Spring and Summer has simply flown by...

Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Time has simply flown by...
Wow, high time for another post on this blog that has languished in cyber space since the end of March five months ago almost to the day. Well, to start with I'll post a link to an earlier video that I made at the Gulf Island Film and Television School. I went there for a week during spring break to study Super 8 Experimental video. I worked with two other emerging filmmakers to make, 'The New Road' which was screened locally at the Beach Blanket Film Festival. Thank you Nikos Theodosakis! So here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?p=BA1B6362FF651A60&wl=1

Currently it existe only in VHS format but since I rediscovered it on my also languishing-in-cyberspace youtube channel called filmflamflicks I decided to drop everything this a.m. and post it before something happens today to derail my best efforts to develop this blog. Perhaps, I should have a check in midweek at the very minimun just like Julia Cameron recommends in her fabulously successful 'The Artist Way.' About five or six years ago now I facillitated two consecutive AW groups in my home for the first AW book followed by 'Walking in The World.' On one of the weeks, one of the assignments was to write down five artistic things I wanted to accomplish and lo and behold I found my cards and on one card was, 'Make a Documentary' and lo and behold it DID manifest just last summer when I went to Cuba to Documentary Film School in San Antonio.

Namaste from downtown Penticton!

Ellensburg Film Festival in Washington State

Time to submit my film, 'Nowhere Man' to another fine film festival in the Pacific Northwest. So far it has been submitted to Las Vegas International Film Festival, DocUtah, and the Port Townsend Film Festival where I was invited to enter and my entry fee was waived. Thank you, Janette Force of the selection committee for your very kind offer!

Am using the Without a Box site for submission and have had to do write two synopsises of my film a short version and a longer one. Both follow f.y.i.



NOWHERE MAN was filmed on location in Old Havana, Cuba during the summer of 2010. This eleven minute documentary chronicles the plight of a balsero (or raft person) from the Mariel Boat Lift in the early 80s and how he successfully escaped the oppressive communist Castro regime on an inner tube raft on the Florida Strait in eight hours only to find himself deported back to Havana twenty years later older but perhaps no wiser. We follow Roberto during a typical day as a street hustler preying upon tourists in Vieje Habana as he struggles too supplement his meager income acting as a tour guide as well as attempting to plot his way of of Cuba once more. The next time for good..

NOWHERE MAN is a revealing documentary on life for that rare Cuban phenomenon, an emigre (Roberto) who has returned home after living for over 20 years in the United States in various cities. The film follows Roberto through the streets of Old Havana in his not-so-secret life as an unofficial guide and general procurer of goods and services for foreign visitors. Already on parole for hassling tourists, the film shadows Roberto as he attempts to fly under the radar of the vigilance of state police and the ever present security cameras in his constant search to make a fast buck to supplement his meager government salary and ration book. Robert's narrative gradually peels back his personal history, exposing his encounters with the law, both in Cuba and in the U.S.A. that have lead him to his current predicament. Caught between his capitalist aspirations and his current socialist reality, Roberto is struggling to survive in his birthplace while attempting to find a way; any way to return to the adopted country that rejected him. Roberto's candour in front of the camera challenges our perception of him. Is he a consummate hustler or a victim of circumstances, or both?

Nowhere Man in Havana