I have discovered another reason to blog about the upcoming CineFestival. My short documentary I submitted — “Dia de los Locos” — will indeed be screening. Saturday morning. It will be in with a block of other short pieces between 10am and 11:30am. So, I guess I will be opting out of the extra hours offered Saturday by the Company.

This from the website:

Saturday, April 12
10:00 am – 11:30 am, GCAC Gallery -Taste of Texas Shorts

Rio Grande Odyssey, Dir. Chad Green, 3 min.
Dia de los Locos, Dir. Erik Bosse, 15 min.
DreaMachine Lullaby, Tonzi Canestaro-Garcia, 7 min.
Requiem for Sweep, Vincent Moreno, 11 min.
The Great Wall of Texas, Dir. Valerie Asensio, 7 min.
Ram, Dir. Tyler Ybarra, 5 min.
Eye for an Eye, Rogelio Salinas, 8 min.
Hurricane Party, Dir. AP Gonzalez, 28 min.
Preview: Long As I Remember: Chicano Veteranos, Dir. Laura Varela, 10 min.

I don’t know if this is the order in which the pieces will be screened.

I’ve seen Rio Grande Odyssey about four times already. It’s excellent! Directed by Chadd Green, shot by AJ Garces, produced by PrimaDonna Productions, and featuring poet Rod Stryker, it’s smart, slick, fast, wise, and funny.

My own piece moves along fairly well — or so I like to think. It features my collaborators and co-producers, Deborah Keller-Rihn and Ramon Vasquez y Sanchez (we comprise Proyecto Locos — an artist collaborative). I’ve flogged it about quite a bit locally, but if anyone out there has yet to see it, come on out Saturday morning. (Actually, it’s posted online, accessible through my website).

I’ve seen some of Vincent Moreno’s work before at a NALIP video slam. Very beautiful and moving work.

Tyler Ybarra is perhaps best known for his wonderful mockumentary, Tripas Love. I’m guessing this short piece is a pean to the late lamented head honcho of the legendary Tacoland.

Rogelio Salinas is a very focused filmmaker with a clear path in the work he wants to create. I’ve seen bits of a work-in-progress of his over the months. Very promising work with striking photography.

And of course, Laura Varela. She’s undisputedly one of San Antonio’s most committed and serious filmmakers — I’m really looking forward to this preview of her current big project.

As for the other films, I know nothing about them or their creators. But I’m expecting to see wonderful and new work.

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I woke up this morning feeling fairly seedy. And as the day progressed I knew I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t coming down fast with a cold. This is going to make this upcoming weekend a bit of an ordeal. I want to take advantage of as many of the CineFestival screenings as possible. Also, I have an opportunity to pitch the Josiah Youth Media Festival to some young filmmakers. Then there’s the Main Plaza opening. And, also, I have agreed to help shoot a rather hush-hush gorilla art event which is scheduled to meander, peripatetically, through downtown and the southtown area over the weekend. Damn, but it’s sad, in a way, that I no longer have connections to black market pharmaceuticals. (Ah, those were the days. Sometimes I wonder how I managed to live through them.)

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It’s interesting that I found out today that the Dia de los Locos documentary was scheduled to play at CineFestival (thanks to a MySpace bulletin from Vincent Moreno), because I met for breakfast with the other two members of the project. Me and Ramon were sitting at a westside taqueria. We managed to cajole Deborah to come and join us. She was in the neighborhood shooting photos.

Ramon had recently bought a really kick-ass Canon point-and-shoot camera at a pawn shop. It came cheap, but lacked an instruction manual. When Deborah showed up, she took a look at Ramon’s camera, rummaging through the menus to see what it might do. While they were doing that, I checked out Deborah’s newish DSLR, a Nikon. It’s a nice little machine. And I’m glad she got it. I’ve seen her do some great stuff with little point-and-shoot digital cameras (since her last DSLR crapped out), but clearly she was hampered. No more.

What Ramon wanted to talk to us about was not really a new Proyecto Locos project, but an idea he has to create a binational cultural exchange between San Antonio and Mexico. Sure, there are loads of groups already doing this, but his plan is intriguing, and I think quite possible. It involves a certain amount of politicking, and here is where me and Deborah come in. We three have all done work that fits into this mold. Deborah was quick to point out that she was in the middle of her own projects, and so, she assumed, was I. But we all seemed to think this idea of Ramon’s might have merit. Maybe we could be involved via some sort of advisory committee.

Personally, I know that one of Ramon’s reasons for doing this is to create more opportunities to travel to Mexico. And, personally, I’m all over that.

We’ll see. Ideas are everywhere, but the grand ones only seem to take hold when a series of uncertain and unplanned events coalesce.

But while we were tossing around ideas, Ramon mentioned something about an idea he has had for awhile about a Barrio interpretation of Gibran’s The Prophet.

This would be loads easier to do than to create a binational cultural exchange program.

The more I think about it, the more I think I need to push Ramon to consider this the next Proyecto Locos project. Theater and / or film. “El Profeta at the Pik Nik.