People We Met
by Shelly Schoeneshoefer

At the end of the “Eat and Shoot the Indie Way” lecture, the digital sound and video editor, Jürgen Hoppmann from Görlitz, Germany, asked me if I plan to eat something after listening to this talk and if so what. He seemed to be sour grapes when he stated The Slow Food Movement was only for the rich and that he planned to skip lunch. (SS)

Swedish director and animator Oskar Gullstrand said after his film showing that his film The Day after the Tomato took two days to make. Is that normal? Boy does he work fast. He was taken by surprise when Karen recognized his mouth on one of the animated tomato characters. Check out the website www.splinterarts.com. They are a very creative bunch of Swedish tomatoes. (SS)

When taking a bus limo ride with Todd Verow, director of Vacationland, Shelly learned that his film was self produced for the low cost of $8,000. With that price and some inspiration we could all brew up a independent film. Vedrow has been invited several times to the Berlinle and had hoped to win the Teddy award. While fishing io the internet, Shelly found that Verow is a champion of low cost, quality DV filmmaking has a solid reputation as a truly independent digital filmmaker. He has had films at Sundance and many other festivals. For interesting articles on the subject see: www.Bangorfilms.com. (KP)

Chinese Fortune Cookies: The marketing group from Beijing asked,” What do you think the West wants to see in an Asian film?” “Something like Eat, Drink, Man Woman or CrouchingTiger, Hidden Dragon or Hero.” “What do you think the Western viewer wants to see?“ Shelly asked in return. “I don’t know; the Chinese films can be so boring.” “What do you think of ThePromise?” “It’s not good either.” Strangely, I enjoyed The Promise which was the most expensive Chinese film ever made. I also learned that I don’t have a “T” on my badge like the daily press which gets the opportunity to see the press showings with all the stars. Thanks to my friend Oliver Bradley who works for a website in Brussels and whos I met last year, I got the ticket for this one. (KP)

Director Angelina Maccarone and producer Ulrike Zimmermann made Unveiled (Fremde Haut) which is a film involving an Iranian woman who flees to Germany for asylum. It is a movie dealing with gender identity as well as showing the refugee homes where asylum seekers have to live before they receive residency status. She explained how difficult it was to find someone to produce her film. The television stations did want to touch it because there was not a main character. That seems strange since the character Fariba (Jasmin Tabatabai ) definitely has the main role. Perhaps they were afraid this film would be a lemon?... which it was not. (??)

Correspondent Zhang Bihong writes for a News Agency out of Beijing. She had also lived in the United States and was interested in reading our Currents magazine. She informed me that Shelly means beautiful snow perhaps like a beautiful Snow Cake? (SS)

Kinder Lounge: We were like Peas in a Pod.
The kid actors from Opal Dream were dying to go see some film themselves. Their manager was yelling no time! no time! (No time for an interview or for the kids to have a bit of fun?) (SS)

I definitely had a good laugh with director Dean Chircop of Bloody Footy when he said he just could not make a film about cricket and skiing is a bit difficult in Australia. Naturally this was the perfect year to make a film about soccer since the World Championship is going on. Since Germany is hosting it, it seemed to be perfect shoo-in with this film. (SS)

After meeting, drinking and shaking hands with the director, producer and main actress of Lovitor, a Russian 14pluscChildren’s film about street kids. I noticed that things just didn’t add up when checking out the business cards from these gentlemen against the names in the catalog. Strange!!!....or was it the wine? (SS)

I had a nice surprise meeting with the American director and producer, Joel Pablombo, of Milk and Opium, a children’s film. When he was presenting his film, Shelly noticed that he spoke perfect German. Is your wife German? As a matter a fact she is and comes from Hamburg. We have two kids and live in India. It’s a small world isn’t it and it’s getting smaller. (KP)