Jazz at the Tratt Tenor Saxophonist Ernie Krivda

"A tenor wielding monster stalking the southern shore of Lake Erie.''
WHEN: 8-11 p.m. Sat., Feb. 19
WHERE: Matthew's Trattoria & Martini Lounge, 153 E. 13th St. (814-459-6458)
WITH: Joe Dorris, drums; Frank Singer, guitar; Tony Grey, bass
COST: $7 cover. Reservations recommended.
By Bob Protzman

If you think critically acclaimed, poll winning Joe Lovano is the one great jazz saxophonist from Cleveland, you're wrong.
If you need convincing that you're misinformed on the matter, please stop by downtown Erie's Matthew's Trattoria & Martini Lounge on Feb. 19 to check out tenor saxist Ernie Krivda, the "other" great Cleveland sax player.

Once described by a critic as "a tenor wielding monster stalking the southern shore of Lake Erie," Krivda, recently turned 66, has been called by some one of the greatest tenor players in jazz—period.

Now in his sixth decade as a professional jazz musician, Krivda has built an impressive discography of some 30 albums on nationally distributed labels such as Cadence, CIMP, Koch, Timeless and Inner City. His three Inner City albums, recorded in the late 1970s-early '80s while Krivda was living in New York City, and reissued on CD several years ago.

From the beginning, Krivda's playing has been praised by critics and peers alike as dynamic, original and unique.

His distinctiveness may come partly from his dislike of categories—in jazz or anything else. In what could be a self-description, he says, "I want to hear people who transcend categories. I love great be-bop players, but not because they're great be-bop players, but great players. I like players who are larger than the category they come from. Dexter Gordon, for instance. I guess he was a be-bop player, but I don't think about him that way."

His individuality as a musician also stems from the wide variety of influences he's absorbed--from his tenor-playing dad (Joe Lovanos dad, Tony, also played tenor) and other Cleveland musicians, as well as jazz giants he's listened to since childhood, some of whom he eventually worked with.

At 18, Krivda went on the road with the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra, directed by Lee Castle. Later, he played with Quincy Jones' last touring big band. In the mid 70s when Krivda was in New York City briefly, Miles Davis inquired about hiring him. Krivda's major influence and good friend, however, was alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley with whom Krivda played toward the end of Adderley's career and life. "I learned from him in so many ways. I listen to him now and just laugh, because he was so ridiculously good," says Krivda.

Krivda's sound and style are modeled on many sources, from his love of big bands and hard-blowing trumpet players to a violinist uncle.

"I always liked big bands (he leads one in Cleveland called the Fat Tuesday Big Band), and I loved (trumpeter) Roy Eldridge with the (drummer) Gene Krupa band. They have impact, presence and command, and those are things I try to bring to my playing" he says.

As for the violin, he says, "Leaping octaves is the nature of the instrument, and I try to do that on the saxophone."

Krivda also is a very physical player, bending up and down at the waist, somewhat in the manner of the legendary Sonny Rollins. "That's not something I think about; it's just part of what I do," says Krivda.

Rollins, while in motion, is famous for ripping off uninterrupted chorus after chorus of improvisation.

So does Krivda, who says of those long, flowing lines, "I practice that. I call it the momentum of ideas. To me, that's very important. I work hard on it" he says.

Rather than pedigree from important college/university music programs, Krivda has, as he puts it, education money couldn't buy.

In the 1960s, young Mr. Krivda got a gig in the house band at Leo's Casino, which presented all the great soul, R&B and Motown artists. "I'm sure there's some of that music somewhere in my playing," he says.

In the early '70s, he played in the house band at a Cleveland jazz hot spot called the Smiling Dog Saloon. "We opened for and I sometimes sat in with many of the greatest players. Can you imagine playing opposite people like Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Stan Getz, Art Blakey, McCoy Tyner, Sonny Stitt, Ahmad Jamal, and Ornette Coleman? I was so lucky, it was ridiculous. Six nights a week I'm getting a close-up of how it's done from the greatest players of the time. It had a tremendous impact on me."

Krivda's greatest achievement—so far—has to be his 1998 re-creation—recorded at Cleveland's Severance Hall--of the brilliant Stan Getz 1962 album with strings titled "Focus."

"A desire to record that music was with me for a long time, so it was that much more satisfying. It was a memorable concert," says Krivda.

He adds, however, that jazz is about now. "You like that you did those things, but you don't look back that much. I'm excited about my new group (The Art of the Trio), and after we're finished talking, I'm heading to my basement to practice and that will be the most important thing in my career."

For further information, go to www.erniekrivda.com.

expERIEnce Children's Museum
By Abby Dinges

Upcoming Events

Traveling Exhibit Debut!!
Monday, February 14th we will be debuting the traveling exhibit "Crime Lab Detectives" developed by the Museum of Discovery!
The crime is a break-in theft. The center piece of the exhibit is a full scale crime scene consisting of a section of a house and the garden outside. Surrounding the scene are six lab tables where the various clues are examined. There is also a Suspect Area and a Solutions Wall.
This exhibition was made possible with assistance from The Erie Community Foundation.


***During the duration of the exhibition, the Museum will be open 7 days a week! M-Sat. 10am-4pm and Sun. 1pm-4pm. Also, any Law Enforcement showing their ID/Badge during this time will receive Buy One, Get One Free admission!***


Toddler Story Time
Thursdays at 10:30am
Parents and children are invited for a story and hands-on activity related to a different theme each week. Story time is included with Museum admission
February 3rd – Chinese New Year February 10th – Valentines

February 17th – “The Hat” February 24th – Friends


Chinese New Year Celebration

Saturday, February 5th from 1pm-4pm

Families will learn which animals represent them on the Chinese Zodiac Calendar and are invited to explore the Year of the Rabbit. They practice using chopsticks and learn about the traditional dragon parade. This event is included in Museum admission and free to members.


Valentine Making

Saturday and Sunday, February 12th & 13th from 1pm-4pm

Want to create a special Valentine for someone you know? You can create your own Valentine here at the Museum using all recycled material! This event is included in Museum admission and free to members.

Poetry And Its Bearing
By Dr. Sonnet Mondal

It’s quite outlandish to put forward an answer from the core of the heart when asked about the importance of a particular art form in our lives. What is the importance of stories in our lives? What is the importance of novels in our lives? And my topic here, which is, what is the importance of poetry in our lives?

Now if we are asked about the importance of exercise, academics or a particular diet in our lives we can very well respond with strong statements to prove our point. We all want a good heath to survive well, a muscular figure to survive even better with greater stamina and undeniably we all want a secure and constant income source throughout our life to evade irregularities in a peaceable living. These effortless reasons are enough to define importance of the aforesaid three elements that more or less remains wound up with a decent living. But where can we find such reasons to define importance when it comes to penning poetry!
So let us prefer using the word ‘Role’ of poetry in this essay. When does one pen poetry and why does he/she do so? Answers will differ from poets to poets but the basic underlining principle is love towards the art.

A person having good command of language can write stories and novels if he possesses a commercial mind but one goes for poetry only if he is inspired. Inspiration in poetry doesn’t by and large come from people or awards. They can act as encouragement only but poetry itself acts as a brainwave to pen further verses. ‘Write a poetry today and you will surely pen another tomorrow and a chain will start to convert you into a poet.’ Here lies the uniqueness and specialty of poetry in philosophical terms.

Literally it is unique as the most pithy and figurative genre of literature. Looking back at the time when epic poetry reigned supreme to present days of free verse it has been portrayed in several forms which can be termed as its sub parts each possessing a noteworthy character to ascertain itself in the minds of people.

Poets or people who pen poetry often use the term hobby when asked the reason of their penning of poetry but we all notwithstanding only poets forget to mention that our primary hobby is thinking but too less people realize it and even if they do they find it too uncanny to mention it as a sideline. When the realization dawns in a better way and with much more freshness in it, people prefer penning poetry to detain those thoughts.

Here is where the birth of poetry takes place. It then acts like a parasite feeding upon feelings or like a magician capturing the flow of mind forcing us to pen, pen more for multiple reasons the primary being showcasing thoughts, talking to self, for peace, to protest and then comes the will to inject into other’s hearts for human nature is such of a kind that desires to share everything whether it be sadness, happiness or desire. Now if he is able to share, he will wait for reactions. Positive reactions are in a way blunders because the will to become famous through poetry develops .One runs to publish poetry and then wishes to get reviews and then to receive awards and so on.

The unending chain of desires affects this art form badly. May be not its language aspect but the aspect of thin thread like feelings get artificial. But taking the matter as a whole, poetry is the only art form that lures a person from the very beginning, inspires him in its world and places him in the beautiful world of hopes and desires without which the life will be like a ship without a helm.

Coming into the literary evaluation part of poetry, a person writing poems understands best the meaning of the following words, “Criticism becomes failure only when you stop trying.” Poetry is such an art that never lets you drop it no matter how much criticism you get. Another aspect is perfection. “A Poet pens his last poetry that day when he finds complete satisfaction by penning any poem.” But taking a look into lives of poets, they never did it actually, till their bones took away the strength from them to move their fingers. Thus it says poetry leads a person towards flawlessness.

Poetry is like the knife that goes on becoming sharper each time it is rubbed that is each time a new poetry is penned a better verse is sure to follow. At the same time it says through example that, “Perfection has no end.”

Coming to the sub parts of poetry or what it includes we can easily come into the conclusion that it contains more art forms within itself than any other. Music contains tune and rhythm, painting possesses visual beauty, novels contain stories but poetry contains them all and many more. For example, we know about novel in verse referred to as epic poetry that was in fact the starting medium of literature, we know about poetry being sung as songs and rhythm and rhyme are two vital elements in poetry. These prove the wide scope and profoundness in this art. Philosophy and aesthetics reign supreme here and the panache of a writer comes to test when he writes a verse, for it demands a lot through economy of words.

That poetry has less readership shouldn’t be a concern as it is not about money in poetry, it’s not about other’s ideas in poetry but the lessons to lead a better life which is realized only by those who write poems, even though a few. The essay might seem to present views in a sublime way but that is how poetry resides in hearts.

It is just like a glass which reflects your view. Similarly poetry reflects your nature when you give it a reading. I might not find its importance as much as global economics or academics but even a machine requires rest and so do humans. Without entertainment perhaps even the sharpest of minds would reveal dullness and poetry is an intellectual way of finding entertainment within oneself.

Great Lakes International Film Festival 2011 Call For Entries

Considered among the top 100 most popular film festivals in the world and as apart of a 501c(3) non-profit organization, the 10th annual Great Lakes International Film Festival has officially opened its Call for Entries and will accept submissions internationally of independently produced feature length and short length films and scripts in the genres of documentary, horror, experimental, Religious/Spiritual, animation, and all genre of music videos and Gay/Lesbian for the 2011 festival.

Showcasing the best films of the 2011 season, the Great Lakes International Film Festival will be held LIVE in the great city of Erie Pennsylvania on September 23rd thru September 24th 2011, with our online festival taking place September 22nd thru October 1st, 2011.

Our LIVE film festival will be held as a benefit fundraiser for the Second Harvest Food Bank of Erie Pennsylvania. There will be absolutely NO admission fee or ticket price charged to attendees of the LIVE film festival event, and the event will completely be FREE OF CHARGE to attend. All we ask is that each attendee makes a small donation of a non-perishable food product or cash. Moreover, 100% of all food and cash donations collected at the LIVE event will go to those of our local community who are in desperate need. More details will be announced as they become available.

Our film festival has reached a global echelon launching our festival interactively online allowing independent filmmakers and fans to watch and enjoy the films world wide on the go, from work and from the comfort of their own homes. In this technologically advanced world we live in, where communication and convenience MUST be at the tips of our fingers, we knew this was the next evolution in film festivals.

Since launching our fest online we have gained even more popularity among the film viewing public and filmmakers, not to mention production houses and distributors because they no longer have to travel to find the next film that will make Hollywood sit up and take notice. In this day and age, convenience is the name of the game, especially for the independent film industry.

Much like most other festivals, ours was limited by time in how many films we could screen at the fest. Simply put, if a film is good, it will be accepted and screened without time constraints. Films will not be available for download, but shall be presented in a video on demand system that will allow users to watch the films. The V.O.D. system will be secured and can be viewed from any computer.

Unlike other festivals streaming films online, films in this festival cannot be downloaded, the films HAVE NO EMBEDDING CODE and our HTML code if copied and pasted, the films will not play, therefore they CANNOT be placed on other websites.

The only time and place they can be viewed is in our festival. In short, we have gone to great lengths to set this system up to protect the safety and security of each filmmaker's film always keeping the filmmaker in mind. Basically, it is just as secure as a brick and mortar theater screening, only much better.

You hear so much about the environment and global warming it got us thinking. When you realize how much power is used during the film fest – electricity for the building, natural gas for heat and the gasoline the people use to get to the fest it left one hell of a carbon footprint. By doing the whole festival on line it actually helps cut down on greenhouse gases.

We shall accept all ranges of music videos, along with entries of short and feature length screenplays, stage plays, and teleplays of all genres and niches.

The 2011 Great Lakes International Film Festival will accept all forms of religious, Christian, and spiritual films including African, African American, Gay/Lesbian, Black, Hispanic, Islamic, Latino, Native/Aboriginal and student films from the United States and around the world.

The Great Lakes International Film Festival horror categories for scripts and films will include Horror, Thrillers, Science Fiction, Suspense, Grindhouse Horror, Horror Documentary, Horror Animation, and student films and scripts.

The annual screenwriting competition is a way for new and veteran scriptwriters to possibly get the break they need.

If there is anything as universal as the ageless storytelling of motion pictures, it’s the music that makes up life’s soundtrack.

The 2011 Great Lakes International Film Festival shall accept music videos from around the world of cross-continent and cross-genre productions. We shall accept music videos of all ranges from pop, punk, rock, alt-country, country-western, folk, reggae, hip-hop to electronica, jazz, blues, Zydeco, industrial, gothic, karaoke, avant-garde, world music, and experimental.

The Great Lakes Film Festival Scriptwriting Competition offers a $1,000.00 cash award to our first place winner of the 2011 competition among other prizes. The winning script will be forwarded to agents and industry professionals for consideration.

Printable Entry Form

Film Submission Fees, Deadlines and Rules

Script Submission Fees, Deadlines and Rules

Sanctum ~ Movie Review
By Roger Ebert

"Sanctum" tells the story of a terrifying adventure in an incompetent way. Some of it is exciting, the ending is involving, and all of it is a poster child for the horrors of 3-D used badly. The film is being heavily marketed as a "James Cameron Production," but if this were a "James Cameron Film," I suspect it would have fewer flaws and the use of 3-D would be much improved.

Based on a true story, the movie involves a scuba-diving expedition into the Esa-ala Caves of Papua New Guinea, said to be the world’s largest cave system. The plan is to retrace an already-explored route to reach a "base camp" somewhere far beneath the surface, and then to press on, perhaps to find how the surface water draining into the caves finds its way to the sea.

There’s no need to discover this, you understand, but after some loss of life, Frank (Richard Roxburgh), the leader of the expedition, tells son Josh (Rhys Wakefield) that only in a cave does he feel fully alive; the humdrum surface world is not for him, and "human eyes have never seen this before."

After awkward opening scenes of almost startling inanity, we find ourselves deep inside the cave system, and our heroes deep in trouble. They are combining dangerous climbing with risky diving, and it’s a good question why an inexperienced girlfriend was allowed to come along. Still, tactical errors are not what concerned me. I only wanted to figure out what was happening, and where, and why.

"Sanctum" should be studied in film classes as an example of inadequate film continuity. At no point are we oriented on our location in the cave as a whole, or have a clear idea of what the current cave space looks like. If you recall Cameron’s "Titanic," its helpful early animation briefed us on the entire story of how the great ship sank. That was a great help in comprehending the events of the ship’s final hour. In "Sanctum," there’s a computer animation showing the known parts of the cave, but as the POV whizzes through caverns and tunnels, it achieves only a demonstration of computer animation itself. We learn damn all about the cave. The animated map even flips on its horizontal axis, apparently to show off. Hey, I can do stuff like that on my Mac, and then my hair is parted on the other side!

The movie is a case study in how not to use 3-D. "Sanctum" takes place in claustrophobic spaces with very low lighting, which are the last places you want to make look dimmer than they already are. The lighting apparently comes from battery-powered headlamps, and the characters are half in darkness and half in gloom. Now why put on a pair of glasses and turn down the lights?

One purpose of 3-D is to create the illusion of depth. One way to do this is to avoid violating the fourth wall by seeming to touch it. Let me give a famous example from "Jaws 3D." The problem with that movie is that when the shark attacked, it was so big, its body touched the sides of the screen, and the 3-D illusion was lost. (The movie also has a scene of an eel attack, and that’s scary.)

Alas, the cinematographer of "Sanctum," Jules O’Loughlin, consistently touches the side of the screen. He even follows the curious practice of framing middle action with large, indistinct blocks of foreground stones and stuff. But they are out of focus so that the mid-range can look sharp, and 3-D only makes us wonder why the closer objects are less distinct. In close quarters, he has to use many closeups, and those, too, get old in a hurry in 3-D. The 3-D movie "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (2008) did a much better job of placing its actors in its spaces. Of course the spaces were mostly f/x, but there you are.

In its editing continuity, "Sanctum" doesn’t make clear how the actions of one character relate to the others. There is great spatial disorientation in the use of close shots. There is a scene where a character gets in trouble underwater, and I invite anyone to explain exactly what happens. "Sanctum" uses a tactic to distract from this visual confusion. Three team members follow many of the events from above on a large computer monitor. Alas, we don’t see what they see. We only get reaction shots of them seeing it. Where does their screen image come from? Head-mounted web-cams? A cam in that submersible lighting device? I dunno. How is the image transmitted? I doubt the cell-phone service is great in an underwater cave in New Guinea. Maybe they set up a LAN? How is it powered? They even complain about the batteries in their headlamps.

There are a few closing scenes which involve the ruthless rea­lity of who survives in a cave and who doesn’t. One of these involves Frank and Josh. We’ve had a long wait, but the scene works. It has absolutely no need for 3-D. I wonder if people will go to "Sanctum" thinking the James Cameron name is a guarantee of high-quality 3-D. Here is a movie that can only harm the reputations of Cameron and 3-D itself.

Google Offers Virtual Tours of the World's Top Art Museums

With Google's Street View, Web surfers can pinpoint and zoom into many parts of the world -- in some places, right down to street level.

Now, Google is using its Street View technology to help us view art from a new perspective.
 

Amit Sood is the head of the project, which has now become his full-time job. He hopes the Google Art Project will entice people to visit these museums -- as well as enrich the lives of those who cannot afford to do so.

"When I was in India, growing up in Bombay, I never got a chance to go to museums, to explore these artworks," he said. "I always just read about it. I just read about Van Gogh, I couldn't actually go to the Van Gogh Museum (in the Netherlands). Now I can."

The project's features include:

• One piece of art from each of the 17 museums rendered in high definition that Google says will give site visitors a real-world quality look at it.

• A Street View feature that lets viewers take a 360-degree virtual look into selected galleries. Users can click from a view of an entire gallery to a close-up look at one of the pieces inside it.

• A "create your own collection" feature that lets users select particular views of the artwork included and assemble their own virtual galleries.

The Museum of Modern Art said in a written release that Vincent Van Gogh's "The Starry Night" was selected for the high-resolution treatment.

One of the world's most famous paintings, it will be rendered in about 7 billion pixels, "enabling the viewer to study details of the brushwork and patina beyond that possible with the naked eye," according to the museum.

New York's Frick Museum has included works by Bellini, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Ingres, Renoir and others.

"The Art Project represents an exciting synthesis of art and technology, which will enhance the ways one can access and experience masterworks in great public collections while providing individuals and educators with new tools for sharing their impressions and discoveries," said Anne L. Poulet, director of The Frick Collection.

Other museums participating are: The Altes Nationalgalerie and Gemäldegalerie, both in Berlin; The Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art in Washington; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Museo Reina Sofia and Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, both in Madrid, Spain; Museum Kampa in Prague, Czech Republic; the Palace of Versailles outside Paris; Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum, both in Amsterdam, Netherlands; The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia; and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

"Every year we have over 3 million people that come to the museum, but online it's around 16 million -- and that's a number that's been increasing every year," said Steve Peltzman, chief information officer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

That signals that more people are using the Web and that people are more digitally savvy than they've ever been, he said.

The virtual tours aren't intended to replace the experience of standing face to face with works by the old masters, but participating galleries hope the project will pique interest in art and in turn increase visitor numbers over time.

Google uses vehicles mounted with special cameras to collect Street View images of buildings and neighborhoods around the world. The mapping service sparked controversy in several countries last year when Google acknowledged its Street View cars inadvertently collected data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks, including users' e-mail addresses and passwords.

Thanks to Street View technology, visitors to the Google Art Project site can also explore the area around each museum. So after getting their art fix, people can wander around Manhattan or take in the sights of Florence.

"We hope people will use the website before, during and after their visit to MoMA," Peltzman said. "With this technology there is so much that you can't do while you're at the museum. We think this will inspire people to come to the museum."

Mark Twain’s 18 Rules For Writing
By Rob Taylor

One of the best known American writers is Samuel Langhorne Clements, otherwise known as Mark Twain. Twain is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), called "the Great American Novel", and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He is also noted for always writing stuff people wanted to read…every time!

During his writing life, which lasted until the beginning of the twentieth century, he developed 18 rules that he, as well as a growing number of writer, even to this day, wrote by. The following are those rules:

1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.

2. The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.

3. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and the reader shall always be able to tell the corpses from the others.

4. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.

5. When the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.

6. When the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description.

7. When a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. (Characterization, esp. in dialog, shall be consistent.)

8. Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader.

9. The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.

10. The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones.

11. The characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency.

12. The author shall say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

13. The author shall use the right word, not its second cousin.

14. The author shall eschew surplusage.

15. The author shall not omit necessary details.

16. The author shall avoid slovenliness of form.

17. The author shall use good grammar.

18. The author shall employ a simple and straightforward style.

Now, remember these rules! They may not make you the next Mark Twain but the will help make your next story even better than you could imagine.

Boonies Film Festival Accepting Film Submissions, Sponsors and Donations

The Boonies International Film Festival at Warren, Pennsylvania, USA, is now open for business! The inaugural film festival will take place August 17-20, 2011 and the festival is now accepting film submission, sponsors and donations.

The Boonies will accept independent films in three categories: feature films, short films and music videos. Filmmakers wishing to submit their film to The Boonies International can do so through the online submission and marketing service, Without A Box at www.withoutabox.com.

Though discounted “Early Bird” film submission fees expire February 1, 2011, student submission fees are always at a discount. More submission and general information for filmmakers can be found at The Boonies web site: www.thebooniesinternational.com as well as at www.withoutabox.com.

Filmmakers, businesses and the public will appreciate that The Boonies International has made all festival screenings open to the public through our Sponsor-A-Seat fundraising campaign. Through this campaign, the festival hopes more people will be able to see the films presented.

Boonies Executive Director Jeff Clark states, “The festival is for filmmakers of all ages and our mission is education based, so we are hopeful opening the screenings to the public and film industry will make it much easier for families and organizations to see as many films as they like.” Not only will all screenings be open to the public at no cost, but the same is true for most workshops and festival parties. Only a small and select number of workshops and parties will have admission fees.

Clark added, “Offering the festival to the public at no cost is The Boonies way to optimize the educational opportunities of the film festival and allow people to see more films. It also allows those attending the festival to have more spending money, and that’s always nice. ”

Through The Boonies Sponsor-A- Seat fundraising campaign, anyone from corporate sponsors to grassroots contributors can support the festival. Donations are accepted at the festival web site through Pay Pal, at The Boonies address and at Boonies events. Specific sponsorship opportunities are available; please contact Jeff Clark for information regarding sponsorships with The Boonies International Film Festival at Warren, Pennsylvania, USA.

This 4-day international film festival is for filmmakers of all ages and will feature independent films, emerging technology, music and all art mediums. The festival will reward filmmakers with seven individual awards, each including cash, an artist-created trophy and TBA prize packages.

Film categories are: Best Feature Film, Best Short Film, Best Music Video, Best Actor, Audience Favorite, Youngest Filmmaker, and Oldest Filmmaker.

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