#OIFF23
Whaaaat. The festival circuit’s just begun and Paul Raci’s received a Lifetime Achievement award AND has been nominated for a Solzy, and I won Best Director at OIFF23! I feel like every time I decide to shoot award ceremonies, I end up winning an award like I do HERE and HERE. Thank goodness for Maria Pankova (who had won TWO awards at Ouray) for grabbing the camera out of my hands so I could receive my award, as you can see here…
I’d just come from Tribeca (with a 6 hour stopover in San Francisco to do laundry) and this screening was a lot more nerve-wracking than any of the three screenings at Tribeca, most likely due to having met all of the filmmakers the night before; my imposter syndrome was in high gear! This was my first time attending OIFF and I had been told by producer Ben Wiessner that this festival was going to be my speed, especially after he’d heard me wax poetic about festivals like DisOrient, Boston Shudderfest and Tallgrass Film Festival in Wichita. As Ben said, “no one drops proper nouns here”. And sure enough, it was the kind of festival I could melt into. No chest puffing, no proper nouns or numbers (“Yeh, we got [celebrity name] attached, got a $[blah blah] million dollar budget…”) just great films, good people and filmmakers who love filmmaking…
…and singing.
The folks of OIFF let me throw a karaoke party on the second to last night and I want to share a video of “Closing Time”, the actual last song of the night. Writer-Director Linh Tran says goodnight while everyone sings “Closing Time” giving off major Weezer “Sweater Song” vibes before I had to run off and catch up with the chorus. Nothing in this video is choreographed/blocked, this is just what happens when I host karaoke at the Ouray Film Festival and tell the few straggling filmmakers that it’s “closing time”.
And here’s a truncated version of Paul Raci’s Lifetime Achievement honor before screening the film for which he was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, SOUND OF METAL.
Congrats to Jake Abell and Jared LaCroix on year #4 of Ouray. I took a bunch of stills and video during this fest and made friends with lots of filmmakers, artist and all-around good people. Here’s a little video I made to capture them during the fest.