On June 9th, we premiered our short film for the audience of the Albuquerque Film & Media Experience (AFME). We were very excited to finally show our work, appropriately in the land where it was filmed and takes place. The response from the audience was tremendous, with people showing real interest in the story and appreciating the quality of our film. It was amazing to find out later in the day that we won the Audience Award for Best Short of the festival!
I am very grateful to Acoma Pueblo Governor Gregg Shutiva for coming to the screening with his family. It was a real honor to screen the film for them. As a result of a very positive conversation after the screening, we hope to collaborate with the Governor and the Acoma Cultural Center further on screenings and perhaps figuring out an exhibition utilizing the research materials we found.
Great thank yous to Ivan Weiner and Lainie Quirk for putting on an amazing festival. It was really fun event, full of films, panels and special events right in the very central Nob Hill area of Albuquerque. It really felt like a major event has come to NM and I hope the AFME will keep growing bigger, making the state an even more important destination for filmmakers. It would be more than appropriate to have such a big festival in town considering the amount of Hollywood production that constantly keeps taking place in the Land of Enchantment.
Of course, heartfelt gratitude all around to our great cast and crew. It was a challenging shoot due to its sheer ambition and we have a great film to show for everybody’s care and strong efforts. Special thanks to our actor Ron Weisberg (“Nathan Bibo”) for passionately promoting the film during the festival (and telling us about the AFME in the first place).
Now we wait for news from other festivals while arranging special screenings and moving ahead with planning for the feature version of this film. We are definitely aiming to make this into a feature film as it was always meant to be. The story is so epic and multi-faceted that telling it as a short always seemed a real challenge. How to squeeze the twists and turns of such rich lives into 15 minutes? Hopefully, success on the festival circuit along with a great script for the feature (currently being written) will help us produce this film soon. We’ve lived with the story for almost two years and can’t wait to bring it to a wide audience!
