• DECONSTRUCTING DAD •

Happy to report that the film will be screened on Sunday, August 7th, by ‘Movies on a Big Screen‘ in Sacramento, CA.  M.O.B.S. is a great, dedicated cineaste community in Sacramento that shows lots of quality films you won’t find at the local multiplex, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.  Here’s a lovely quote from the mayor about the program:

“Movies on a Big Screen puts on artsy, offbeat, totally inappropriate for children films, regularly…” —Christopher Cabaldon, Mayor of West Sacramento, CA, State of the City Address, April 2009 

Of course my film is actually perfectly fine for kids! Show starts at 7:30pm at the Guild Theater, 2828 35th Street, Sacramento, CA 95817, admission is $5 — here’s a link to the M.O.B.S. site.  Wish I could be there, unfortunately I can’t this time around, but hope you can!

Stay tuned for imminent info about other upcoming screenings, including England and Cologne, Germany.

—Stan Warnow

Across the river from the main festival venue...

Just back from a truly memorable 4 days at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic.  Though it’s a world class festival that attracts stars and players from the top of the heap, it also caters to thousands of young people who each summer make a pilgrimage to this world famous mountain spa town at the beginning of July — and contrary to what you might expect, the festival welcomes these young backpackers, even providing camping facilities.  Partially as a result of this philosophy, the KVIFF is known for having really enthusiastic audiences, and that was certainly the case for Deconstructing Dad.  There were two full house screenings while I was there, with excellent Q+As after — and a third after I left.

Yes...me in a tux!

But at the other end of the spectrum from backpacker campsites was the opening night party and screening.  This was a black tie event and though I’m generally more comfortable with the backpacker group, I dug out my old tuxedo that I hadn’t worn for maybe 10 years and wrestled my way into it.  Getting dressed that night was kind of agonizing….all those buttons!  I couldn’t bring myself to wear the “official” white pleated shirt though, so managed to find a purple dress shirt so I could be a little bit different.  Anyhow I can state with pretty much absolute confidence that this is the only shot of me in a tuxedo that will ever appear on this website!

But I had a great time, (was also interviewed for the festival daily newspaper, as well as by Hana Gomolakova for the English language prague.tv website — here’s a link), saw several fascinating films, and recommend this fest highly to anyone who can make it over there to attend in the future.  Thanks to all the people who make this festival a truly extraordinary event, especially Pavel Klusak, the festival programmer for music films, and to Anna Purkrábková also from the programming department, as well as Jana Ptáčková from guest services who does a great job supervising travel and lodging for all the invited participants.

Also, in my rush to get ready for the trip, I didn’t get to post about an interview I did in May for a radio show on the University of London radio station.  They put together a terrific piece about the film and Raymond Scott for their Technically Classical  radio show.  To have a listen to this half hour show click here.  Thanks to Laurel Murray and everyone else at the show for making it all happen.

Stay tuned for some imminent announcements about other upcoming events…

Delighted to report that the film will be shown July 3rd, 4th, and 8th, at 4pm (yes 3 screenings) during the upcoming Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic.  Karlovy Vary is an internationally famous spa town, and the festival is also a major international event — the most important film festival in central Europe, with 179 feature films of all type on the slate for this year, and I’m excited that mine is one of them.

The festival attracts a huge contingent of young film students and fans, and has gained a reputation as a sort of Woodstock like film festival — sounds good to me.  But it also has the glitz and glamor of a major festival with A-list actors and films on display — this year Judi Dench and John Turturro are getting awards, and John Malkovich will also be in attendance.

But enough about them (and enough dropping of names) — I too will also be there for the first four days of the festival (I’m definitely not getting an award, the film is being shown out of competition), but I will be doing Q and As at the first two screenings, and looking forward to enjoying the town and other festival events and films….and sampling the healing waters that started it all in this legendary spa town.

Here’s a copy of the website listing for the film:

Basic film info	Section
	Deconstructing Dad	2011: A Musical Odyssey

and a link to the overall festival website.

If you’re in that part of the world, hope to see you there!

Stan Warnow

Two screenings coming up in the next week. First is in Peekskill, NY at the Center for The Digital Arts at Peekskill Community college. So for those of you living  to the North of NYC, it’s an easy trip. And as that’s where I live it’s an easy trip for me and I will be there and doing a QA — in fact the event is called “Meet The Filmmaker.”  Plus, it’s FREE   Time and date Tuesday evening, April 19th, and here’s a link to more info. ( FOR ANYONE WHO CHECKS TODAY,  April 19th–somehow the date on the link reverted to a default of December 31, 1969–those dang computers!  And the time is off too, The correct date and time are TONIGHT APRIL 19TH 7 PM!) Sorry for my mistake!

And then for those in the Boston area, the film is being shown as part of the Together festival, which is another cool electronic music fest that is devoted to “Music, Art and Technology. The screening is on Friday, April 22nd at the Berklee College of Music. Professor of Music Synthesis, and former Raymond Scott colleague, Thomas (Tom) Rhea, Ph.D (who is in the film) will attend, speak, and he and I will do  a Q&A.   And this is another FREE event.  Sponsors and partners include Grooveshark®, Ninja Tune, Live Nation®, Vitamin Water®, and Red Bull Music Academy®. Details: here. THE NEW YORK TIMES wrote about the fest: ”Techno has grown up, and so have its fans. David Day, 35, is such a regular that he started his own festival, Together, in Boston. ‘I go to these festivals to be with like-minded people who also live and breathe electronic music.’  Here’s a link. Address of venue for tonight’s screening is: 22 The Fenway, Rm F12, Boston, MA

Hope to see you there!

And a quick look back and thanks to Andy Battaglia and everyone at the Unsound Festival for making last weekend’s East Village screening a full house success.

I’m delighted to report that the film won the Critic’s Award — one of the two awards for feature-length films given at the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, held  March 18th-20th.  I was totally surprised by this and it made a great festival that much better.  I was able to be there for the entire festival and it was a wonderful few days.  The festival did a great job hosting the filmmakers, the audiences were large and very supportive of all the films, I got to see a lot of excellent work, and as a California Wine Country Festival, the food and drink were uniformly superb.  It’s easy to see why it was called one of the “25 Coolest Film Festivals” by Movie Maker magazine.  Thanks again to Jason Perdue and everyone on the mostly volunteer festival staff for putting on such a superb event.