February Screenings: San Francisco and Honolulu

It's official - The Insular Empire will be screening soon in both my home town of San Francisco and on the campus of the University of Hawaii at Manoa (Honolulu)! February never looked so good. :)

Thursday, February 18, 2010 7:00 pm
Galeria de la Raza
2857 24th Street, San Francisco

FREE screening
with special guest panel:
Deboráh Berman Santana
Dr. Hope Cristobal, Jr.
Craig Santos Perez
Vanessa Warheit
Angela Tennison

Sponsored by Famoksaiyan and made possible by
Galeria de la Raza’s Grantwriting for Indigenous and Native American Artists (GINAA) program

**********

Sunday, February 21st, 4:00 pm (doors open at 3:30pm)
UH Manoa Architecture Auditorium (room 205)
Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii

FREE screening
with special guest panel
Lino Olopai
Dr. Hope Cristobal, Jr
Angela Hoppe Cruz
Terri Keko'olani
Vanessa Warheit

Sponsored by:
The Hawaii Council for the Humanities
UHM Center for Pacific Islands Studies
UHM Dept. of Anthropology
Hawaii People's Fund
Pacific Islanders in Communications
AFSC Hawai'i
UHM Marianas Club

Refreshments to follow

Welcome note from the Director

Welcome to Horse Opera's spanky new blog for The Insular Empire: America in the Marianas. In the weeks and months ahead, I will be posting updates and information here regarding the film's progress.

Currently The Insular Empire is at a rough cut stage -- meaning the basic structure is in place, but there's still a lot of work to do. The rough cut is 78 minutes long, and the final film festival version will probably be about 75 minutes. But to get on PBS, it has to fit in a 56:46 window -- which means I somehow now need to hack out 22 minutes. 

To get the film done, out to festivals and on the air (and into the hands of community organizers like Famoksaiyan), there's still a lot of work to be done. And the first task is to raise money. Six proposals are currently in the hands of funders, and more are being written. And of course, I'm continuing to accept donations from everyday people like you, who are willing to lend a hand because you want this story to be told.

Once the financing is in place, next steps include:

• More editing. Bringing the festival version to a fine cut - and hacking out 22 minutes for the PBS version.
  
• Animation and graphics. I am desperate to find a good animator here in Vancouver. (Send me your recommendations! I'll be posting a job description here shortly.)
  
• Music. The amazing Todd Boekelheide will start on the film's score as soon as financing is secured.
• Archival. The Insular Empire is FULL of fantastic archival... all of which needs to be procured in original format and cleared for distribution.
• Sound mix, online, color correction, and a lot of other technical hoo-ha that broadcasters require.
• Distribution strategy. How can we get the most people to see this film??
  

Wanna help make it happen? It's easy! Just click here and follow the easy instructions to make a donation. No amount is too big or too small! And if you can't afford to send money our way... send us your emotional support. This has been a long, hard, labor of love -- and your good wishes mean a lot to me.

Please feel free to share your comments and add your voice to this blog. I look forward to hearing from you.

- Vanessa