Silent Score—On May 27 and 28, Santa Fe's Lensic Performing Arts Center will present a special event titled “Live Music, Silent Film.” On Friday, Buster Keaton's celebrated comedy Steamboat Bill Jr. will get live, toe-tapping accompaniment from Santa Fe's eclectic octet BING. On Saturday, it's the haunting horror drama The Man Who Laughs. Both screenings/concerts start at 8 p.m. Tickets are $8-15 at the Lensic box office (211 West San Francisco) or online at www.tickets.com.
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Cinematic Space—Filmmakers Bill Brown and Thomas Comerford are following up their 2002 Lo Fi Landscapes Tour with a new program of films about “the space of history and the history of space.” The new collection of 8mm and 16mm shorts is titled Pictures from the New World and culminates in “Chicago Detroit Split,” in which Brown and Comerford juxtapose footage of identically named streets in their respective hometowns, creating “chance encounters across time and space.” The tour will be stopping in Albuquerque on Wednesday, June 1, at the Guild Cinema. Brown and Comerford will be there in person to discuss their collaboration. Showtime is 8:30 p.m.
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Just Shoot Me—Christopher Coppola's newly rennovated Duke City Shootout (formerly DigiFest Southwest) is racing ahead with an impressive lineup of judges and mentors. Among the names being mentioned as judges are singer Tom Waits, director Spike Jonze, actor Peter Fonda, comedian Phyllis Diller and writer Tony Hillerman. Confirmed mentors include Allison Anders (Gas, Food, Lodging), Joe Dante (Gremlins), Patricia Cardosa (Real Women Have Curves) and Penelope Spheeris (The Decline of Western Civilization). The festival, in which seven filmmakers fight it out over the course of one week to shoot and edit their mini-masterpieces, will take place July 22-30. Final deadline for submitting your 12-minute script is June 1. You can find out more info at www.dukecityshootout.com.
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Write On!—The 7th Annual Screenwriting Conference in Santa Fe will take place June 1-5 at the Radisson Santa Fe. Five days worth of workshops, panel discussions and pitch meetings are designed to whip would-be screenwriters into professional shape. Among the faculty this year will be screenwriters like Jeff Arch (Sleepless in Seattle), Chris DeVore (The Elephant Man), Gerald DiPego (The Forgotten) and Daniel Pyne (The Manchurian Candidate) as well as assorted agents, directors, producers, story editors, literary managers and more. The emphasis this year is on both writing and marketing your film ideas. Log on to www.scsfe.com for information and availability.
