From: Doug Chaffin\(\ (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Jul 19 2010 - 11:59:15 PDT
Short intro: My name is Doug, I'm 29, I'm dedicated to photo-chemical cinema as a personal visual non-story art form. Like most of us here, I have had to struggle and sacrifice to be a filmmmaker. To complete my 8-minute 16mm movie "PALMS", I made it virtually alone, for almost 3 years, at the cost of around ten thousand dollars for which I am still in debt over. I want other pure cinema enthusiasts like myself to be able to see my 16mm print projected on the big screen the right way. And I want to be able to continue to make more 16mm non-commercial purely cinematic movies, like my current uncompleted b/w film "7222".
I finished "PALMS" in August of last year and since then(except for the great filmmaker and Canyon Cinema director Dominic Angerame who gave me a great review, and for Don Yannacito's gracious review) , I have received no support from other abstract/poetic filmmakers or avant-garde programmers. They have been either rude to me or just non-responsive.
The festival situation seems very bleak to me and last year I did not have any money to afford submissions to anything except TIE. I have not been able to get a job working at any avant-garde film organization or institution which I would love to do because I care deeply for the cause of cinema as a personal art form that great artist heroes of mine like Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren championed and I care for the preservation and exhibition of other filmmakers' work, especially celluloid prints. Any money I would make would mostly be put right back into our cause anyway: buying film stock and making my movies, renting other filmmakers' prints, buying film artists' DVDs, and attending underground film screenings, festivals etc.
I would like to reach out to Anyone out there who would :
1) be willing to watch my movie - please feel free to email me or call me and I will mail you a DVD or even my film print(when i get a job and can afford to)
2) Anyone who can offer to screen my print at any kind of venue
3) Anyone who might even remotely be able to help me get a job
4) Anyone who could send me any DVDs of obscure non-commercial filmmaker's work, especially photo-chemical movies
Right now I am living for free with my Grandma, i don't have a car, I'm desperately trying my best everyday to get any kind of job and save up about 1,100 dollars so i can move to Boulder, CO and enjoy the great film and arts community that Stan Brakhage left behind. I want to work out there and attend the Film Studies program and continue to make my films, with an eye to maybe becoming a TA and then a film professor someday. I don't know of any other way to make a dependable living doing something I care about, finance my own work, help other filmmakers with theirs and help their films to be shown, and most importantly, have the film projection facilities and film library necessary to enjoy all the thousands of non-commercial movies that I am so passionate about seeing - Will Hindle, Bruce Baillie, Scott Bartlett, Ed Emshwiller, Andrew Noren, Phil Solomon, Jack Chambers, Timoleon Wilkins, Jim Davis, Germaine Dulac, more of Brakhage and more
of Norman McLaren et cetera into infinity.
Any help or any words of personal life experience that any filmmakers here would like to share with me would be immensely appreciated.
Sincerely
Douglas Graves
2400 E. Pleasant Valley Rd.
#4
Oxnard, CA 93033
702-580-4293
PURE CINEMA CELLULOID
http://www.purecinema-celluloid.webs.com/
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