Coast to coast, Santa Cruz to Chicago, and Nicole Kidman

Paul Festa at UCSC - Apparition of the Eternal Church from Paul Festa on Vimeo.

Ten days from now UC Santa Cruz will present my films Apparition of the Eternal Church and The Glitter Emergency, both with live musical accompaniment (Gianni Staiano accompanying Apparition on organ, me accompanying Glitter on violin). In honor of the occasion, I pull from the archive the above Q&A done in July at Santa Cruz when HisCon PhD candidate Logan Walker screened a double-header of Apparition and Glitter for his class Film 20A: The Film Experience. James had just given me an iPhone for my birthday and this is the first video I took with it, balancing it on a chair in the corner of the room. I also took these pix of Logan before and after the show, and of the class, which impressed and charmed the hell out of me.

Being chauffeured to campus, where parking is more difficult than midtown Manhattan.

After class, Logan and I decided to ford the river to get to the amusement park. It was shallow almost all the way across. That was almost the end of the iPhone.

The youth of America are both intelligent and charming, at least at UC Santa Cruz.

Coincidentally, Apparition of the Eternal Church also got some press today - this doesn't happen every day to a five-year-old film. The interview explains how I connected with the site, Biblioklept, but it doesn't tell how I came up with that screwball photograph - that's explained in this email:

Edwin you should use whatever picture you like - I've attached two you probably haven't seen - the first is a still from a home movie and is the first known documentation of me directing a film. The second I took yesterday with Photo Booth as an audition picture ("Imposing faces are a plus!") for extra work on a new Nicole Kidman picture they're shooting in Oakland. They wanted something taken with a Webcam or cell phone and rejected this one as looking too much like a professional head shot. Isn't technology marvelous?"

Regular readers of Paul Festa's Archive Fever are familiar with the first photo I mentioned:

Paul Festa, prodigy director

Today I went to the set of Hemingway and Gellhorn and did not see Nicole Kidman, but en route from getting fitted with scratchy wool pants and a Spanish Civil War gun belt to acquiring a soldier's haircut on the production's dime I saw something that made my directorial mouth water more than any starlet could: 

Green to envy

I leave you with the latest poster for Apparition and Glitter in Santa Cruz Thursday March 17th, along with a Save-The-Dave for Chicagoans: The Chicago International Movies & Music Festival will open with The Glitter Emergency before showing a Kenneth Anger double-header and then The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) - all four films with live musical accompaniment.

CHICAGO

Thursday, April 14, at 7:30

Wicker Park Art Center

2215 W. North Ave.

SANTA CRUZ

Thursday, March 17, at 7:00

First Congregational Church

900 High Street