WELCOME !

ARIVACA INDEPENDENT FILMMAKER'S EXPO
EVENT DATE: MARCH 24th, 2007
Arivaca Community Center
Universal Ranch Road
Arivaca, Arizona 85601

Arivaca, Arizona is proud host a film event that supports the spirit of the 'independent' Arizona filmmaker.

Now that digital technology has made creating films easily obtainable for the creative individual, it is important for a film director/producer/actor to have their work appreciated and evaluated by a live audience.

This film exposition was established in the rural community of Arivaca, in order to refresh the mind with an alternate to mainstream films.

For accommodations, dining, sightseeing, artist's co-op and other attractions, visit our community web-portal at www.arivaca.net

Looking forward to see you on March 24th!

Sincerely,
Barton Santello
Arivaca Film Expo Organizer

Selected Feature: Mia's Journal

Film: Mia's Journal

Writter & Director: Angela Soto

Cast: Paige Snowe, Erika Luna, Jason Grossman, La Monica Everett-Haynes
Genre: Drama
Run Time: 60-Minutes

Showing Time: 12-noon, March 24th - Arivaca Community Center

Actors: Paige Snowe & Erika Luna

“Mia’s Journal” is a premiere feature work by Tucson Filmmaker Angela Soto. It’s a story of two women who fall in love under challenging circumstances, as told through the stories of Mia in her journal. The journal was lost and then found by college students who read the journal that reveals the secrets of the romance. The story reveals secrets, truths, compassion, and the struggles with moral dilemmas.

Note to audience: This film contains mature themes.





Writer/Director: Angela Soto

Selected Feature - "Decision To Ask Why"

Film: Decision to Ask Why
Director: Scott Hellon
Production: Point of View Pictures
Genre: Drama
Run Time: 114 Minutes

Showing Time: 1:15pm, March 24th - Arivaca Community Center

“Decision To Ask Why” is a brilliant dramatic film by Tucson independent filmmaker Scott Hellon. “Decision” is a completely original screenplay about a group of university students adapting and growing to the social pressures of college life. This is a mature work of storytelling without the sex, violence, and nonsense typically present in films of this genre. A highly-recommended original works from an independent writer/director.

Scott Hellon - Director

Scott Hellon has been writing stories and formulating screenplay ideas since his early teens. While still a teenager, he attended intensive Summer film school programs at the University of Southern California and Boston University, where he made several short films.

After completing his first two screenplays in 2002, Hellon conceived a feature film project to be shot with an extremely low budget in his hometown of Tucson, Arizona. Writing a script around who and what he had to work with, Hellon spent the next year-and-a-half developing and shooting the college student drama "Decision To Ask Why". Hellon also wrote the screenplay, produced, and played a character in the film.

Selected Feature: Incident at Alma

Film: Incident at Alma
Director: Dick Fisher

Written by: David Lee Rawlings
Run Time: 30-Minutes
Genre: Historical Drama
Release: 2006

Showing Time: 3:30-pm, March 24th - Arivaca Community CenterIn rural post-Depression Arizona, a preacher has only ten minutes to save a condemned black farmhand's soul. In an intense, emotional confrontation the preacher's faith is shaken when he is forced by the prisoner to examine the meaning of his own life.

The film is a cautionary tale of race prejudice and personal redemption. Set in 1935, it tells the story of the last few minutes before the “legal lynching” of a black farm hand in a small rural community in Arizona. A preacher (played by Colin Cunningham, Stargate-1, CSI: Miami, House, M.D.) is given ten minutes by the local sheriff (veteran western actor Don Collier) to minister to the condemned man (Kwane Vedrene). Their brief conversation creates an unsettling bond between the two and reveals more than the preacher was prepared for. The experience leaves the preacher, and ultimately the rest of the town, changed forever. Incident at Alma is a timely, dramatic parable of the human spirit, of justice, self consciousness and redemption.

Note to audience: This film contains mature themes.

Web Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0807844/

Selected Feature: High and Dry

Film: High and Dry
Director: Michael Toubassi
Production: Upstairs Film
Run Time: 100 min
Genre: Music Documentary
Release 2006

Showing Time: 4:15pm, March 24th - Arivaca Community Center

High and Dry is an opportunity to see a film the Tucson Weekly calls: "The definitive document on the development of the Tucson music scene." HIGH AND DRY pays tribute to the influential and eclectic community of musicians that has emerged from Tucson, Arizona over the past 20 years. Through performances and interviews, the documentary captures the struggle of one small town's big music scene.

Photo: Featured Musician - Howe Gelb
www.howegelb.com

High And Dry explores and pays tribute to an influential circle of musicians including Giant Sand, original cow-punk Al Perry, seminal blues guitarist Rainer Ptacek, Doo Rag featuring Bob Log III, Supersuckers, Calexico, The Sidewinders, and more!




<-- Photo: Featured band "Supersuckers" www.supersuckers.com

Web Sites:
High and Dry Movie
Upstairs Film

Director: Michael Toubassi
Note: Click on name above for biography & filmography

Michael Toubassi is the co-founder of Upstairs Film, an Arizona not-for-profit production company. A graduate of the University of Arizona, Michael has written, directed and produced a number of short independent films and documentary videos. In addition to his work in film production, Michael is the president of Bossy Management, a music management and promotions company

Evening Film Schedule

EVENING SHORTS FILM PROGRAM
Start Time: 6:30 pm to approximately 10:00 pm

Films in the evening schedule are short works of approximately 15-minutes or less. All topics and themes are considered: Comedy, thriller, documentary, political, experimental, horror, drama, music video, etc.

Note: All films by Arizona filmmakers!

Evening Short: Remembering Ruby

Film: Remembering Ruby
Director: Gerald Harwood
Production: Anubis Productions International (Tucson, AZ)
Time: 14-Min
Genre: Documentary B&W (c 1995 & 2001)

In 1939, Edwin Crabtree Jr. shot an 11-minute 8mm film in Ruby, Arizona, capturing the only known live action images of Ruby. Footage included adults at work and leisure, children at play and mining operations. In tribute to former residents of Ruby, this video celebrates the lives of those who were part of this small mining community, just a few miles from the Mexican border. Now a ghost town, Ruby's mining history as the Montana Camp dates back to the late 1800's & ends in 1940 with the mine's closure.

Evening Short: You Can See Forever

Film: You Can See Forever: The Making of On A Clear Day
Director: Melissa Banczak (Tucson AZ)
Time: 9-Min
Genre: Documentary
Release: 2006

You Can See Forever: The Making of On A Clear Day, follows Tucson director Alan Williams as he struggles to complete principle photography for his original screenplay about illegal immigration titled On a Clear Day. From an indisposed leading actor to the first rain in over 30 days to an AWOL cinematographer, this documentary charts his six month journey.

Director: Melissa Banczak

Melissa Banczak spent 5 years as an editor and screenplay agent at Otitis Media in Minneapolis. When the agency closed, she began making short films. Her first film, Lilah and the Alien won an ACE award for acting at the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival in Birmingham, AL in 2004. When not making short films, she can be found out in the hills working on wildlife documentaries. She is currently the official videographer for the Tucson Wildlife Center.

Official Website: www.allthewayhomefilms.com

Evening Short: Arivaca Folklorico

Film: Arivaca Folklorico

Director: Barton Santello (Arivaca, AZ)
Time: 4-min
Production: Psychotropic Films

Genre: Documentary
Release: 2006

Poster art courtesy of artist Peggy Kane (Arivaca)

Arivaca Folklorico is a short 4-minute video postcard that captures the essence of tradition and culture in a rural mountain town at the international border of the desert southwest. The Folklorico Festival in the small town of Arivaca Arizona, is an annual event created by resident Clara Godfrey to honor the memory of her father. It coincides with the fall harvest, Halloween and ‘Day of The Dead’ celebration in the Mexican tradition.

Director: Barton Santello

Barton Santello is a filmmaker, natural builder, solar power enthusiast and multi-media artist living in Arivaca, Arizona

For more info see: Psychotropic Films weblog

Evening Short: Johnny Diamond - Private Eye

Film: Johnny Diamond - Private Eye

Director: John Wellbeloved
Running time: 8:50
Released: 2006

Shot in B&W, this Film Noir set in Los Angeles, circa 1949, gives us a quick glimpse into the life of a lonely Private Eye, Johnny Diamond. Diamond is a tough guy WWII Veteran Private Eye. He is working as a body guard for a well-to-do Widow in the Hollywood Hills. It is night and an intruder enters the house. Diamond fights off and kills the intruder who is none other than the Widow's supposed dead husband who had come back to kill his wife. After leaving the mansion in the hills, he drives back to his small room Downtown and contemplates his future. He decides to leave the Private Eye field to find a quieter life, but is soon drawn back into the dark underworld of L.A. after a visit from a beautiful young movie starlet, Rochelle Harlow.

Evening Short: The Bombardier

Film: The Bombardier

Director: Tim Gassen (Tucson, AZ)
Production: Purple Cactus Media Productions
Run Time: 8-min
Genre: Suspense Thriller
Release: 2006

A WWII flyer returns to his old B-17 bomber to find that more than just his old memories are alive. Filmed in high-definition anamorphic widescreen format.

Director: Tim Gassen

Company owner Timothy Gassen boasts more than 20 years of professional experience in all phases of media production — including years of award-winning work as a print journalist, author, filmmaker and audio producer.

Timothy Gassen holds a B.F.A. degree in Motion Picture Direction from The Ohio State University, and is also an alumnus of The University of Arizona, where he was selected for the Renny Harrison Film Scholarship. Gassen has worked on the sets of major Hollywood films and a wide variety of independent film and video productions. He has directed numerous music videos, with his work airing nationally and internationally.

The PCMP owner is also a music composer and publisher, with more than 75 compositions currently in print. He has produced more than a dozen albums, mostly in the alternative rock genre.

Gassen is a former staff reporter for the Arizona Daily Star newspaper, and staff columnist for Magnet, a national music magazine. He is currently a columnist for InsideHockey magazine, and is now writing an ice hockey book. His print work appears in newspapers and magazines throughout the globe, and he won a 1995 Arizona Press Club Award. Gassen has also authored two successful books on rock music.

Evening Short: Barbie Presents the Grays

Film: Barbie Presents the Grays

Director: Robert Richards (Arivaca, AZ)
Genre: Experimental
Release: 1985

'Barbie Presents the Grays', on the surface a comic 'stop motion' and claymation film decrying illicit drugs and teen suicide, might well be asking: When it comes to popular prohibitions, is the problem the substance or the source?

Evening Short: The Intervention of Brad

Film: The Intervention of Brad

Director: Bruce Dellis (Tempe, AZ)
Genre: Horror Comedy
Run Time: 5-min
Release: 2005

Brad's friends have gathered to confront him about his...uh, problem. The fact that Brad is a Frankenstein-like monster makes the discussion a bit more volatile.

Director: Bruce Dellis

Tempe, Arizona resident Bruce Dellis wrote and directed two films for the inaugural season of Screen Wars: “Doug, Mitch, and the Ironclad Argument;” and “The Intervention of Brad” – both of which starred co-producer Max Bullis. This collaboration resulted in multiple awards at the Screen Wars award ceremony, and three Rocky Mountain Emmy Awards. Bruce’s first feature-length screenplay, “Netherbeast Incorporated,” is currently in post-production with local filmmaking brothers Brian and Dean Ronalds at the helm. Bruce was also selected as the 2006 Arizona Filmmaker of the Year by the Phoenix Film Foundation.

Evening Short: The Phantom of the Plastic Playhouse

Film: The Phantom of the Plastic Playhouse

Director: Kim Braun (Tucson, AZ)
Run Time: 3 min
Genre: Suspense
Release: 2006

A child's playhouse becomes a scary place in the mind of Tucson filmmaker and composer Kim Braun. Kim dares you to enter. No she double dog dares you!

Director: Kim Braun
Website: www.KimBraun.com

Kim Braun is a composer who writes music for film & television as well as concert music, electronic music, orchestrations, arrangements and songs. Her current focus is writing film scores for small, independent productions, of which she's completed about a dozen to date. Her main writing style is avant garde, using harmonic and melodic dissonance to create tension, suspense and drama. Although classically trained, she has a passion for all types of music and has the ability to write in many styles, for almost any instrumentation.

Evening Short: Day Residue

Film: Day Residue

Director: Barton Santello (Arivaca, AZ)
Production: Psychotropic Films
Run Time: 13-min
Genre: Experimental
Release: 2005

Day Residue weaves a dream-like tapestry of present-moment images captured from the filmmaker's experiences in the rural Arizona of Arivaca. The corresponding 'digital art' in the film was derived from a real-time performance piece, where computer graphics were orchestrated to parallel a musical score, resulting in a trippy visual tapestry.

Music used in this film was composed by ambient/electronic musician Richard Bone: www.richardbone.com

Working from "Desert Homestead Multi-Media Studio", a post-production studio
in Arivaca, AZ that operates on 100% solar photovoltaic power, underground filmmaker Barton Santello, creates experimental media that is altering the 'form' of film.

Evening Short: Specimen

Film: Specimen
Director: Tim Gassen
Production: Purple Cactus Media Productions
Genre: Sci-Fi Experimental
Run Time: 4-minutes
Release: 2006

The enemy is ourselves in this experimental contemplation on American paranoia, and the isolation of the individual who dares speak out. Filmmed in 16mm.


For information on director Tim Gassen and Purple Cactus Media Productions see the film "The Bombardier" above.

Evening Short: Yes and No

Film: Yes and No

Directors: Scott and Anna Griessel (Green Valley, AZ)
Production: Creatista
Run Time: 7-min
Genre: Political Satire
Release: 2006

"Yes and No" made during the 2006 election season is a hilarious spoof on political advertising.

Scott Griessel is a writer/producer/director with a national client list. With over 20 years in the film and video business Scott has created national, regional and local commercials, infomercials, training videos, music videos, a short film called “7 Digits,” a television pilot called “AZ Crazy” and series of videos for children called “When I Grow Up.” His video, film, photographic and film work for clients like BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Saab and North American Van Lines has taken him to distant places like Germany, the U.K., Holland, Canada, Austria, and even Hollywood. (OK. It’s not that far away, but it is another universe).

Scott and his wife Anna are the owners of Creatista. Before starting Creatista, Scott was a creative director and partner at the nationally honored creative agency, LaBov & Beyond.

Evening Short - Controlled Bleeding

Film: Controlled Bleeding - A Nation's Nightmare

Director: Barton Santello
Production: Psychotropic Films
Run Time: 16-min
Genre: Experimental Documentary
Release: 2007

This work is the filmmaker’s perceptions on recent U.S. history, related primarily to the consequences of oil dependency. Artistic multi-media images were orchestrated within the film to reflect a resulting world-wide nightmare. A nightmare which is essentially the political, religious, economic and military ‘dream’ of a few individuals in power, both in the U.S. and abroad.

Director Info: For info on Barton Santello and Psychotropic Films, see the films "Arivaca Folklorio" or "Day Residue" above.