Eastern Oregon Film Festival Announces new date and upcoming screening

Putting their feet up after a successful 3rd annual event last October felt really nice. But EOFF organizers are diving back into it, readying themselves for another amazing year.

"We have decided to move the film festival to a date that can be more accessible to our regional friends and introduce visitors to Eastern Oregon's awesome winter destination."  - Benjamin Morgan, Board Member

Drum roll please....

It’s going to be the best EOFF yet. Mark your calendars!

EOFF will be hosting a night of film at the new “Stage Door Theatre” housed in the back of the historic Liberty Theatre in La Grande. The 50 seat venue is a new and welcomed intimate space for arts and cultural use.

Come join us Wednesday April 25th from 6pm – 9pm for a chance to see the Liberty Theatre, hear about last year’s event successes, screen some great home brewed films, and help support The Eastern Oregon Film Festival in its fourth installment.  For directions to the venue and more information about the films and evenings agenda visit: http://eofilmfest.com/

SHOWING:

The Best of the 37th Northwest Film & Video Festival touring program presents a carefully selected cross-section of the state of filmmaking in the Northwest. The Northwest Film Center presents this showcase in an effort to bring the filmmakers wider exposure and to offer this independent regional work to venues large and small.  View more about the selected works here: http://eofilmfest.com/

About the Films:

SAVAGE

Lisa Jackson / Vancouver (NAR) A musical take on the First Nation residential school experience. “A beautiful and surprising Ghost Dance.” —GD. (6 mins.)

INTO DARKNESS

John Waller / Portland (DOC) Breathtakingly beautiful and surprisingly suspenseful, this voyage underground reveals the wonders just under the surface. “A compelling adventure that takes away the need to ever pursue such a pastime oneself.” —GD. (15 mins.)

MUMBLES

Rick Raxlen / Victoria (ANI) Raxlen’s hand-drawn animation sits in with Oscar Peterson. “An abstract, heartfelt illustration of great music.” —GD. (2 mins.)

ROBIER TALKS ABOUT LIFE PART 28

Jim Lowry / Portland (DOC) “ROBIER TALKS ABOUT LIFE...in a memorable fashion while looking for someone like Beckett or Caver or Pinget to transcribe it.” —GD. (5 mins.)

SHUT UP AND RIDE

Michael Ward / Portland (NAR) The time has come for two friends to sell their tandem bike. Braking up is hard to do. (9 mins.)

THE THOMAS BEALE CIPHER

Andrew S. Allen / Seattle (ANI) Deliciously atmospheric animation embellishes this noir tale of ciphers and fortunes. (10 mins.)

MY VOYAGE TO EGYPT

Ian Berry / Portland (EXP) A woman moves very slowly through Cairo. “A love letter in search of a...” —GD. (3 mins.)

CROSSINGS

Brian Libby / Portland (EXP) Frolicsome editing turns Portland’s Fremont Bridge into a roller coaster ride. “Celebrates something I do all the time, going and coming—and like doing, more coming than going.” —GD. (4 mins.)

DEAR PETER

Orland Nutt / Portland (EXP) This quick and beguiling tête-à-tête is offered as a musical biography of Peter MacArthur. “The Best of Frittering with a Vengeance Films.” —GD. (2 mins.)

THE TRUE BELIEVERS

Nathaniel Bennett / Medford (NAR) Lukas takes to the woods with his endearing and motley crew to prove the vast government conspiracy that is endangering the Bigfoot. “TRUE BELIEVERS makes you realize once and for all why poor Sasquatch must never be found.” —GD. (25 mins.)

Eastern Oregon Film Festival: CALL FOR ENTRIES

Now Accepting Submissions! The Eastern Oregon Film Festival is slated for October 20, 21, & 22 this year, right here in downtown La Grande, Oregon. If you missed last year's event, or only got a small taste, be on the up and up to get info on participation in this years festival.

Eastern Oregon Film Festival has just launched a new website and are now accepting submission for films. Early bird-discount runs through the 16th so get you final cut wrapped up and get your film submitted. Final submission deadline for films this year will be August 31, 2011. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE.

The Eastern Oregon Film Festival would not be possible without the help of the ambitious and grande sponsors who choose to help financially or with goods & services in 2010 and is reaching out for continued support as this festival is nurtured into a signature event for La Grande and Eastern Oregon. For information on how you, your business, or an organization can support the festival in 2011 please visit: http://eofilmfest.com/participate/sponsorship-opportunities/

Eastern Oregon Film Festival had a tremendous 2010 year screening 20 films, showcasing 4 bands, and having a heck of a lot of fun. The festival reached out to filmmakers across the globe and was blessed by the participation of such filmmakers as Matthew Porterfield (Putty Hill), Jessica Oreck (Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo), Kentucker Audley (Open Five) and many more.

Portland, Oregon’s “Yeah Great Fine”, and Boise’s “Finn Riggins” & “Hillfolk Noir” blessed last year’s stages and were accompanied by local musicians Shaun Daniel and Sons of Guns for 3 nights of after hour gatherings.

Eastern Oregon Film Festival hopes to continue to grow and to continue to interface with powerful media artists in both film and music while reaching out to the East and West to facilitate a convergence point for great independent film and music.







Article source: http://www.lagrandelife.com.

NO LGSFP FOR 2011

Currently there are no plans to put on the annual La Grande Summer Film Project for 2011. With the passing of Crossing the Blues and the main organizer in the midst of a new family member the event has been shelved.

Continued focus and rerouted energies are being diverted to this year's Eastern Oregon Film Festival to be held October 20-23, 2011 in La Grande, Oregon. The early bird call for entries is already out and great plans are in works for a killer repeat of last year's festivities.

If there are interested folks in orchestrating a La Grande Summer Film Project for 2011 please contact chris@coldcoffeemedia.com for information and resources.

Happy filmmaking La Grande and let's get some films submitted to the fest!

Eastern Oregon Film Festival: The coolest thing to happen in La Grande for decades!

The projectors are ready to roll for this year’s Eastern Oregon Film Festival in La Grande, Oregon for the second year. A lot has evolved since last year’s grassroots start-up with screenings held upstairs of Mt. Emily Ale House. This year expect all screenings at the historic Granada Theater in downtown La Grande. EOFF will take over the large screen October 21st, 22nd, & 23rd and force-feed you films you would not otherwise have an opportunity to see here. We are talking blow-your-mind, creative, smart, innovative, intense, emotional, breath-consuming, award-winning films fresh from Sundance, Cannes, Berlin International, and South by Southwest, as well as some local gems.

The Line-Up

This year’s opening night highlights Banksy’s “Exit Through the Gift Shop”>, which had Entertainment Weekly saying:

“An exhilarating hall-of-mirrors look at what happens when global art fame turns anonymous, artists become objects, fans turn into artists, and the whole what’s-sincere-and-what’s-a-sham spectacle is more fun than art was ever supposed to be.”

“Exit Through the Gift Shop” will be the opening night feature film (proceeded by a short entitled “We Are Croissan’wich“) and will start at 7:00p.m. The opening night films will be followed by a Coffee & Pie (True Romance reference) party at White House Coffee. Music will be provided by Boise’sHillfolk Noir. There will be a $5.00 cover charge for non Festival-Pass holders – but guaranteed to be worth the Abe Lincoln.

Friday, October 22 plan to start your movie-marithon at 12:50 P.M. with a returning director/actress combo from the west side of the state. Ray Nomoto Robinson’s “The Bag” starring Marlyn Mason (watch a D-sandwich Interview from last year) will be the short to kick things off. The Bag will be followed by another returning director, Kentucker Audley with his new feature “Open Five“. After the feature plan to interact with Kentucker via Skype live from Memphis. This will be the first of a few Q & A’s with the filmmakers. This interactive component of the festival will lend to efforts to bring internationally known filmmakers to the area in future years....

VIEW THE FULL LINE-UP and COMPLETED ARTICLE at http://lagrandelife.com/2010/10/eastern-oregon-film-festival-takes-the-screen-october-21-23/

That's a Wrap! 2010 La Grande Summer Film Project comes to an end for 2010

Friday August 20th marked the Premiere of 2010's La Grande Summer Film Project in La Grande, OR. This years event drew over 80 participants in the making of 8 short films in 48 hours on August 13-15th. These 8 short films appeared in a stylized presentation outdoors on Depot Street as part of Crossing the Blues. The scene was fresh off of live music from Wasteland Kings and Portland's MarchFourth Marching Band, with the help of Mt. Emily Ale's Beer Garden the event was packed!

An Audience Choice award for best film was given by way of most donations received for their film. Additional awards presented by Project Director Christopher Jennings are listed below. The film covered 8 genres and more than 20 La Grande locations. The project was entitled "Hello" and was seamed together by the use of a phone call. This helped create synergy for the project and allows it to stand on it's own.

Award Winners!

The COVETED Audience Choice Award for 2010 went to La Grande Filmmaker Chuck Peters and his team for "Small Town Heroe's: A Mockumentary" Chuck Peter's will receive one EOFF Festival Pass for this year's Eastern Oregon Film Festival. The pass grants him access to all film blocks, workshops, and after-parties! (a fine prize) not to mention his teams collected BOOTY!

The Producer's Award for Best Direction went to Enterprise Filmmaker Luke Zwanziger for his film "One Monster Down". Luke will be presented with a $25.00 gift certificate to White House Coffee or Mt. Emily Ale House (his choosing).

Certificates of award and small trophies will be delivered to the filmmakers!

Thanks for the great year. Congratulations to our filmmakers and their successes!


Check the films page to see the rest of the awards! http://lagrandefilm.com/2010_films_awards.html

Anchor Down Productions: One Monster Down

Well, I believe I have officially recovered from the wonderous, near sleepless 48 hours of film making last weekend. From the great turn out of over 75 participants, I nabbed a solid crew, as I am sure many of the several other teams did as well. I'll attempt to give a spoiler free yet interesting recap from the production.

After the drawing of genre and sponsor, we were left with Crime & Gangster/Film Noir. We commenced pitching ideas and picked up the second idea pitched from my teammate Michael Spalione. As we all wrote, teamster Brian Buck storyboarded along. He also sketched up this nice logo for our production team.

Story writing moved along extremely well with aid from Shaun Daniel and Kathleen Almquist. I was amazed with the quality of ideas, backstories and psychology that went behind our story. We hashed out a script with enough filler material to write a feature length, but condensed into a nice little concept. By 12am we were out of White House Coffee with a film tentatively titled "Delusions of an Idealist" referencing Nietzsche's poem of the same name.

Our shooting went fairly smoothly. We did need to find a rotary phone (which was donated thanks to Dawn's Delights), which held us up a little, but it worked out fine as we set up our scene in a house and waited for our younger actors, both of whom did a superb job. From there we moved on to Serendipity whose owner was over the top amazing and allowed us to use the location for a tux fitting as well as using the upstairs for voice over recordings.

We did some quick rewriting replacing the lower ranking mob members with one. It turned out fine and the story didn't have to change a bit. I also nabbed a patron of The White House Coffee House to play a body guard along with my father to play a low ranking mafia don. We wanted to have some Spalione blood in there with a grandfather and father, but couldn't swing it in the last moment. Turned out nicely though, in one take even with me experimenting with a new shot! I think that is one of the coolest things about 48 hours is the freedom to experiment with your film with little guilt. I hope to see some intriguing techniques from some of the other teams at the premire.

We had some moments of hilarity and corpsing from some text message suggestions from a member who wasn't able to be with us. It happens after a long day. We recorded a take, but ended up not using it. I think the best part about our large writing team was our ability to throw ideas into the ring and our ability to shoot them down. At the end of the day, one quick rewrite of the voice over gave us a name for our film that we felt encapsulated the whole thing: One Monster Down.

Over the course of the film we dented my friends car door in a scene of violence, I directed with my hands literally tied behind my back, and our car almost didn't make it to the gravel pits. Also, in this shot we forgot about something very crucial that allowed us to practice our masking skills. Whoops. Very small hiccups, making for a great day, with aid from over 18 people on my team between team and friends. Other than some muddy audio I feel like the final piece came out quite nicely for our short time period. But you can judge for yourself Friday, Aug 20th at 10pm on Depot Street where all of the films will be shown. I can't wait to see the others. Come early for some live music!

- Luke Zwanziger, Director

La Grande Summer Film Project: Production Begins Tonight!

Tonight, Friday the 13th in La Grande, Oregon marks the kick-off for production on the La Grande Summer Film Project as part of
Eastern Oregon Film Festival and Crossing the Blues: La Grande Summer Festival.

Join in the project by attending a kick-off social event tonight at 8:00pm at White House Coffee. We have received 9 team entries and hope to add one more at tonight event. The teams will utilize additional participants who attend the event as well as feature local business locations in there 48hour production period. Additionally information on October’s 2nd Annual Eastern Oregon Film Festival and offer opportunities to support the growth and success of the event.

Teams:

There a great line-up of local and regional filmmakers participating this year along with some new faces, excited youth, and more. Filmmaker teams from previous year include Callandar Films, Surbulation Station, and The Big Productions, along with many new teams. (view last year’s films by the teams mentioned)

Locations:

Special thanks to all of our sponsoring locations for this year’s La Grande Summer Film Project. 2010’s locations are Bella Main Street Market, Benchwarmers Pub & Grill, Eastern Oregon University, The Maridell Center, Serendipity, Bodywork,Sunflower Books, Marie Josephine, and The La Grande Community Garden.

Watch For:

With filmmaking commencing at 9:00pm this even keep an eye out on the La Grande Summer Film Project Production Blog, The Eastern Oregon Film Festival Facebook Page, and Twitter to catch a few updates of how it is going for the teams.

Screening:

Plan to attend Crossing the Blues on Friday and Saturday, August 20 & 21 to view the completed project. The film will be screened OUTSIDE on Depot Street by Mt. Emily Ale House around 10:00pm. Befroe the screening catch live music by MarchFourth Marching Band, and Wasteland Kings. There will be a beer garden available and other potential vendors and entertainment. The project will run on a loop Saturday 21st upstairs at the Ale House as well.

The project serves a number a great purposes and is accessible by all. Please plan to participate by either making, viewing, and supporting the efforts of Eastern Oregon Film Festival and our local filmmaking community.

La Grande Life Morning Drip Features Film Project

Mike Surber, filmmaker and participant, put together this weeks Morning Drip for www.lagrandelife.com featuring fellow filmmaker Brian Wallis and discussing the fun from last years event and promoting this years event. Check out the video here: http://lagrandelife.com/2010/08/the-morning-drip-37-two-dudes-shooting-each-other/

The Genre's in the Mix

Oh the list! Here is the compiled list of genre's that we will lotto off to the teams. This list was provided by Chuck Peters at Valley Video Services and uses wiki definition links for a little more information. Which one do you want? Which one will you get!

Comedy: A genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humor. Also, films in this style typically have a happy ending (the black comedy being an exception).

Musical: A film genre in which several songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative.

Western: Western films commonly feature as their protagonists stock characters such as cowboys, gunslingers, and bounty hunters, often depicted as semi-nomadic wanderers who wear Stetson hats, bandannas, spurs, and buckskins, use revolvers or rifles as everyday tools of survival, and ride between dusty towns and cattle ranches on faithful steed: (Modern Western is up for interpretation)

Action: A film genre where in the story is largely told through physical action as opposed to dialogue. The action typically involves individual efforts on the part of the hero.

Science Fiction: A film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, ESP, and time travel, often along with futuristic elements such as spacecraft,robots, or other technologies.

Fantasy: Are films with fantastic themes, usually involving magic, supernatural events, make-believe creatures, or exotic fantasy worlds.

Thriller: A genre of literature, film and television that uses suspense, tension and excitement as the main elements.

Mystery: A sub-genre of the more general category of crime film. It focuses on the efforts of the detective, private investigator or amateur sleuth to solve the mysterious circumstances of a crime by means of clues, investigation, and clever deduction.

Crime & Gangster/Film Noir: A genre that involves various aspects crime and the criminal justice system. Stylistically, it can fall under many different genres, most commonly drama film, thriller film, mystery film, action film , caper film and film noir. Films focused on the Mafia are a typical example of crime films.

Horror: Are unsettling movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, disgust, panic, alarm, shock and horror from viewers through the means ofmacabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres. Horrors also frequently overlap with thethriller genre.

Doc-Mock-umentary: Documentary film is a broad category of moving pictures intended to document some aspect of reality. A "documentary film" was originally a movie shot on film stock—the only medium available—but now includes video and digital productions that can be either direct-to-video or made for a television programme. Mockumentary (also known as mock documentary) is a genre of film and television in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format

Thriller: A genre of literature, film and television that uses suspense, tension and excitement as the main elements.

Countdown to Production

Friday night marks the kick-off event for 2010's La Grande Summer Film Project. Come to White House Coffee at 8:00pm on Friday August 13th to socialize and meet filmmaking teams and discuss resources. 9:00pm will mark the delivery of specific criteria for the 48 hours films. Bring friends and invite all of those who may be interested in participating in the project.

Locations
We have a great handful of sponsoring locations. Teams will be required to feature one of these locations in their shoot. Sponsors include BELLA, Eastern Oregon University, Benchwarmers Bar & Grill, Serendipity, Meridell Center, and Body Work. We are still looking for a few more before kick-off. The locations will be raffled off to the teams. For some photos of the location visit www.lagrandefilm.com/locations.html.

Genres
The teams will be given a random genre to work with. This potential list will be supplied by Chuck Peters at Valley Video Services. We will aim to post the possible genre list this week before the event.

Eastern Oregon FIlm Festival
Additionally we will be providing some information on Eastern Oregon Film Festival and will be doing some efforts to raise some money through sponsorship, donations, festival passes, raffles, etc. Bring your excitement and support for this 3 day event in October.

This should be a great time - see you there.