Best of the Fest!

“Nagasaki Circus”

The short Bravo!FACT, NFB, BookShorts film directed by Rachel Peters, written by Martin Ewen, puppetted by Lee Zimmerman and composed by Becky Booker

recently made the “Best of the Fest” by audience choice, at the Hamilton Film Festival, in Hamilton Ontario.

Congratulations to all involved!

Bravo!FACT Presents “Nagasaki Circus”

Nagasaki Circus can now be seen (minus the beautiful, dancing credits) on Bravo!Fact’s website:

http://watch.bravo.ca/bravofact-presents/season-5/bravofact-presents-ep-505-the-words-the-thing/#clip221015

It was great to see it aired!

Festival Updates

First and foremost, I’d like to announce that “Nagasaki Circus” aired on BRAVO last night, Oct. 4th, 2009.  I didn’t, myself, see it, but I’ve been told.   Happy day for “Nagasaki Circus”!  Sad day for the cast and I missing it.

For those wishing to watch “Nagasaki Circus” on the big screen, it’ll be showing up in a couple new venues this fall.

First, check out the Pleasure Dome screening in Toronto.

Robert’s Creek

Honey, Honey ~ Feist

Now, WHO Gave Rachel the Lighter?!

On Friday, February 13th, (That’s right, Friday the Thirteenth!) Rachel will be joining Zero Gravity Circus in freeze-your-bum-off Toronto to not only perform her comical fire eating, but also to screen her newest short, animated film, “Nagasaki Circus“.  It’s sure to be an eventful night.
As well as extinguishing fire with her FACE, Rachel will also be seen lighting her tongue on fire, her fingers, her lips, and if all goes well… nothing else.

photo courtesy of Irene Duma

Side note:  Somewhere within the immeasurable moment that falls between February, Friday 13th and February 14th (Valentine’s day) lies a celebration Rachel created called, “Valenween’s”.  Valenween’s is a celebration for the unlucky in love.  It occurs only every few years, and the next one won’t be upon us until the year 2015 (followed by 2026), so treasure Valentine’s Eve, known this year as “Valenween’s“.

Behind the Scenes of “Nagasaki Circus”

Fresh and hot off the youtube!

Watch the story of how the film “Nagasaki Circus” came to be.
Get glimpses of the marionette filming process and hear Martin Ewen’s take on life as a cynical, stilt-walking mime.

Photo Gallery

Click on the photo once for it to fill the screen, and again in the bottom right-hand corner for its full, high-resolution size.

See lightmonkey.ca -- great portraits.

Photo by Evan Young

Photo by Evan Young

Gummi teeth and eyeballs in Jello brain molds.
Don’t invite me to potlucks.

Photo by Quade Hermann

Rachel and Lurk at the TO Busker Fest

It’s a Moving Stories Holiday

I recently attended the lovely holiday party (since we, in the professional PC world no longer say “Chr-r-r-ristmas”) of BookShorts, Moving Stories Film Festival, and Pages Books TINARS (This is Not a Reading Series).  It was the last stop of the nationally touring Moving Stories Film Festival, in which my film screened with a consistently pleasant reaction.
The Hollywood theme gave me an excuse to wear my nice jewelery and pose in a photo with a gun, and the season gave me an excuse to create a new batch of Frankin Toys, to give to producer Judith Keenan.

See the Moving Stories page for more party photos.

Read my instructional post on “How to build a Frankin Toy”.

“Loves it!” Newfoundland and Beyond

My [now annual] excursion to St. John’s NFLD was, as usual, a lovely time.  I’ve found that in every trip to The Rock I seem to get tricked into being educated, in some way or another.  This year at the St. John’s Int. Women’s Film Festival was no exception.  From Irish sailors stopping in to port, to films about Holy Heart High School, to dark comedies about Newfoundland life — everything seems to be crammed full of culture.  Everything also seems to be uphill and against the rain.

I ate cod tongue.

I have yet to be screeched in.

I spent Oct. 11th and 12th with seven junior high students, creating animation flipbooks and claymation shorts for the festival-sponsored workshop, “2D in 2Days”.  I was truly impressed by the quality and understanding of animation these guys achieved in only two days and it excited me to try the workshop again.  I had planned it all out two years ago, but this was my first time seeing it through to fruition.

The morning of Sunday, Oct 12th was spent in the CBC radio studio, with Angel Antle, on the Weekend Arts Magazine, talking of workshops, festivals, films (specifically mine, “Nagasaki Circus”) and fire eating.

Then, a little break and on to the festival!  I actually got rather distracted during most of the festival and missed a great deal of the films and workshops I had wanted to attend.  I ended up starting a flipbook of my own, having been inspired by my kids from the previous week, and I hid away for most of the week.

“Nagasaki Circus” screened on the 17th with the Moving Stories Film Festival, within the St. John’s Festival — A festival within a festival.  Like an onion.  Or a parfait.

Luckily, I missed my flight home because I was too busy dancing atop of Signal Hill with filmmaker, Irene Duma, so I was able to attend the closing ceremonies and the after party where I was able to meet people I had hidden from all week and shove some helium balloons down my shirt.  See?  It all works out.
I then garnered a solid three hours of sleep, woke up while the others were still wrapping up the party, and I caught my next flight off that precious stone.

watch Post Festival Depression, chalked full of festival inside jokes!

Here’s what you should expect next:

The Moving Stories Film Festival is trucking onward to screen at the Ottawa Writer’s Festival where many-a-masterclass will occur.

I will be on the panel of one of these masterclasses, “Animating Books: From Page to Screen”

Come to the screening Wednesday, October 22, 7:00 PM, at Library and Archives Canada, 395 Wellington Street
Tickets, passes and info: 613.562.1243.
The brilliantly written and puppeted “Nagasaki Circus” will be screened, along with many others, including Paul Quarrington’s “Pavane”, which is a short adaptation of (or alternate angle to) his latest Gillar long-listed novel, “The Ravine”.

The “Animating Books: From Page to Screen” masterclass with Rachel Peters and Gary Thomas, Hosted by Chris Robinson, and Presented with the Ottawa Animation Festival will be held Thursday, October 23, 6:00 PM.

For more information about the Writers’ Festival and all of its events, visit: www.writersfestival.org

I’ve got MY bus ticket.  Do you?

Nagasaki Circus is a Wrap! …and I aint talkin’ a chicken caesar wrap!

I’ve spent the last year creating 6 minutes of film entitled “Nagasaki Circus”.
My longest work yet (I am a commercial maker) was written by a cynical, stilt-walking mime named Martin “Lurk” Ewen.
Martin, a mime, turned out to be one of the most articulate human beings I’ve ever encountered (innately poetic, no?) and upon reading his short story of the same name, I couldn’t help but want to try to do it justice in film.
The story sat in my mind for close to a year, searching for a style and a medium worthy of its surreal nature, and then I discovered Lee Zimmerman and his hypnotic marionette show.
I believe Lee was the piece of the puzzle that brought us all together.  We all knew each other from the variety performance community, which created a great dynamic.  In variety performance, there’s about a half-a-degree of separation from everyone else.  I love my hippy world.  I’m glad it was able to successfully cross over into my other hippy world.
Eventually the project was taken on by executive producer, Judith Keenan and Bookshorts and we ended up with funding and encouragement from Bravo!FACT as well as the National Film Board of Canada.
This was my second film with the National Film Board’s involvement and I hope it’s the sign of a long lasting relationship.

The final piece is now touring with the Moving Stories Film Festival and will be submitting to other film festivals shortly.  Bravo!FACT has graciously let us hold off on airing the film until the summer of 2009 so that we can get the most out of our festival endeavors.

To read more about “Nagasaki Circus”, see what The Moving Stories Film Festival has to say in their press release.

Also, be sure to take a look at the Moving Stories tour schedule to see when it might be passing through your area!