Saturday, December 6, 2014

All Hail Couch Fest!

Currently, nine people are RSVPed via Facebook for this evening's event in Long Beach, California, with another eight down as "maybe's." If that seems like a slim audience, bear in mind that maximum cinephile capacity for this particular Couch Fest locale is just 20 to 30.

The annual grass roots short-films showcase was launched in 2008 in Seattle by Craig Downing. Each year, the event gets a fun round of media coverage. Reports about this year's 32-city edition have been shared by Seattle radio station KUOW-FM, University of Washington student newspaper The Daily, Seattle's KPLU-FM and So Cal's Long Beach Post.



From the Post article:

For filmmaker Kathy Payton, opening up her home provided her and her wife Belinda the chance to not only meet other locals — the couple moved here in August — but also give people a chance to walk around downtown afterwards.

"Why open my home?" Payton said. "I simply love the art of film and have been attending various festivals for many years. I've often told friends and family that some the best films or shorts I've seen were at festivals. I've also had the opportunity of screening one of my films in a few festivals so to be a part of one as a host is so exciting for me."

In Seattle, there are 18 hosting venues, each tapping a variation of selected shorts. An all-venues pass costs $10. Internationally, this thing reaches far and wide, from Brasilia, Brazil to Kathmandu.

Dave Rock and Fielding Edlow's eight-minute short DVR, above, is arguably this year's most #meta entry, not to mention one with many memorable zingers. At one point in this Tinseltown husband-and-wife discussion, screenwriter-she (Edlow) says to actor-he (Edlow's real-life husband Larry Clarke): "Oh, I love it! Career advice from the traffic cop on Moesha."

[Couch Fest 2014]

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