Hello to the 15,000,

I’m happy to tell you that SECURITY, the DV feature film we made as the project of a film class on the University of California, Berkeley, campus, sponsored by the Pacific Film Archive, won the Audience Award at the Green Cine Film Festival on the Internet. Congratulations to the students and others who participated in the Direct Action Cinema class that produced the film. Thanks to the Pacific Film Archive and its producers Steve Seid and Kathy Geritz for making it all happen. And thanks to Jonathan Marlow and the Green Cine staff who invited the film sight unseen and who jumped through technical hoops to get it up on the site in time.

And particular thanks to the 15,000. I don’t think it’s any accident that we won the Audience Award. I see it as the power people can have when they band together to make something happen. I thank you for supporting SECURITY. Our next festival appearance will be at the Cast/Crew Premiere at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA on (yes) Sept. 11, 2005. Hopefully many of you can join us. Stay tuned for ways to make sure you can get in. If you can’t go to the screening or are not in the area be sure and tell our allies to put it on their calendar.

I know many of you tried and failed to download the picture from the Green Cine site. It used to be that the unknown microbial under-world was a daunting frontier where epidemic disaster lurked. We now have a new parallel universe inhabited by the cyber creatures that prey on our digits. No one is safe. But I guess you knew that. But thanks for trying because enough of you got through to ensure our victory.

Anyway, the heroes of this effort are Laura Deutch and Deniz Demirer who labored for three years to edit and produce SECURITY. I think you’ll be impressed with their work and I personally thank them for staying the course. It’s people like them who make the world happen. There are a million critics for every iconoclast strong enough to create visionary work. Laura and Deniz are two of the singular ones.

And by the way, on the http://www.greencine.com site (I encourage you to join up. They have a lot of good independent cinema available for rental and download) there is a character who calls himself TallTale. He is an ordinary citizen (ordinary is perhaps being too kind) who has taken it upon himself to rate many of the films currently being rented by Green Cine. Like the pesky horsefly, the dim witted and slow flying scourge of Northern Wisconsin summers, he has alighted on SIGNAL 7, ON THE EDGE and HEAT AND SUNLIGHT to deposit his special insight.

Last I looked there were no countervailing opinions up there to trump his. If any of you like these films of mine and feel, like I do, that democracy is great because you can call out fools as a first amendment obligation, please go up on the greencine.com sites for these three films and add your views. I think you have to be a member to vote but, if you watched SECURITY you may qualify or otherwise, as I say, I think it’s a good place to rent real cinema. The way it works is that the new commentary comes up in first position, pushing the old further down the list. I think TallTale’s notions deserve their place… last in a series of otherwise literate reviews and opinions written by thoughtful and credible people.

When you make films you get into the business of contrary opinions. You’re going to be called a dunce by a prince, and a prince by a dunce. In a way, you can’t win. But you know my belief. Opinion rules the world. Oddly, enough this is true in all fields, even in science where theoretical proof of anything runs into absolute lack of certainty in everything. So let’s call our shots and speak out. If we don’t we’ll make the many TallTales of this world very happy.

On the subject of speaking out…

—- A Message from MoveOn.org

As you probably heard, Sandra Day O’Connor just resigned from the Supreme Court. This is an extremely important time for our senators to hear from us. They need to know that we are counting on them to stand up to President Bush and protect our rights — because with a moderate like O’Connor stepping down and a far-right like Bush making the nomination, well, the stakes couldn’t be higher. The Terri Schiavo tragedy showed us all just how far these people are willing to go.

MoveOn PAC has already started an emergency petition, and we’re looking to get 250,000 signatures and comments to the Senate before Tuesday — which is when rumor has it Bush will announce his nomination.

I hope you can take a minute to join me in signing this petition, so our senators know that, in what might be the fight of our lives, we need them to do what it takes to protect our rights.

http://www.moveonpac.org/protectourrights —-

Aim High,

Rob