BIFF

I'm in Bergen, Norway, at the Bergen International Film Festival... I just got back from the first screening, which wasn't part of the festival, but rather an additional screening the festival organized at a nearby science center. The audience was composed of about 60 high school students and a few teachers. There was a Q&A afterwards, which went pretty well. Last night I had dinner with the director of the festival at a traditional Norwegian restaurant, where I had filet of reindeer.

Next time I'll fill you in more on a fascinating conversation I had with an unexpected dinner companion, as well as on the first festival screening...

How audacious

We've won a prize!!

In the Pariscience festival, we picked up the "Audacity Award." This appears to be the second prize of the festival, and is described as awarded awarded "for a film that’s shows originality in its subject matter or treatment." It includes a nice cash component as well! One of our intrepid physicists, Gregorio Bernardi (who appears twice in the film: he is one of the explainers of the Higgs boson as well as the guy who describes what I call "the magic screen," referred to in an earlier post) actually teaches at the University of Paris, and was able to attend the awards ceremony.



He said that it was like "a mini-Oscars ceremony," where a clip from each prize-winning film was shown. He said the clip they showed from our film was from the animated section of the explanation of how the Tevatron works, with Luke Haddock's great animations and Dr. Lederman's voiceover. Apparently there was even a plaque awarded, which Gregorio kindly accepted on our behalf. Whenever we get an office, that will be one of the first things that goes up on the wall.

So now we can officially add "Award-winning" to our descriptions...

Vancouver News Part 2

The second screening went quite well also --- not sold out, but nearly everyone stayed for another lively Q&A. Hosting the session was the festival director, which was quite a treat. The film shows a third time at the festival on Wednesday 10/10, but alas, none of us will be there.

In the meantime, a good friend of mine posted a blog entry about my blog entry, so I'm tying us up in knots further by blogging about his entry about my entry. He's an old friend from college and has made a name for himself as a voiceover talent / NPR dj. He's got a great blog about music (specifically jazz) with great musings about recording, musical personalities, and how music holds up and changes over time. He was interested to read about my musings on music in film, and specifically my experience working with Kate Simko, the composer for The Atom Smashers.

More interest: today and yesterday we received our first inquiries from down under, specifically from the Australian Centre for the Moving Image as well as a film festival in Perth. If we only had a nice, fat, travel budget...

Now we're gearing up for the Austin Film Festival, where we have a nice page here, as well as the Bergen Festival in Norway, with a page here.

Vancouver news (part 1)

Briefly, a picture of something every filmmaker would love to see: "Sold Out!" The first screening went beautifully, with a sold out crowd of about 250. Almost everyone stayed for a good Q&A afterwards. On my way now to the second screening, on a Sunday morning at 10:45. I'm guessing there won't be a "sold out" sign for this one...