Short entries related to the cinema, music, media, politics, social issues, and personal grievances.
Brought to you by Brendan Prost. A 22 year old independent filmmaker, university student, radio show host, etc.
Posts tagged independent.
Now Available: At long last, my second feature film Choch is available to rent and own. We are utilizing an innovative new distribution platform called Distrify to offer an instant stream of the entire movie in glorious high-definition for $3.99, a downloadable HD rip that you can keep on your computer to share and watch whenever you want for $8.99, and we will of course also be selling our self-authored limited edition DVD for $15.
Get paid to share: Why Distrify? Well, on top of the flexible delivery and payment options the platform offers, the most attractive element to me was the sharing incentive system. With Choch on Distrify, whenever you share our video player on your website, blog, or social network, you will receive 30% of whatever revenue we garner from people buying or renting the film from that widget that you shared. It is to your advantage as well as ours that Choch circulates to as many people as possible. Get paid to support independent film!
Support my new project: I am currently in the pre-production stages of my new feature film project and will be directing all revenue raised from rentals and sales of Choch towards funding that project. If you enjoyed Choch, Generation Why, and my other films, you can help me produce new work by buying or renting the film and spreading our video widget.
The sad truth revealed in Like Crazy, that the film so successfully underlines in the final scene, is that love and emotional fulfillment are, like most things, subject to the limitations of time, place, and circumstance.
We like to imagine that everything we need is potentially within reach, and that we need simply the will to grab hold of it. We like to think that if we truly work hard enough, that the things we desire can be ours. With effort and a little perseverance, our relationships can and will succeed. A society like ours, guided by self-determination, believes that it’s all up to us to make things work.
Like Crazy exposes this as a fallacy. The scary reality the film confronts us with, that makes its’ final frames so devastating, is that the time, place, and circumstance may never be right. These are elements of our lives that we often have no control over. Therefore, our happiness or quality of life may largely be determined purely by chance or by other forces beyond our manipulation (personified in the film as a faceless, unreachable bureaucracy).
Belief in our own ability to find fulfillment, particularly in our relationships with other people, is a useful delusion, but not entirely well-founded. I guess all we can do is try our best, be honest, and hope that fate treats us as well as we deserve.
Like Crazy is a 2011 film by Drake Doremus, starring Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones.
When you starting throwing your body around like this, you know you’re excited.
(via you-refromanothertime)
The poster for my new short film, Jerk, which will be premiering in Vancouver on Tuesday May 1st 2012 as part of “Glitter and Doom: The Second Year Film Screening” in the David Mowafaghian Cinema at SFU Woodwards (the Goldcorp Center for the Arts).
Jerk is a short narrative character study of a reclusive, self-fulfilling young graduate student who has fallen into a pattern of disassociation. During the course of his routines this student begins to encounter a woman who resembles a familiar figure from an online adult video. Initially shocked by this revelation, he becomes transfixed by the potential implications…
My feature film Choch will be screening Friday March 23rd in That Empty Space at the University of Calgary at 6pm. This free event is being hosted by the sociology students association, and will be accompanied by food and beverages. Members of the cast who will be there include Cody Cox, Mike Thorn, Stephanie Foran, and Sean Sinclair.
RSVP and invite your friends on Facebook.
If you’re in Calgary at this time, please consider attending. If you know people in Calgary who would be interested in this screening, please pass along the word to them. This is a rare opportunity to see the movie with an audience and to engage in a discussion about some of the ideas broached the film: identity construction, the portfolio personality, self-alienation, unexamined subcultures, self-reflexive characters, peer pressure, sexism as a condition of masculinity, etc.
Recent recipient of a 4-star review from FilmThreat, Choch is a portrait of a young man struggling with an unattractive and misleading identity he’s developed for himself over a number of years. Day after day he recoils at the things he says and does, but is confined to complacency and self-hate by the same insecurities that birthed his false persona in the first place. A cycle of regret and resignation seems doomed to repeat itself until circumstance manifests a confrontation between the outward and the inner self, suggesting that perhaps there is hope for this partially assembled soul to be more than what he pretends to be.
Combining vérité photography and new-wave editing with internalized and partially improvised performances, Choch offers a symbolic and sparingly evocative portrait of an unlikely individual’s identity crisis.
Visit the website. View the trailer.
“Choch radiates an emotional honesty that makes it one of the most intriguing and involving low-budget indies to cross my desk in 2011.” - The Independent Critic
“A naturally performed and assured piece of work.” - The Calgary Herald
“When two worlds collide… Prost handles it perfectly.” - Film Threat
“Disconcerting, universal, beautiful” - A Certain Slant of Light
“Visually captivating, and tightly put together by an artist on the verge of a breakthrough.” - Time Consuming Productions
“I found myself thinking about Choch for days afterward. Even better - I found myself thinking about my own manufactured identity because of it.” - These Rabbit Ears
“The film offers truly unique insight into what personal identity means, the meaning of friendship, and the prospect of change.” - Level 2
Poster for Andrea Dorfman’s 2003 film Love That Boy. A Canadian gem.
So I went back to my hometown of Calgary March 3-10 for two reasons. The first was a screening of my first feature film, “Generation Why”, that was hosted by the sociology club at the University of Calgary. The second was a screening of my short film, “Transfixed; What’s Broken”, at the $100 Film Festival.
My dear ol’ dad shot some video from both the events and I’ve whipped some of it together to serve as some kind of measly memorandum.
It is always a rewarding experience to share your work with people. Even if the audience isn’t quite as large as you thought it would be, even if people aren’t profoundly moved the way you hoped, even if you garner little or no recognition, even if the presentation isn’t perfect, and even if it doesn’t make you happy. It’s a privilege to be able to be creative and to have people take an interest in what you had to share. Thanks to everyone who came!
My feature film Generation Why is screening at the University of Calgary on Tuesday March 6th at 6pm at That Empy Space in the student union building. This is a free event hosted by the sociology students association, and will feature a Q&A and general discussion after the movie, as well as free food for attendees.
The film is a thoughtful and engaging examination of a young generation’s struggle to find themselves and their place in the world as seen during the course of a ‘slacker uprising’ in one city incited by three frustrated high school graduates. The Independent Critic says that Generation Why “nicely blends dry, witty humor with light drama and rather serious social insights into a heartfelt, intelligent story” and Rogue Cinema praises it as “absolutely a beautiful looking film… it’s entertaining, yet it puts its finger right on the pulse of young North America”. You can learn more about the film by visiting the website.
If you live in Calgary, please consider attending this event, which is open to everyone, and please let your friends know about it as well. Local independent film needs your support to thrive and survive. Hope to see some of you there!
If you don’t live in Calgary, you can watch the film on Indieflix, order a DVD from me, or host a screening with OpenIndie.
My feature film Generation Why is screening at the University of Calgary on Tuesday March 6th at 6pm at That Empy Space in the student union building. This is a free event hosted by the sociology students association, and will feature a Q&A and general discussion after the movie, as well as free food for attendees.
The film is a thoughtful and engaging examination of a young generation’s struggle to find themselves and their place in the world as seen during the course of a ‘slacker uprising’ in one city incited by three frustrated high school graduates. The Independent Critic says that Generation Why “nicely blends dry, witty humor with light drama and rather serious social insights into a heartfelt, intelligent story” and Rogue Cinema praises it as “absolutely a beautiful looking film… it’s entertaining, yet it puts its finger right on the pulse of young North America”. You can learn more about the film by visiting the website.
If you live in Calgary, please consider attending this event, which is open to everyone, and please let your friends know about it as well. Local independent film needs your support to thrive and survive. Hope to see some of you there!
David Robert Mitchell’s 2010 film, The Myth of the American Sleepover.
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