Okay, I’m not actually going to be in Tel Aviv, but tomorrow night both DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER and ASHLEY AND KISHA: FINDING THE RIGHT FITare going to be playing in the Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival! Here’s the info:

Tel-Aviv Cinematheque, TLVFEST – Israel International LGBT Film FestivalYair Hochner2 Sprinzak StTel Aviv 64738 Israel
3:00 AM, theater L for ASHLEY AND KISHA3:15 AM, theater G for DAMON AND HUNTER

I don’t know why these films haven’t had more success in the US LGBT Festival circuit, no Reeling, no Frameline, no Philidelphia, none of the big gay and lesbian film fests. The whole film fest thing is a bit of a crap shoot, and after our submission blitz for ASHLEY AND KISHA, I decided that reaching for the film fest brass ring wasn’t the best place to put our money and energy.

Don’t get me wrong. We are thrilled thrilled thrilled when our films get a chance to play in a theater! And we’d never turn down a chance to be in a festival. But we’ve completely given up on the idea that first you do the film fests, then theatrical, the DVD. Both DAMON AND HUNTER and ASHLEY AND KISHA went out to the people first, then on to the film festival circuit. (We put the festival laurels on the second or third pressing.)

This is a contrariun marketing strategy, but it’s worked for us. Our DVD sales are on par with some of the most recognized documentaries of the last couple years. I think one of reason for this is that we don’t cannibalize our DVD sales with endless low or no paying festival appearances or a money-losing theatrical run. Apparently we’re not alone. From a recent Business Week article:

OPTING OUT OF THE FESTIVAL CIRCUIT
But like musicians who shun record labels (BusinessWeek.com, 10/10/07) to sell their music themselves, anecdotal evidence suggests documentary filmmakers—already an entrepreneurial bunch—are foregoing the conventional path of shopping their films to a distributor. They’re skipping such deals and using the Internet to get their stories in front of people who want to hear them.

But while DVD sales might be the financial backbone of Comstock Films, I still think there’s something special about seeing a film in a theater. I still think there’s something magical about the power of a film to turn a group of strangers, sitting in the dark, into an audience. And I because we’re inculcated in the notion that sex is a private, shameful act, I think that’s something wonderful and unexpected when that happens with one of our films.

So meet me in Tel Aviv, meet me there tomorrow night! If not in person, then in spirit!

Coming Soon!

I’m sure I flatter myself too much when I think that my films stand on George Carlin’s gigantic shoulders. His voice will be missed!

“To hold a camera is to be at war.” – Tony Comstock

Once upon a time, I tried to get something I called Pre-literate Productions/Savannah Cinema going with a Masai friend I had worked with in Kenya. But at the time editing the on a laptop was still considered unreliable, and I’m incompetent at anything requiring community mobilization, or navigating the vagaries of the not-for-profit world. The project went no where.

My friend Carlos is a having a little more luck (not surprising, since he actually knows what he’s doing.) If you’re in New York, and looking for some tasty fun this Friday, why not head over to the Cineminga Fund-raiser on Delancy. Good food, good drink, good cause!

In Tierradentro, Colombia, the Nasa people are starting to use digital video to tell their stories. Please join us for a presentation of Cineminga’s pilot project: Dreams of Mountains

Over the last year, Carlos Gomez has been working with a small group of people in the Huila reservation teaching them video techniques and writing a story. The images you will be seeing on the night area selection of the material we shot and edited during the course of the workshop, and will offer a rare window into a breathtaking landscape and wise, resilient people.

Chop Shop will serve delicious Colombian-inspired food.

Wine and beer will be provided by The Bubble Lounge.

We hope to inspire your financial support, so please bring your checkbook! Funds will go towards finishing the story and enabling this community to purchase their own basic media equipment.

Friday, June 20th 8:00PM
50 Delancey St, Apt 4
Contact Carlos at cgomez@mc.net

 For more information please visit: http://cineminga.org

Andrew Sullivan is a senior editor at the Atlantic Monthy, and blogs politics and culture at The Daily Dish. Sometimes I send him notes. Sometimes he publishes them. Yesterday I sent him this:

To: Andrew Sullivan
From: Tony Comstock
Subject: Clitoral Anatomy

Since you continue to be fascinated with the clitoris and use it in various of your arguements, perhaps you should do a little wood-shedding on clitoral anatomy. Your information is sorely out of date:

http://news.bbe.co.uk/hi/health/5013866.stm

HTH

Here’s today’s Daily Dish clitoris post:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/06/clitoris-envy.html 

A straight man setting a gay man straight on clitoral anatomy. No wonder Peggy refers to Sullivan as “Your boyfriend, Andie.”

Artist’s Shit, aka Shit in a Can

Two museum goers contemplate photos by artist Jeff Koons

When engaged in a debate there is a risk that you will arrive at a point when you realize that your opponent is not only incurious and ill-informed, but also willing to say almost anything, no matter how irrelevant and inflammatory, to score rhetorical points. When that point is reached, you realize that any light that might be shed by the debate will be blotted out by the heat; that there’s no point of any further engagement. I didn’t reach that point when Alison Croggon said this:

”…the defining essence of pornography is that it endorses, condones or encourages abusive sexual practice…”

Nor when she said this:

“I do find much pornography - especially the stuff you get on the internet - absolutely horrifying: yes, I’ve looked, young Russian women getting fucked by dogs with the emptiest eyes I’ve ever seen, what is that story? That’s not freedom, that’s slavery and imprisonment and rape. That’s not about life, that’s about killing something.”

Or even this: (more…)

Shine Louis Houston is using 35mm lenses on her current production!

Previous posts: Size Does Matter (The Incredible Shrinking Focal Plane),  Size Still Matters (Kirby Ferguson’s DVD)