I. Announcements – Made by UI Secretary, Rosemary Thomas

II. Guest Speaker – Eric Vollweiler

Eric has been involved with the entertainment industry for over 16 years. He started with internships is marketing and public relations for Equity and Broadway Theater, the N.Y. State Theater Institute, Proctors Theatre and Theaterfest in N.J., where Eric worked with Betty Buckley and Melba Moore.

His next path took him to extra’s casting, starting with Powers Professional talent in upstate, N.Y. in 1997-1998 and worked on “The Horse Whisperer,” “In & Out,” and “Law and Order”. Eric later studied at Emerson and got involved with more extra casting positions, such as Boston Casting and Kevin Fennesey Casting in 2000, working on “What’s the Worst that can Happen?” and “Osmosis Jones. During Eric’s last semester at Emerson he moved to LA in 2001 and interned at DreamWorks SKG casting department where Eric worked on “The Time Machine, “Last Castle,” “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” and “Spin City.” Before Eric moved to LA he interned on his first film Festival, Nantucket (2000), than came Sundance Film Festival in (2002). These two experiences created a new destination and a passion that would stay with Eric for years to come.

In 2005 in LA Eric was in charge of advertising and business development for the DIY Convention, Do it Yourself, in Film, Music & Books. Also in 2005, Eric and Brian Roth created VR Events and with the help of Los Angeles Family Magazine raised over $100,000 to produce the “Youth Actors Expo” in Sherman Oaks, CA.

In 2006, Eric produced and was involved with sponsorship, advertising and celebrity booking for Silver Lake Film Festival, Pan African Film & Arts Festival, The Now Casting Film Festival, Indi slate and Film Festival Reporters party at Sundance, Moving Pictures Magazine, Tribeca Film Festival party, The Film Festival Summit in Las Vegas and “The Great New Wonderful” Premeire at the Angelica Film Center in Manhattan.

In 2007 Eric was co-producer on the Ed Wood Film Festival in Albany and Ruff Cutz Indie Film Conference in Boston.

In 2008 Eric met Zach Letzberg and became the associate producer on the Film, State & Showbiz Expo in Manhattan which is now the Showbiz Expo in NY and LA. Also, in 2008, Eric was Co-producer/Conference Director of Ruff Cutz Indie Film Conference at BU’s CDIA campus in Waltham, MA.

In 2010, Eric worked on the Showbiz Expo in NY and LA, produced an Evening with Melba Moore at Proctor’s Theatre and produced Film Columbia’s Film Festival party.

Eric is presently working on the Showbiz Expo taking place in NY on March, 26 and LA on May, 6-7. Eric is also one of this year’s producers on the Ballston Spa Film Festival in August. A 15-minute Q & A session is to follow

III. 15-Minute Networking Break

IV. Film Screenings:

Jon Russell Cring: Director Jon Russell Cring will be screening a clip from his new feature film AND SEE ALL THE PEOPLE, also slated to be screened Thursday, January 27th, at the Madison Theater at 7 p.m.: TIX $5 – Thursday January 27th @ 7:00 P.M., Madison Theater 1040 Madison Ave., Albany, NY. www.extraordinaryfilmproject.com

Heidi Philipsen: Heidi will be screening her 1998 interview with George Clooney at the Berlin Film Festival – remnants of her time as a reporter with Deutsche Welle TV – and significant as the Berlin Film Festival is this month. Time: circa 5 minutes Don’t Miss It!

I.  Announcements – Presented by UI Secretary, Rosemary Thomas

II.  Guest Speaker – Live via skype from the American Film Market in L.A. – Kurt Eli Mayry

Producer / Production Manager / Director of Education,The Motion Picture Institute of Michigan Kurt Mayry produced the 1992 feature film Hellmaster, starring John Saxon, which aired nationally on HBO/Cinemax. His subsequent producing effort Dark Heaven was released in July of 2004.

His extensive business background has built MPI (The Motion Picture Institute of Michigan) into a premiere film-making program and paved the way for Michigan film professionals to seize much of the incoming Hollywood film production opportunities created by Michigan’s 2007 42% tax-incentive program, by incorporating his film industry knowledge and experience into the classroom where he instructs students on how to organize and manage their films.

Mayry’s extensive film background spans from working on such notable films as Beverly Hills Cop to working as a camera tech for one of the largest Panavision Equipment houses in the Midwest. He holds a Bachelors degree in business from the University of Michigan, is currently the Director of Education at MPI and  recently produced and co-wrote the horror thriller The Rain.

Upstate Independents is pleased to have Mr. Kurt Mayry as November’s Guest Speaker – he will be speaking to us LIVE from the American Film Market in Los Angeles, C.A. about his career, his film “The Rain,” Michigan’s tax incentive program and about the Motion Picture Institute of Michigan.

A Q & A Session will be held thereafter.

III.  Networking  Break -

IV. Upstate Independent November Board Member Elections – November’s UI Meeting marks our annual elections for open Board Member positions.  Positions and details about how to prepare for the elections as a running candidate will be announced within the week.

I.  Announcements – Presented by UI Secretary, Rosemary Thomas

II.  Guest Speaker – UI Board Member to speak about November election.

This November, Upstate Independents will be holding it’s annual election for open Board Member positions. Announcements will be made at the meeting with further information about how to run for an open Board Member position.  The election will take place at the November UI meeting.

III.  Networking Break

IV. Film Screenings

THERAPUTIC – a new graphic horror film that is based on the escapades of relationship therapist Dr. Lina, whose treatment methods are unconventional at best.  The film is the second short of writer/director/producer Evelyn S. Oliver, who previously created “Testimony of a Devotee,” and the first project on which UI Member Erin Deighan has received assistant director credit.  Director/Writer/Producer Evelyn S. Oliver, 1st Assistant Director Erin Deighan, and Lead Actress Misty Easler will all be present.
Run time: approximately 11 minutes

FRONTIERS – feature film:  a mystery/fantasy, period piece set in the year 1839.   A local fur trapper is followed by a mysterious force, leading to an uncharted journey of survival, in which the boundaries of reality become blurred.

HOME SWEET HOME – short film: science fiction, set in 9642, a space pilot encounters severe weather, forcing an emergency landing back on earth, with all communications cut off, the space pilot soon learns that he is on a planet that appears unfamiliar, desolate, and seemingly ancient.

Trailers from both films, directed by Utica-based filmmaker Daniel Calhoun, will screen.  Run time: 3 minute, each trailer

ATMA – 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.
Running time: 3 minutes

HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND KILL MY MOM – A young man, David, works in a bar with his abusive mother. After a particularly nasty night David sees an opportunity to kill his mother. Later he tries to get his friends, Mustard and Carmal, to help dispose of the body. They refuse and David is left alone to deal with the body, only to find out that his mother is not dead but very upset.
Running time: 17 minutes

A Q & A Session is to each set of film screenings.

Don’t Miss It!

Upstate Independents’ September 7th, 2010

Meeting Line-Up

I.  Announcements Presented by UI Secretary, Rosemary Thomas

II.  Guest Speaker – Line Producer, Production Manager & Asbury Shorts NYC Founder Doug LeClaire.

Doug LeClaire is a Clio Award-winning television commercial and cable network promo Line Producer and Production Manager.  He has worked in the NYC film/video industry since 1980.  Doug was the Production Supervisor on a series of “I Love NYC” spots produced immediately after the 9/11 attacks featuring Woody Allen, Ben Stiller, Henry Kissenger, Al Roker, Yogi Berra and Kevin Bacon. Shot over a year long period on various NYC locations and sound stages. He’s produced over 200 national commercials and promos for networks such as: Comedy Central, Spike, Lifetime Networks, WE, Oxygen, NBC, ABC and PBS.

Additionally, Doug’s also line produced two independent feature films over the past 5 years including “Greetings from the Shore” which received world-wide distribution.  Doug is the Founder and Director of Asbury Shorts New York :  NYC’s longest running annual short film exhibition, which is also a touring event called: “The Short Film Concert.”   The show is celebrating it’s 30th year of screening classic, award-winning short films in venues around the world — AND is coming to Albany at the Linda on September 11th (MARK YOUR CALENDARS!)

Last August over 1900 people attended Asbury Shorts “Short Film Concert” at Summer Stage in Central Park.

Check out Doug’s recent interview on WAMC’s Roundtable with Sara LaDuke:

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wamc/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1696551

III.  Networking Break

IV. Film Screenings for – UI/Asbury Shorts Film Contest Selections

Don’t Miss It!

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