Out Of Your Seat, Onto The Screen
The first movies attendees will see on opening night of the Pride Film Festival will be those by entrants in the Pride Video Shoot Out. It's a friendly competition that's really about turning movie-watchers into movie-makers.
While some selections are obviously produced by seasoned filmmakers, others are the work of first-timers using everyday equipment. In fact, 2011's Video Shoot Out winners, Anna Saraceno and Anna Vanderzee, were brand new to film making.
Movies On The Quick
Participants are given only seven days to make a 3-minute film for the competition. Requirements include featuring a designated prop somewhere in the film, and speaking a required line of dialog. (Last year's prop was a quilt, and the line of dialog was "Blood is thicker than water.")
The submissions are shown on the first night of the festival, and audience members vote for their favorites. The winning selection is shown again on Saturday evening.
First Timer Nerves
Vanderzee says she was hesitant to appear in the film because at the time, the idea of seeing herself on the big screen of the Buskirk-Chumely Theater sounded terrifying. "But I couldn't be okay with somebody else playing me in the video, with my partner and all of my pets," she says. "So I stood outside and smoked a cigarette while it was playing."
Saraceno remembers being excited and nervous for the first viewing. "I knew that as soon as the opening theme started, either people were going to find it really funny, or they just weren't going to like it."
The laughter started immediately.
Behind The Laughs
In spite of how silly "The Lady Bunch" is, Saraceno says it has a serious undertone which gets at the heart of what any Pride event is all about.
"A lot of times we need to defend the fact that we consider ourselves to be families," she says. "We're kind of joking around that Anna and I have a family with our four animals, but I think the message is 'Family is what you make it.'"