1000 Journals Documentary

The program guide of the Newport Beach Film Festival has just come live. It's a B-side community, where you can sign up, create a schedule, write reviews, and invite others. It's pretty cool, check it out. We're screening on Sunday, April 27th, at 3:30 PM, in the Edwards Island Cinemas, located in the Fashion Island Mall. I've great memories of the festival, as a film I produced, Ave Maria, was invited in 2000, and screened in the same theater.

I'm invited to introduce the film and show journals at The Inside Edge, a foundation of and for "intellectually-curious and spiritually-conscious people" who meet for breakfast every week. Insomniacs and seriously early birds among us, please come and join this. My 1000 Journals presentation will be on Wednesday morning, April 23rd, at 6:30 AM, at the University Club of UC Irvine. More information is on the Inside Edge website.

1000 Journals is featured in the impressive collection of interviews by MarBelle of Directors Notes. MarBelle is after "The What, How & Why of Independent Filmmaking," and by speaking with directors from around the world,  both about their specific films, and about general filmmaking concerns, is offering a multi-faceted resource for artists and audiences alike. We are episode number 082, and available on the Directors Notes website as well as on iTunes.

We'll be screening four times at the 51st San Francisco International Film Festival, which runs from April 24th to May 8th.

Saturday, April 26, at 1:30 PM

Monday, April 28, at 9:00 PM

Thursday, May 1, at 12:30 PM

Thursday, May 1, at 3:15 PM

All screenings will be at the Sundance Cinemas Kabuki.

From April 1st, SFIFF's website will include a box office, and the full program guide.

Image caption: Festival attendees stand under the Castro Theatre marquee at the 43rd San Francisco International Film Festival. Photo Credit: © Pamela Gentile. Copyright: Pamela Gentile/San Francisco Film Society. Year: 2000

Over the past few months, we've been talking with a museum in Naples, Italy, the Galassia Gutenberg, whose curator, Simonetta Capecchi, has put together an exhibition of art journals about traveling. Simo blogged about the making-of, and wrote about us here, and here, she created a PDF version of the catalog, an online gallery on Flickr, and a very comprehensive journal blog and website roll. Journal 2639 of the 1001 Journals Project is visiting Galassia Gutenberg for the duration of the show, from March 28th to 31st, 2008. To Simo, un successo travolgente, and tanti auguri!

1000 Journals is invited to the Indianapolis International Film Festival, April 23rd to May 3rd, 2008. The festival has recently announced its competition line-up in a press release. Check it out... The full program will go live on the fest's website April 1st, including box office and venue infos. We'll be screening twice, co-hosted by the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA): On Thursday, April 24, at 9:15 PM, and on Thursday, May 01, at 2:15 PM. Someguy will be at the first screening.

I just discovered a Call for Artists on the festival website: Jointly presented with the iMOCA, artists are invited to donate movie-themed art items to a silent auction. Maybe one of you wants to participate? The entry form is on the festival website.

Over the weekend, I put together our Berlinale Photo Album and posted it in the blog on

http://www.1000journalsfilm.com/

Check it out!

Once the Cubix ushers had cut-off the overtime Q+A's and herded us out of the cinema, quite a few people stayed in the lobby to see more of the journals we brought. Among them was Frank, a writer for the iheartberlin blog, who took pictures, and then posted a story in the blog, in German, and English. He sent me an email the next day with the link. Frank has a great eye: he photographed random pages in Journal 987, and along with Tracy Moore's and Seelenbücher's entry, ended up posting the page LindA Zacks created while Ralph and I were filming her in Brooklyn, March 2006. That day marked the beginning of a wonderful friendship, and collaboration on the animated title sequence... I heart LindA!

The Brandenburg Gate as back-drop for the interview with Spiegel-TV. Producer Melanie von Marschalck had contacted me upon arrival at Frankfurt Airport, and I met her and her team in Der Spiegel Magazine's offices at Under Den Linden.

You can see me taking these pictures in the clip of the interview, which will be on the Spiegel server until mid March.

From the Brandenburg Gate to the building of State of Schleswig-Holstein's representatives, where Ulf Engelmayer and his team has set-up a radio studio for a daily report from the Berlin Festival.

Before we went live, at 6:00 PM, we had time to flip through the journals I brought, and after the show, Ulf and his wife showed me their personal journals and asked for an entry. Eventually, there will be a podcast of the interview we can link to.

Whereas our Berlinale Premiere was in a historic movie palace in the former West Berlin, the repetition screening, at multiplex cinema Cubix, brought us into the former East, onto Alexanderplatz. The Tuesday screening was as packed, and followed by an interesting Q+A session going into overtime.

Gudrun Wendler, artist, dear friend, and fan of the 1000 Journals Project, hosted our very first semi-public screening of the teaser, in 2005, when she lived in Los Angeles. The Wendlers moved to Berlin two years ago and came to see the finished film, her husband Jürgen on Sunday, and Gudrun on Tuesday.

After the screening and Q+A's, we continued in the lobby...

Sunshine and blue skies, 10 degrees centigrade (50F), people sitting in street cafes or walking around with ice-cream, that's the new Berlin in February. Our house at twelve noon was packed. This was our first screening to an audience of non-English speakers, our first outside of Los Angeles, our third ever. Dieter Kosslick, the Berlinale director, introduced the films and the new screening slot we were inaugurating: the Sunday Matinee. A short film (Bruce Weber's Wine and Cupcakes), followed by the feature. Dieter's charming and loving welcome, and Bruce Weber's shots of Central Park in the Fall, helped me settle in my seat and relax and enjoy those two hours that mean so much to me, and I felt profoundly happy: Ralph and Nic on my side, Louise in the row behind, four journals in the audience, and most wonderfully, several of our German interview subjects who had traveled to Berlin: Elfy from Cologne, and Eva, Chris, Gerald and Heiner from Braunschweig. If only Someguy could have made it, too…

Elfy and her Berlin friend, Gerald and Heiner, Chris, and Louise...

... and Eva with Journal 878.

There are many more photos but so little time right now in between the screenings... Just this: it went really well!

The queues are unbelievably long here. People are standing in line for hours to buy tickets to the 1,256 screenings of 384 films selected for this year's Berlinale. As I'm already into stats: 5,328 films were submitted to this 58th edition...

Parallel to the festival runs the European Film Market, with 120 exhibitors from 51 countries selling films to 790 officially registered buyers. The EFM hosts 1,069 additional screenings of 714 films.

Most film companies exhibit in the beautiful Martin Gropius Bau, others are out on the street, or in hotels in the neighborhood. The French company Wild Bunch has set-up this cool office to sell Steven Soderbergh's Che:

I went to the screening of the documentary Secrecy, which Louise is handling as well. It ran in the EFM section Straight from Sundance, will next be at SXSW, and many other festivals. Try to see it if you can!

Louise, Secrecy Co-Directors Peter Galison and Robb Moss, and I had dinner in the mall after their screening. We were too exhausted to go for anything fancy, and just wanted to sit down and talk. Besides seeing our film with an audience, meeting other film makers and exchanging notes is what makes festival outings so great. We all go through the same stuff, good and bad...

So many people, so much glitz and seemingly miles of red carpet. Films are loved and celebrated here. And filmmakers get spoiled. I met with Louise Rosen, our sales agent, and Ulrich Schmieder, who works for the festival and helps us every step of the way. We got organized, badged, ticketed, keyed, we picked up a few of the 2,100 press kits we had printed, then worked our way from Potsdamer Platz, the H.Q., to the Martin Gropius Bau and the European Film Market, to the Hyatt Hotel, Berlinale Palast, and back. If it wasn't for winter and Berlin, it did feel a bit like cruising the Croisette in Cannes, the two miles strip along the beach, festival hotels, to the Palais: stop and go to say hello to friends and colleagues.

Then we rushed to the hotel to get ready for Opening Night, and the world premiere of the Rolling Stones concert film, Shine a Light by Martin Scorsese. They were all there: Marty, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ron Wood.

Louise Rosen, and Eva Lindemann, the producer of Bruce Weber's short Wine and Cupcakes which is screening back-to-back with us.

Ulrich Schmieder... Vielen, vielen Dank für Deine sagenhafte Unterstützung!

I just updated the info on the Berlinale screenings: We are now starting at 12:00 Noon on Sunday, February 10.

1000 Journals is invited to the Berlin International Film Festival, and our screening dates are finally confirmed. The festival posted a press release this morning, in both German and English versions.

We are in the section Berlinale Special, and screening on

Sunday, February 10, at 12:00 Noon
Filmpalast, Kurfürstendamm 225

with a second screening on

Tuesday, February 12, at 5:30 PM
Cubix 7, Rathausstr. 1/Alexanderplatz

Tickets are available online, a few days prior to the opening of the Berlinale on February 7th.

We are programmed to screen back-to-back with Bruce Weber's latest short, Wine and Cupcakes.

More about the Berlinale is on Filmfestival World, including these stats: General Attendance: 340,000 people, Media Attendance: 3,696 (we have been asked to deliver 1,700 printed press kits and/or digital press kits on CD for the journalists), and Accredited Industry Attendance: 16,146.

I'll be in Berlin the whole time. Ralph is coming, too, for both screenings. If any of you are planning to come to either screening, please post a comment or contact us.

This is an experiment and Berlin is part of it. 1000 Journals has been invited to screen in the Berlinale Special section of the 58th Berlin International Film Festival, which runs February 7-17, 2008. Screening details will be announced later in January.

The world premiere of 1000 Journals was in November 2007, at the AFI Fest in Los Angeles. Check out the reviews and news stories, see Someguy's read carpet interview, and the pictures from the premiere screenings. Sign up to receive email infos about future screening dates and festivals.

Counting down the days, hours, minutes… Someguy gets to L.A. on Thursday, Linda on Saturday. And the four AFI Fest journals just came in the mail. You can track them on the 1001 Journals Project website:

journal 2434 | journal 2433 | journal 2432 | journal 2431

Linda's cool card for the festival.

In preparation for an interview tomorrow I compared the weight and
thickness of an empty Canson sketchbook, which Someguy used to make the
journals, with the Journals I have here on hand for the press:



Empty Journal: 15 ounces (425 grams), 0.9 inches thick (2.25 cm)

Journal 526: 1 pound, 10 ounces (737 grams), without the pouch, which
weighs one additional ounce (28 grams). It's 2.2 inches (5.5 cm) thick.

Journal 550: 1 pound, 7 ounces (652 grams), 2.4 inches (6 cm)

Journal 878: 1 pound, 9 ounces (709 grams), 2.5 inches (6.5 cm)

Journal 987: 1 pound, 14 ounces (850 grams), 3.7 inches (9.5 cm)



Ink or paint doesn't weigh much, but the journals get heavy and
sculptural because of all the actual, physical objects people have
added: photos, stones, coins, fold-out pages, fabric, spices, coasters,
half of a California driver license, braids, cockroaches (still very
dead, fortunately)… 987 is literally bursting at the seams.

In yesterday's Times was an eight page Supplement on the AFI Fest, and on page 2 was this story:

AT AFI FEST
THE BEST OF WORLD CINEMA

With 148 films from 37 countries, AFI FEST 2007 is a window onto the individuals and cultures that make up our world. Finding a single film that embraces such a large concept seems impossible, but Andrea Kreuzhage's documentary 1000 JOURNALS, which makes its world premiere at the Festival, does just that.

The Festival has always been home to the best in international filmmaking. And this year's includes Academy Awards® entries from many countries, including Mexico's SILENT LIGHT, Romania's 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS, Lebanon's CARAMEL, Germany's THE COUNTERFEITERS, France's PERSEPOLIS and South Korea's SECRET SUNSHINE.

JOURNALS follows a sociological experiment and art project by San Francisco-based artist "Someguy," who left 1000 blank journals in public places to see what people would do with them. As people discovered the books, the journals spread over the globe and recorded the thoughts, hopes and dreams of people from Europe, Australia and even remote Alaskan villages.

In the film, Kreuzhage finds that the Journals Project creates a culture of its own, as people set up Web sites to track the books' progress, expectantly await the journals' arrival in the mail, and experience—sometimes unexpectedly—the manners and customs of all kinds of people.

"The 1000 Journals Project is an unmonitored social experiment, which relies on trust, and people's generous, creative 'donations' of time, effort, and love for a global community spirit," says Kreuzhage.

"The task is seemingly simple: Put something in this book, and pass it on. The challenge this presents fascinated me. People took the risk of collaborative black holes, of 'their journal' getting stuck along the way. To possess and consume wasn't the goal; this was all about creating and sharing, and it was a chance to take part in something no single person could achieve alone."

AFI FEST has invited "Someguy" to create and place journals in random areas at the Festival Village for anybody to pick up, write in and read. It's a chance for filmmakers and festival goers to record their thoughts about the films, the Festival and their experiences.

In its small way, the AFI FEST Journals Project hopes to open up yet another window, one that shows how the experience of seeing a film brings us together.

- Marc Lee

I scanned the story; here's the link.