UPSTATE INDEPENDENTS is pleased to announce:

Upstate Independents’ August 3rd, 2010

Guest Speaker: Ballston Spa Film Festival Founder & Director Daniel DeFabio

Daniel DeFabio got his first job in “Hollywood” in Troy, N.Y. working as a production assistant on Martin Scorsesse’s “The Age of Innocence.” Not long thereafter, he moved to Los Angeles and worked on a few other films including True Lies before turning his skills to the then new internet. Thereafter, he became a pioneer in online movie marketing and was the co-writer and -producer of the first animated entertainment series on the web, Madeleine’s Mind.

In 2006 he moved back to live in Ballston Spa, N.Y., where he discovered the BSBPA was doing Concerts in the Park and was inspired:  Why not Movies in the Park, too? In 2007, he screened a free Movie in the Park each First Friday throughout summer and in 2008, The Ballston Spa Film Festival (BSFF) was created. In addition to the other monthly movies, DeFabio continues to work in entertainment marketing, creating TV commercials and motion graphics. His work was seen last summer on TNT’s “The Closer.” Most recently, two of his short films aired on WMHT (PBS) TV.

Q & A session to be held thereafter.

Don’t Miss It!

Where we’re located:

Upstate Independents meets the first Tuesday of every month at The Linda: WAMC’s Performing Arts Studio, 339 Central Avenue, Albany, NY from 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Click here to view the Google map and get directions. It is a great opportunity to network with others who are interested in all aspects of film and television production.

Check out the best independent film and media resource in Upstate New York. For more information, e-mail us at info@upstateindependents.com

See you there!

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Upstate Independents July 6, 2010

Guest Speaker: Senior Entertainment & Music Executive, Carl Griffin

Upstate Independents (UI), the resource for filmmakers, actors, screenwriters, and other media artists based in the Capital Region, welcomes three-time Grammy winner Carl Griffin 6:30 p.m. on July 6 at The Linda: WAMC’s Performing Arts Studio. Having accumulated over 38 years of experience in the music and entertainment industry, Carl Griffin is a force with which to be reckoned. Having accumulated over 38 years of experience in the music and entertainment business, Carl will offer some perspective about the artists and stories that shaped his career and American jazz and R&B.

He has worked with a “who’s who” of musicians that include BB King, Diane Krall, Jane Monheit, Arturo Sandoval, Ramsey Lewis, Ronnie Dunn, Evelyn Champagne King and Jonathon Butler. Carl’s Grammies include recognition for his work as Producer for BB King, Live at the Apollo and Arturo Sandoval’s Hot House.

Recently, he produced six shows at the Carnival Performing Arts Center, Miami, Florida, featuring Dave Brubeck, the Count Basie Orchestra, A Tribute to Tito and Machito, Patti Austin, Sonny Rollins, and Chick Corea.

Like many artists who recognize the value of music and pictures, Carl has a hand in TV and film production as well. Last year, Carl contributed as Artist Coordinator the L.R.P. Media production, History of Recorded Music, which covers over 300 interviews with a diverse range of artists such as Billy Joel, Tony Bennett, Quincy Jones, Clint Eastwood, and Paul Simon.

Q & A session to be held thereafter.

Member Film Screenings:

Chriss Vincelette, Director/Editor -V Productions – Film Title: “Books for Change”

Synopsis: A grassroots group of humanitarians team up with an indie filmmaker. Their mission: To bring books and literacy to developing countries while promoting understanding and acceptance of the cultural diversity in their own local communities. Run time: 4 minutes 30 seconds.

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Alexander Uhlmann, Writer/Director – Film Title: “Across the River”

Synopsis: A true story about the young George Washington. Run time: 16 minutes.
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Richa KhandelwalBhat, Director – Film Title: Atma (in Sanskrit, ‘soul’)

Synopsis: Atma (in Sanskrit, ‘soul’) is a woman who has discovered God through the Bhagwadgita. Like all lovers of God, she too lives in a different world. To her, living is God, non-living is God. Philosophy, science, history, art, romance, past, present, future is God. This film is her attempt to understand why the world is the way it is: far from what God describes as truth in the Bhagwadgita. Run time: 3 minutes.

Don’t Miss It!

Where we’re located:

Upstate Independents meets the first Tuesday of every month at The Linda: WAMC’s Performing Arts Studio, 339 Central Avenue, Albany, NY from 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Click here to view the Google map and get directions. It is a great opportunity to network with others who are interested in all aspects of film and television production.

Check out the best independent film and media resource in Upstate New York. For more information, e-mail us at info@upstateindependents.com

See you there!

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I.    Announcements

II.    Film Screening with Q & A:

III.   A 15-minute Networking Break

IV.   Guest Speaker-of-the-Month:   Anne Nelson

Anne Nelson’s career spans the fields of writing, human rights, and international affairs.  Nelson, a native of Stillwater, Oklahoma, graduated from Yale University.  As a young journalist she covered the wars in El Salvador and Guatemala.  Her work appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and Maclean’s magazine, and on PBS, NPR, and the BBC.  Her 1986 book, “Murder Under Two Flags,” was adapted as a feature film starring Robert Duvall and Kevin Spacey.  In 1989 Nelson won the Livingston Award for best foreign correspondence for her reporting on the Philippines.

As of September 11, 2001, Nelson was the director of the International Program at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.  She based her first play, “The Guys,” on her experiences following in the attack.  It opened at The Flea Theater off-off-Broadway on December 4, 2001 (only twelve weeks later) starring Sigourney Weaver and Bill Murray, and ran there for over a year. Tim Robbins produced and starred in “The Guys” with Helen Hunt at the Actors Gang in Los Angeles, and with Susan Sarandon at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.  “The Guys” was published by Dramatists Play Service and Random House, and has been produced in 48 states and fourteen foreign countries. The audio version, featuring Swoosie Kurtz and Bill Irwin, won the Audie Award for best recorded play of 2002. Variety stated:  “The Guys will likely forever be the primary theatrical artifact of the immediate post-September 11th moment.”  Nelson wrote the screenplay for the feature film version, starring Sigourney Weaver and Anthony LaPaglia, which premiered at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival.  “The Guys” was featured at the Lincoln Center New Directors/New Films series, and won a 2002 National Board of Review Award for Excellence in Filmmaking.

Nelson’s 2006 play, “Savages,” was based on the true story of a Marine officer tried for war crimes during the U.S. occupation of the Philippines in 1902. It was a finalist for the Human Festival and was produced off-Broadway and at the Orlando Shakespeare Festival.  The New Yorker magazine wrote, “Anne Nelson’s historical drama has a lacerating beauty.” It was published by Dramatists Play Service.  Nelson’s series of short plays deal with themes of globalization.  “Petra,” set in Jordan, was a Humana finalist and was included in the Cherry Lane Theater’s 2006 program, “Middle East in Pieces.”  “Delinquent” was presented at the Epic Theater’s 2008 “First Vote” program. “Global Melt” is currently a finalist for the Humana Festival.

Nelson’s newest book is “Red Orchestra: the Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler” (Random House April 2009; Germany, C. Bertelsmann, 2010).  It is the true story of a group of German theater artists and intellectuals who infiltrated the Nazi regime in the effort to defeat it. The New York Times Book Review praised the “deep sympathy and unsentimental compassion of ’Red Orchestra,’ with its story of a tiny band that somehow managed to summon the wild courage to take a stand against a barbarous status quo.”  Nelson has completed a screenplay based on the book, in conjunction with Salty Features. She is working on the first English translation of “The Illegals” (1946), a play by Günther Weisenborn, a Brecht associate who belonged to the resistance group in Berlin.

Nelson was a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow for her research on “Red Orchestra.” She is an adjunct professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, teaching international media studies, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  She and her husband, author and environmentalist George Black, have two college-aged children and live in New York.

Q & A session and special book-signing to be held thereafter.

Upstate Independents meets the first Tuesday of every month at  The Linda: WAMC’s Performing Arts Studio, 339 Central Avenue, Albany, NY from 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Click the About Us tab to view the Google map and get directions. It is a great opportunity to network with others who are interested in all aspects of film and television production.

Check out the best independent film and media resource in Upstate New York. For more information, e-mail us at info@upstateindependents.com

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I.      Announcements

II.   Film Screening with Q & A:

A.)    “Confinement”: 30 minutes

Written, directed, and edited by upstate NY filmmaker John McCarty

Confinement is a modern re-telling of the classic macabre, feminist short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935). It is about a woman whose physician husband has determined she is suffering from depression following the birth of their only child and has installed her in the upstairs bedroom of their rental house to recuperate. There, she becomes fixated on the color and design of the paper that surrounds the room. The film, which is currently making the festival rounds, portrays the impact of this confinement on her mental state and feelings about marriage and motherhood. www.confinementmovie.com

B.)    UI Member John Holser will be screening his demo reel.

III.             A 15-minute Networking Break

IV.           Guest Speaker-of-the-Month:  Kathleen Carroll, Artistic Director & Co-Founder of the Lake Placid Film Forum

Kathleen Carroll was a film critic for the New York Daily News for nearly three decades. Variety described her at one point as “the critic who picks pix people like.” While at the News, she interviewed almost all of the leading directors and actors of the late ‘60’s,‘70’s, ‘80’s and early ‘90’s, including Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Natalie Wood, Federico Fellini, Jane Fonda and even Gloria Swanson. She regularly covered the Cannes Film Festival, co-producing as well as appearing in a documentary called “Diary of the Cannes Film Festival” (which featured the very last interview with actor Peter Sellers). She presented film programs at the Toronto Film Festival and the Sarasota Film Festival. She also attended film festivals in Tehran, Hong Kong and Karlovy Vary. She served on the juries of the Berlin, Montreal and Santa Barbara film festivals. She was a featured programmer, along with Roger Ebert and Richard Corliss, on the Floating Film Festival. A three-time chairperson of the New York Film Critics Circle, she has written for numerous publications. She was an adjunct Associate Professor at St. John’s University and an advisor to the university’s Communication Arts division (1972-1983). In addition she taught film courses at New York University and Marymount Manhattan. A native of Lake Placid, she is both the co-founder (along with novelist Russell Banks) and the artistic director of the Lake Placid Film Forum.

Q & A session to be held thereafter

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It is finally Spring!

Image from non-member Chris Carey

Image from UI member Debbie Tuttle

Image from UI member Debbie Tuttle

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