3 of my friends had films at Sundance this year, so I decided to go support and check out the scene at American indie film's uber-festival.

Went to support these 3 friends:

Shorts by Columbia MFA Friends Madeleine Olnek "Hold Up" and Fellipe Barbosa "La Muerte Es Pequeña".

"Hold Up" also won Best Short at New Fest in New York in June. "Hold Up" held it down representing my class at Sundance, directed by Madeleine Olnek, written by Jen Heck, produced by Ryan Gomez, DP'd by Nat Bouman.

Madeleine and I did our 1st homework assignment for Film School together in September 2003, when she and I peformed a moving scene as "the Bush Twins running away from Secret Service" for Peter Miner's Directing the Actors class. After that, we had screenwriting together 1st year with Sabrina Dhawan (writer, "Monsoon Wedding") and Jamal Joseph ("Hughes' Dream: Harlem"), and Directing together 2nd year with Peter Sollett (dir, "Raising Victor Vargas"). I think we also had some nervous breakdowns together before Crit. I also recently found out that Madeleine was one of the writers of the "The Practical Handbook for the Actor" with David Mamet.

Jen and I won the Panavision New Filmmaker Grant to shoot a 35mm crazy short which I produced and she directed at a travelling carnival last August during Hurricaine Katrina. More on that in another entry. Nat shot my 1st short "Lisa Cleans House" the summer after 1st year. The crew was basically...Nat and my 12 year old cousin on boom. yes, very "film school". Luckily, he is the quiet kid in class who always has a camera in his backpack and knows how to make mini-DV look like 35mm with minimal lights and camera settings. Believe it when you see it, folks. The digital revolution lives uptown. Ryan and I slogged through 2 years of 6-9pm producing classes together with our small band of Producing Concentrates (that's columbia slang for Majors) -- practicing our baby-step pitches in class, reading "Down and Dirty Pictures", studying budgets and contracts by the masters Barbara DeFina (prod, "Casino"), Katie Roumel/Killer Films (prod, "The Notorious Betty Page"), and many others. He got into the prestigious IFP Producers' Lab in LA in October, and came back to school this semester repp'd by the Gersh Agency. Pretty sweet. Fellipe acted in a scene for my directing sketches. And he's from Brazil.

The main feature I went out to support was Columbia 5th year Tanuj Chopra's "Punching at the Sun" which really brought post-9/11 desi (south asian) New York to life with lots of heart. The stars are from New Heritage Theatre in Harlem and SAYA!, the youth center in Queens where my friend Sonali and I helped start an arts program back in 1998. It really represented what young people in our community are going through in a funny and touching way. Catch it when it comes to a festival your way.

I was also secretly there to meet the intergalactic planetary Beastie Boys. I've spent the winter producing a short film written by Ad Rock's dad Israel Horovitz (1996 European Academy Award for "Sunshine") that will be directed by my classmate Matt Linnell in late March. Luckily fellow Columbia student Patrick works for ThinkFilm and I was able to meet the rap icons at the reception for "Awesome! I Fuckin Shot That!". The party was held at VW Lounge, and Mixmaster Mike got the crowd moving to hip-hop with a smattering of bhangra. There were some Japanese DJ's and hiphop icons lounging amidst relatively prim Industry folk. One of the highlights of Sundance was when I happened to join a circle of friendly filmmakers at this reception. One of them was named "Todd" who "works with Killer Films" who was there with his Line Producer. We had studied his film "Camp" (a comedy about musical theater camp) in our Music Supervising class. Somehow the conversation went to dailies. A tall German man said, "Yeah, dailies, my brother never watches dailies." Which gave a shock to the others, "Oh, that's a huge risk. What films has he directed?" "Downfall. I produced it. We're twins." He smiled, "He just watches the monitor." (Woah, the chilling 2004 academy award nominee? pretty impressive to Ms. Film School.)