | Domenico’s #1
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Ourselves, in Stories
Directed by Marjee Chmiel
Documentary Short
USA | 24 min | 2021
In the last 25 years, the independent comics community made deliberate efforts to be inclusive and elevate under-represented voices. This is the story of how the community has changed over those years and evidence that if you want to change a culture, you need to change its stories, starting with the storytellers.
Director Statement
Growing up in an immigrant family in a working-class neighborhood in Chicago, I remember how alienated I felt watching the sitcoms and films of the 80s. I was more likely to (and in fact did) see a cat-eating, wise-cracking alien on television than a family of manual workers shopping for appliances at flea markets, or multiple generations in a household.
When I was in high school in the early 90s, I picked up a comic book by a woman named Heather McAdams and it felt like a veil had been lifted. She was funny, weird, gross, horny, and awkward. All traits I could recognize in myself and my friends. All traits that were absent in the beautiful, perfect, smooth-haired girls I saw on screen with psychiatrist dads and homemaker moms.
Since then, I’ve thought a lot about who “gets” to write, tell, and show their stories, and what it means for our culture when those stories come from a limited point of view. In the United States, our stories are among our greatest exports, viewed by audiences around the world. The stories we tell and share shape how humanity sees itself, its past and its future.
For me, independent comics have been a place where all the usual gatekeepers are absent. Agents, editors, distributors, and funders don’t need to sign-off on, accept, review, or otherwise bless the fantastic worlds drawn on a legal pad during the downtime of an artists’ daily hustle. Copy machines and social media are all that’s needed to transport readers into a variety of lived experiences that Hollywood and major publishers overlook as unprofitable.
In 2010, I wrote and published my own independent comic. It did well, it sold at comics conventions and was nominated for a few awards. Beyond that, the comic shared parts of myself, my values, anxieties, beliefs in a way that nothing else has. It was clarifying for me and allowed for connections I had not expected, including conversations with men who bought the comic and confessed to me this was the first story they had ever read with a female protagonist and their surprise that they could find a woman’s experiences to be relatable to their own.
This is the magic of independent comics: anyone can tell their story and they are so cheap and accessible, that you never know who is going to end up reading it, and in turn, understanding your world. Independent comics allow artists direct access to an audience that is hungry for something new, different, real, and raw.
And this is resonating beyond niche audiences.
Indie comics have become Oscar-winning films and genre-defying hit series on Netflix. I’m convinced that if you want to see the stories, we’ll all be talking about in 2025 and beyond, you can start now by meeting the independent comics creators of today
That’s why I want to take you to the Small Press Expo, a beloved annual event, where we can meet the people that are putting ourselves in stories.
Marjee Chmiel
Director
Marjee Chmiel has been working in educational media and science storytelling for over 20 years at PBS, National Geographic, the Smithsonian Institution, and currently at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her directorial debut, Ourselves in Stories, breaks away from her professional area of science to focus on art and creativity. Marjee is completing a certificate in Documentary Studies from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University was selected to be a member of the 2020 Docs in Progress Fellowship, a cohort of documentarians in the Washington DC area. Marjee has a PhD in social science research and is a former Fulbright Scholar. Her small press comic, Luci’s Letdown, was nominated for best small press and promising new talent in 2011. She lives with her husband and two small dogs in the Washington DC metropolitan area.
Film Information
Director: Marjee Chmiel
Country: USA
Year: 2021
Language: English
Runtime: 24 min.
Rated: PG
Credits
Writer: Marjee Chmiel, Juan Pablo Pacheco, Julia Bande
Producer: Marjee Chmiel, Trevor Owens, Juan Pablo Pacheco
Cinematography: Dimo Petkov
Editor: Julia Bande
Key Cast: Bianca Xunise, Jamie Hernandez, Ben Passmore, Raina Telgemeir
Sticky Pinecones
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Sat Mar 5, 2022 – 2:30 pm | Domenico’s #1
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Sticky Pinecones
Directed by Travis Holt Hamilton
Narrative Short
USA |5 min | 2021
While out on a morning walk, a man is offered the gift of a smile and a sticky pinecone, and it changes his life forever.
Director Statement
Sticky Pinecones is inspired by a true story that happened to the writer one morning when he was out walking. It changed his life. And to tell that story, I chose to have a young autistic actor play the role of the young boy, to give the film authenticity, to be true to the story.
Travis Holt Hamilton
Director
Travis Holt Hamilton grew up in Idaho and earned a MA in Cultural Anthropology. While deployed with the United States Army to Iraq in 2003, he wrote his first feature-length film ‘Turquoise Rose’.
After returning home from the war, he and his wife Rebekah self- financed the independent movie with eleven credit cards. As the credit cards continued to gain interest, he figured out how to get his small film into theatres.
After a successful theatrical run, they were able to pay off their credit cards and get a second film off the ground and into production.
Travis, now based in Arizona, continues to produce and direct feature length films with big heart and smaller budgets.
He has produced and distributed five feature length films, with over a dozen scripts at various stages of development.
He is a member of the Producers Guild of America.
Film Information
Director: Travis Holt Hamilton
Country: USA
Year: 2021
Language: English
Runtime: 5 min.
Rated: G
Credits
Writer: Michael Coscia
Producer: Travis Holt Hamilton
Editor: Travis Holt Hamilton
Cinematography: Travis Holt Hamilton