Omaha Film Festival 2007 – Wednesday, Day 2

Day two is officially in the books and I’m thrilled with the way things turned out. Thank you so much to the Omaha community for embracing us and coming out and supporting your festival.

All of the screenings were well attended and the feedback has been very positive. Yes, there were kinks, but we expected as much and were able to work through them. Tomorrow is another day, and a busy one at that.

One of the highlights of the evening was having Writer/Producer Valerie Kaur and Communications Director Tracy Wells of the documentary "Divided We Fall" in the audience to share the experience with Omaha and treat us to an excellent question and answer session after the film. The film was very educational and very emotional and certainly had an effect on the audience, and many of the viewpoints, often quite political, came out in the Q&A. They will remain in town for their next showing on Saturday at 4:00 so if you missed the first one, you'll have another chance.

One of the thrills of being a director of a film festival is nights like tonight. We brought five documentaries, three short films, and three independent narrative feature length films to a city that probably would never have an opportunity to see them and the crowd had an opportunity to interact directly with one of the filmmakers. A rare opportunity to be sure, but made possible by your friends at the Omaha Film Festival. (insert shameless back-patting here)

Inhale deeply, hold your breath and count to ten… exhale.

Thursday will be our first four-screen day and I just got done putting the projectionist schedules together (yeah, it’s 4:00am).

We will have three feature length documentaries, “Darius Goes West: The Ride of His Life,” “Slam Planet: War of the Words,” and “Sleep Under the Sea – John Robert Weaver – American Artist.”* The filmmakers from “Darius” and “Sleep” will be in attendance for a Q&A after their film and we’re working on a special treat for those that attend “Slam Planet” so be sure to check them out.

We are also screening four narrative feature length movies, “Ephemeres” (subtitled French film), “A Lobster Tale,” “One Night With You,” and “House of Usher.” I honestly would have a hard time picking which of these films to attend. We’re honored to have the director and several cast members of “One Night With You” in attendance so I’m looking forward to the Q&A for that film.

Lastly, we’re screening two of our major shorts blocks, with a total of 22 short films in programs and coupled with features (no, I won’t be listing all of those, you’ll have to check out the website).

Thanks again to all who have supported us so far and I look forward to seeing more of you throughout the rest of the week. Thanks also to our tireless staff. It’s sounds cliché, but in this case it’s very true, we could not be doing this without all of you.

www.omahafilmfestival.org

* Why do documentary filmmakers always make such long titles? My last four films have had fewer words in their titles combined than ANY of these docs! Of course, I do have a single-word-title fetish.