Upcoming screenings

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to make sure that all of you who aren't a part of our Facebook group know that we have some festival screenings coming up...

Palo Alto International Film Festival
Friday, September 30th
Palo Alto Square
4:30 PM

Saturday, October 1st
Aquarius
12:00 PM

Palo Alto IFF website

Visionmaker Film Festival / NAPT (Lincoln, Nebraska)
The Ross
Friday, September 30th
9:00 PM

The Ross
Saturday, October 1st
7:00 PM

Visionmaker FF website

Woodstock wins!

Andrew and I traveled to upstate New York this weekend to one of our favorite festivals, Woodstock FF. We've been once before in 2008 with our short film SIKUMI, which ended up winning Best Student Short at that time. We were in competition at Woodstock this time with ON THE ICE and were thrilled on Saturday evening when OTI was awarded Best Narrative Feature and Best Cinematography for our DP Lol Crawley. (Because Lol was not able to come to Woodstock for the festival, I accepted his Best Cinematography trophy award on his behalf)

Click HERE for the full press release online.

Although there were many more we wanted to see, we were able to see three fantastic films. The films couldn't be more different from each other, but they were all excellent. We finally got to see Josh Leonard's film THE LIE which everyone should look for in a theater near you in November. It is at once hilarious, deliciously uncomfortable and genuinely touching. We also saw Mark Simon's fascinating documentary UNRAVELED about lawyer Mark Dreier, who stole hundreds of millions of dollars from hedge funds and was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2008. The third film we saw was TILT, a captivating Bulgarian indie about a group of street kids living and loving in the midst of political upheaval during the fall of Communism. See this film for its exceptional performances and editing. TILT won the editing award at Woodstock and Honorable mention for Best Narrative Feature. If you want to learn more about these films go to the Woodstock Film Festival website.

Our thanks and hugs go out to the wonderful Meira and Laurent. You run a very special festival and we were honored to be a part of it.

Officially Funded!!

We are so pleased (and very relieved) to share the good news that as of last night at 9pm EDT, our Kickstarter campaign closed and was a bonafide success. Our final number was $85,690 and we couldn't be more grateful to the 840 backers who pledged for us!

Click HERE to watch some thank you videos that we posted yesterday. Cara's comes up first in Update #16; Andrew's is at the bottom of Update #15.

We can't wait to celebrate with all of you at the theaters!

Cara

Anchorage Daily News Article

Inupiaq filmmaker turns to kickstarter.com to reach theaters (UPDATED)

Posted by thevillage

Contributor: Kyle Hopkins

Posted: September 1, 2011 - 3:00 pm

UDPATE: The kickstarter.com total for "On the Ice" just jumped another $10,000 in donations. That means the filmmakers are now within $30K of their goal.

Alaskan filmmaker Andrew Okpeaha MacLean and producer Cara Marcous hope to raise enough money through kickstarter.com to put their Barrow-based film, "On the Ice," in about 10 theaters around the country. (Photo by Rob Meyer courtesy United States Artists)

From Kyle Hopkins in Anchorage --

“On the Ice” is halfway to a theater near you.

Producers of the independent, Barrow-based thriller have raised $40,000 of the $80,000 they say they need to show the movie in about 10 theaters around the country.

The filmmakers started the fund-raising push earlier this summer on www.kickstarter.com, a website that asks people to pledge donations to creative projects. If a project doesn’t meet its fund-raising goal by a given deadline, no money is collected.

For "On the Ice," time is running out.

Starring Alaska Native actors, the thriller premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Awards followed at the Berlin and Seattle international film festivals. But critical acclaim doesn’t guarantee that movie distributors will gamble on putting your film in theaters, especially without a marquee star.

After Sundance, producers of “On the Ice” heard a lot of “I love your movie, but …”

“The film has done really well and gotten all these awards but none of the traditional distributors will really go for it in a big way, because we have all first-time actors,” said producer Cara Marcous.

Some distributors offered to release the movie on screens in L.A. and New York only -- a limited release. The makers of “On the Ice” were thinking bigger.

Plus, Marcous said, they wanted the theatrical release to include cities in Alaska as well as markets like Denver, Seattle and D.C.

That’s where Kickstarter.com comes in. The website, founded in 2009, allows the producers to make their fund-raising pitch directly to fans and supporters.

So far, more than 380 people have pledged more than $40,300 to help “On the Ice” reach theaters. Only a week remains, however, before the 5 p.m., Sept. 8 deadline for the filmmakers to double their money and reach their goal.

The cash would be used to create a trailer for the film, create reels of film that would be shipped to theaters and pay for a publicist, Marcous said.

Typically, distribution would cost far more, but the producers will lean on the Sundance Institute’s Artist Services program, which aids independent filmmakers in marketing and online distribution.

Written and directed by Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, who is Inupiaq, “On the Ice” cost around $1 million to make, Marcous said. It was shot in April and May of 2010 in Barrow.

Here’s how the filmmakers describe the story:

“Early one morning, on a seal hunt with another teenager, an argument between the three boys quickly escalates into a tragic accident. Bonded by their dark secret, the two best friends are forced to create one fabrication after another in order to survive.”

See the article online HERE.

ABC Anchorage news story

ABC's Anchorage affiliate KIMO did a news piece last night about our Kickstarter campaign for ON THE ICE. You can watch the LIVE interview with Andrew HERE.

Please note: For some reason they broadcast footage from our short film SIKUMI, so the footage you'll be watching while Andrew is interviewed is not from our feature ON THE ICE.