Submission Rush

We're waiting to hear officially from Cinequest as our premiere film festival. So let the games begin....in the spirit of 2006 being an olympic year. We're submitting the doc in a few other festivals in areas like Los Angeles, Nashville, TN, Ann Arbor, MI, in southern Florida, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz. We'll be submitting to some more like Seattle and Rhode Island as well. It's a lot of work putting together a plan for what festivals to submit to and when. There's a hierarchy in the film festival world and most festivals have a fee so as an indy filmmaker, we have to be very careful where we spend the limited money we have to work with and yet still get the doc out there to be seen. It's quite the balancing act. As producer, most of the responsibility of its success is on me. No pressure, though, right?

Well, besides getting it out there to be seen in film festivals in a theatrical environment, I'm also working with an awesome web developer who will be putting together a killer site full of resources, video clips not shown in the doc, audio clips and podcasts of interviews with different people on the subject and online registration for the COMPLETION conference plus a whole bunch more. I'm surrounding by very very talented people who know how to help get our site and this blog easily found by those who are searching for this kind of content.

Keep us, the doc and its accessibility in your prayers.

God & Gays: The Conference!

So, check this out...I just worked out on the treadmill and while I was doing weights, I turned on my iTunes and this great song from a christian band called RAZE came on. The song is "All Around the World" and I know all the words so I began singing them and dancing around the room in spontaneous kid play. The two cats, Matt and JoJo were sound asleep as I rebuilt up a sweat. While the song was playing, I started to visualize a meeting of some sort. By the time the song was over, I started introducing this agenda of topics for a conference that doesn't exist....yet.

I then scrapped my dayplanner schedule and began feverishly writing down all the ideas coming to my head. What would the topics be, who would speak, the time and date, what counseling would we offer, what breakout groups would we set up, where would it be, what partners do we get, oh and the food!...it was amazing. Then I did a bunch of research and found that the only conference on this subject is Exodus' version and that felt out of balance. So, now I plan on creating a conference to go along with the documentary. It's like a companion...like the Purpose Driven Life book and then the Purpose Driven Life Journal or Alladin the movie and then Alladin on Ice...except we won't be skating.

So, we'll have screenings of the doc and have the conference as an immediate outreach for those relating in some way....ANY way to homosexuality and christianity offering a network of support and compassion. Plus, we invite those who are gay and out but have been burned by the church in some way and feel totally rejected. Oh, if only there was stuff like this earlier...so many would still be with us...