Louis Vuitton Hawaii International FIlm Festival 2008

Dear friends from Someplace Else,

As I’m writing this blog, we’ve just learnt that the film is selected to screen at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival! It’s wonderful news as we were hoping for a West Coast premiere for a while, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. So here we are again, getting busy with preparing things to get the film exhibited in the best conditions possible in order to reach out to the audiences coming to see the film at the Directors’ Guild of America in LA… It’s such a mythical venue, it’s very exciting to showcase the work there. I shall be ever grateful to the programmers of Asian American film works in the US, they have singlehandedly been the most supportive programmers for our film. it’s a blessing that these organizations exist for small productions like ours.

Someplace Else isn’t the most polished film as it was made out of a near-zero budget with DV cameras, nor is it the most academic documentary as it tries to be aesthetically inventive, nor does it have celebrity names or cameos, nor does it have the backup of seasoned producers (or any for that matter), and as a result it has been dismissed by certain programmers for these very reasons - Yet from the feedback we’ve received thus far, we know it is a film that has touched the audiences that have seen it, via its original storytelling, its compelling characters at display, and its innovative ways of blending documentary, character portraiture, music, and the effect the music has on the director.

If you want to learn more about the making-of the feature, please check out the interview Toni Pennacchia had made on www.SpoilerAlertRadio.com about Someplace Else. As I listened to the program after it aired on BSR radio in Providence, I was struck at how fun the experience was. Many thanks to the SpoilerAlertRadio team and MergingArtsProductions for this opportunity. The podcast can be found here: http://spoileralertradio.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=434641

Cheers,

Kai