No, but they definitely eat fowl! I’m up in NYC for the 27th annual IFP Market (formerly known as the IFFM or Independent Feature Film Market but since there’s only docs and shorts here the name change makes more sense). The first elevator ride I take up to the apartment I’m crashing at has two other riders. Instead of “How you doing?” the first words I hear are “Do squirrels eat meat?” This is immediately followed by “…cause we didn’t think so but we just passed one chowin’ down on a dead parakeet!” Um, how do you respond to that? I think I said something to the effect that New York’s the only place I’ve ever seen black squirrels, so nothing would surprise me. These young guys were a little freaked out.
Day one of the Market for those of us attending for the screenings and panels- only officially starts Monday, but registration begins Sunday. A nice change this year is the video library opening from 1 – 8:30 PM on Sunday (thanks Bob Hawk!), giving us all a little jump on the week. I took advantage of this opportunity by previewing a good chunk of the Doc shorts including YESTERDAY IN RWANDA, a moving portrait of a young woman/genocide survivor living in Toronto who carries on but can never forget what has happened to her family and her people. The film was directed by Davina Pardo, creator of BIRDLINGS TWO, the quirky and personal doc that preceded PUCKER UP: THE FINE ART OF WHISTLING at the 2005 Florida Film Festival (FFF).
On the negative side, apparently Apple didn’t come through with the same type of sponsorship as in the past, so there are no computers in the hospitality area for filmmakers and industry to check e-mail. This is quite the inconvenience that hopefully can be rectified next year.
I ran into a well-groomed though raspy-voiced Gill Holland at the Filmmaker Welcome Reception at Lotus, and he broke the news of his upcoming wedding next week—congratulations and the best of luck! Gill produced Tim Kirkman’s LOGGERHEADS (Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature, FFF 2005) and the Midnight Shorts sensation, THE TOZER SHOW: BOMBS AND BLUEBALLS, and is readying four new titles for this year’s festival circuit along with signing a new female artist to his record label. He also introduced me to Paola Mendoza, co-creator and one of the three lead actresses in Lori Silverbush and Michael Skolnik’s ON THE OUTS (Special Jury Prize, FFF 2005). Paola is here with AUTUMN’S EYES, a similarly themed doc feature work-in-progress about a three-year-old girl whose teenage mom is in jail in Jersey City.
Later that night I hit the Brian Jonestown Massacre set at the Bowery Ballroom and unfortunately DIG! turns out to be completely accurate in its portrayal of bandleader Anton as a flaming a-hole. When they actually played the band sounded great—but there was way too much audience baiting, guitar tuning, band member abuse, whining about his equipment getting stolen, etc, to ruin what should have been a memorable show. The bonus though was that I got to meet Jim Jarmusch, who happens to be a big BJM fan. He was happy to hear that BROKEN FLOWERS was off to a monster start in its exclusive Orlando opening at Enzian, and that the theater has played almost all of his films. And even STRANGER THAN PARADISE just screened recently as part of the Sundance Channel Film Series. Having been present at the film’s groundbreaking premiere at the 1984 Telluride Film Festival, it was nice to finally greet one of our coolest and most talented filmmakers.
-Matthew
I've seen black squirrels in parks around Cleveland, Ohio. Never saw any of them eat meat though...
what kind of foods do squirrels eat if they can't find nuts or berries?
