The Full Weekend

Again, my apologies for leaving you in the dark about my glorious weekend!!! The past few days have been filled with busy activity, excitement and growth. let me tell you:

If you're like me, you love vampire movies! On Friday, at the RiverRun Film Festival, I saw one of these, but not your typical variety of horror film. The movie, called "Suck" is a hilarious take on the lives of the undead. It focuses on a failing rock band who becomes better and more popular as each member is turned into vampires one by one! During their rampage, they manage to eat a radio host, a groupie and many others. Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper and Malcom Mcdowell appear in the film, and homage is paid to rock greats not appearing in the film through album cover reference and jokery. So much fun! Check them out:http://www.suckthemovie.com/

On Saturday, Rob and I took a little drive to Columbia, SC to see my film, "Two Downtown" play in the Indie Grits Film Festival. We had a great time. The shorts program was full of experimental pieces of art, animation, comedy and documentary. One of my favorites was a short doc called, "Swim," about a segregated beach resort town called, Atlantic Beach, where all the black tobacco workers used to go to relax during the summer. The director included beautiful old photographs, lovely commentary and simple animation. However, the best part was yet to come...our film, "Two Downtown," won best short film!!! So excited, and certainly UNEXPECTED!!! www.indiegrits.com

On Sunday, my mother and I decided to drive to Cary, NC to attend a poetry writing workshop with Chris Salerno, a professor from NC State U. We had a great time! Chris was wonderful, and the first exercise he gave the group was to write the worst poem you could entitled, "The Unicorns at Dawn." Of course, in their hilarity, the poems turned out amazing! For the remainder of the workshop, we worked on poetic exercises from various prompts and they too, were a lot of fun to listen to.

That evening, I returned to Winston to watch another film at the RiverRun Festival called, "I Am Love," an Italian Movie starring Tilda Swinton. I had no idea Tilda Swinton is fluent in Italian! The film is about a woman who is married to a textile mogul, and how her family breaks off in different directions in love. And the film was gorgeous. The cinematography was luscious and flowing. The music was absolutely epic! My friend, Vanessa and I could hardly contain ourselves after the film!

Yesterday, I was back at RiverRun. That morning, three high schools bussed their classes to see the documentary, "Only When I Dance." The film is about two aspiring Brazilian balet dancers. One is a young man, and the other a black girl. The film shows the two as they work towards their dreams, the boy, ultimately succeeding and joining ABT and the girl struggling, because there are very few black ballet dancers in Brazil. She also struggles with not having the right body type for ballet. The film shows American kids what kids from other countries have to go through to achieve their dreams. We are very lucky! After the film, Jenny, one of my RiverRun Colleagues and a former dancer, talk with the students about the world of dance and various points in the film. It was very enjoyable!

Off to seize the day today...last class at HPU, singing lesson, and Dogtooth, a movie at RiverRun!

~Cara