Dear Diary: Too many films too little time

So many films, so little time . . .

Welcome to Dear Diary, making-of the making of the 2010 Topanga Film Festival.

Today’s topic is programming. With less than 8 weeks until the 6th Annual Topanga Film Festival, the time has come to make a first pass.

The morning started out like most Topanga mornings, coffee, tea, a bran muffin, fruit and a pile of calls to return from early morning callers (mainly our beloved vendor/sponsors) who are not yet trained to our working hours — basically 10 to 6 — with wine time after that, which may, or may not, include more work, wine-fueled brainstorming, mindmapping or just shooting the shiz.

I walked into a lovingly heated discussion between Sara and Urs as they methodically affixed multi-colored post-its on the war wall. The green and yellow post-its break up the wall into screening days with the yellow rows depicting screeningtimes and pink post-its — titles that have made it to through the first rung of selection. Their momentum of work did not break as I walked in, nor was there much of a break in coversation about whether shorts should be grouped thematically, geographically, energetically and so on.

As Urs argued to break up two environmental pictures with a strong social commentary, Sara took two steps back about the time my computer was booting, and for a long second there was silent. Then it happened, staring directly into Urs’ eyes, Sara blurted, “That’s like giving people cottage cheese when they want steak!”

The discussion was over.

A bit later, festival supporter Cari Ann Shim Sham, part of the festival’s selection committee dropped by the office to watch the latest batch of shorts and was delighted to see the post-its adorning the span of one office wall. She said it reminded her of a short film, called Bleu in its first iteration and Are You For Real? — in its second. It screened at the Topanga Film Festival a couple years ago where she danced frocked only in hudreds of colorful post-its.

Soon, we expect to fill the screening time slots with actual film names, but for now, here is the naked screening schedule:

Megatent at Pine Tree Circle

Thursday, August 18 | 12, 2, 4, 6 and 8

Sunday, August 21 | 11, 1, 3, 5

So far it looks like this: Screenings start at 12 Noon on Thursday, August 19th, in the megatent to be housed at Pine Tree Circle, in the western most parking lot and will run on the hour, every two hours, leaving half an hour between screenings — alllowing for a bit of a buffer in the event any question and answer sessions should run over, or, in the rare event that people should linger and socialize.