ArtSake

On the CinemaTech blog, Scott Kirsner shares audio from a recent “Lunchbox Lab” that was organized by a number of Boston-area film organizations. The discussion centered on film/video distribution on the internet for independent filmmakers. Scott recorded the conversation and is streaming it on his site. To quote Scott:

It’s not a wonderfully-produced podcast, but it may be useful to folks thinking through the digital distribution landscape. We talked about iTunes, EZTakes, Amazon/CreateSpace, the re:frame project, new business models and new formats filmmakers should be exploring, and lots more. It’s about an hour-long.

The MP3 is here. I’m the first person to start jabbering.

The speakers, who include Susi Walsh of the Center for Independent Documentary; David Tamés of the website Kino-Eye.com; Jim Flynn of EZTakes and iArthouse; Chris Renzi of Netfilm; Denise DiIanni of WGBH; Sean Fitzroy; Lyda Kuth of The LEF Foundation; Bonnie Waltch of Filmmakers Collaborative; and Cynthia Close of Documentary Educational Resources, touch on Google Ads, paid downloads, streaming content, the creation of additional or malleable content for specific audiences, and numerous other topics in this interesting conversation.

The Boston area is a particularly appropriate place for the discussion, because, as one speaker (I think it’s Scott) puts it, there are thriving film and technology communities, and “it’s interesting when you get the two of those things together.”

(Incidentally, in the non-virtual world, Scott Kirsner has a free talk tonight (7 PM, Wednesday) on his book Inventing the Movies at the Museum of Science Boston. Check it our to hear more about the technological history of film.)

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Exhortations
I thought I’d start with a couple of posts exhorting art action (or action art). The always resourceful Practicing Writing blog drew attention to this intriguing call to nominate your favorite blog posts (by you or other people) to appear in the publication The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 3.

NaPlWriMo challenges playwrights to write a play - a completely new script (no cheatery revisions of old drafts, playwrights!) - in the month of November, and to share the experience using its online forums.

Examiners
We work with really top-notch reviewers for our Artist Fellowships Program, so it should be no surprise when they do good things. Still, the good things are surprisingly copious this week. Company One has begun rehearsing for its upcoming production of Voyeurs de Venus by Lydia Diamond (who reviewed for our Playwriting Artist Fellowships), and between rehearsal calls, pratfalls, and fourth walls, they’re blogging about it.

We yell “super great job!” to Rigoberto Gonzalez (also a past Poetry reviewer for us), just named the next resident poet at Frost Place in New Hampshire.

If you’re going to do an email interview, author Tayari Jones (past reviewer for Fiction/Creative Nonfiction) wants you to do it right and has some ideas to that effect.

Go see Kevin Prufer at the Blacksmith House in Harvard Square next Mon, Oct 27. Why? He’s reviewed for our Poetry Artist Fellowships. But more importantly, he’s a much-admired poet. Those prone to martial arts analogies might say that if his poetry were a ninja, it would be nigh impossible to elude its creeping death. Luckily, his poetry is poetry, and neither I nor anyone I know is so prone. He reads with Jill McDonough, a poet who, like Kevin, has received an NEA fellowship for her troubles.

Excitements
The week is filled with online art happenings to make a Bay Stater glow with pride. First, at a site whose name I’m assuming is a mash up of the words “books” and “LUT” (acronym for “lookup table” in computer science lingo I guess?), Massachusetts publisher Gavin Grant (Small Beer Press) interviews Massachusetts young adult author MT Anderson (The Octavian Nothing books).

Greg Cook discusses Boston graphic designer Chaz Maviyane-Davies, and his poster project to influence the upcoming presidential election.

CinemaTech shares video from the “Tech @ the Movies” panel in Cambridge about our state’s role in the technological development of the film industry.

At the Mass Humanities Public Humanist blog, Mass Center for the Book director Sharon Shaloo combats ambivalence toward Massachusetts literary landmarks. Here’s a quote:

Our commonwealth, indeed our country, was founded on enlightened principles that recognized the vital importance of activity beyond the quotidian. We seem, however, over the course of time and under the burdens of tight budgets to have devolved into a utilitarianism that may have us worry about diffusing a “knowledge”–the use-value of which can be measured easily– but that leads us to a systemic wariness about activity in service of achieving those other ideals–of wisdom and of virtue–which are, to use the coin of our achievement realm, “less testable.”

Well said. And with that…
Exeunt

Image: Mary O’Malley, UNTITLED #4 (2005), ink on paper, 19 in x 25 1/2 in. Mary is exhibiting in Overflow at Laconia Gallery through November 22.

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