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Me being one happy filmmaker and one happy blogger! I’ll have a lot of pictures and videos to show you once I get an upload cord, but here is the skinny on DocuClub, Meerkat Media, Stages and our Silverdocs screening!

DocuClub : http://www.mediarights.org/docuclub/

DocuClub is a film screening series of works-in-progress documentaries. Each month, a filmmaker presents a rough cut of her film. Afterwards, a moderator facilitates a discussion between filmmaker and audience. Constructive feedback from these sessions informs the finished film. Past films that have been screened at DocuClub include Born Into Brothels, The Boys of Baraka, and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.

Meerkat Media : http://meerkatmedia.org

The Meerkat Media Arts Collective is comprised of filmmakers, musicians, illustrators, writers and artists of all stripes who believe in collaboration and cooperation.

We take our name from the communal, prairie-dog-like mammal of the African grasslands, and attempt to make skill-sharing, role-swapping and shared creative authorship central to all our creative endeavors.

Using consensus and other tools of non-hierarchical process, we strive to create media that inspires, encourages, and motivates others to tell their own stories.

Stages : http://stagesmovie.com

In New York City’s Lower East Side, a group of elderly Puerto Rican women and youth of color unite to create an original play in twenty weeks. Grappling with obstacles both personal and political in their lives, homes and neighborhoods, the cast members struggle to weave their stories into art.

Stages follows the cast of the New York theater project from their first guarded workshops to their first off-Broadway performance, traversing themes of immigration, gentrification, aging and coming of age. As the cast discovers that stories transform the way we understand ourselves and each other, they find that sometimes, the hardest story to tell is your own.

STAGES at Silverdocs! : http://silverdocs.com/festival/films/2008/docuclub-works-presents-stages/
Since 1994, DocuClub’s In The Works program has offered filmmakers a safe environment to screen rough cuts of their documentaries before an audience of their peers and lovers of the form. The audience is encouraged to give constructive feedback about the structure, content, characters and clarity of the film in a post-screening discussion facilitated by an experienced filmmaker.

STAGES follows a group of older Puerto Rican women and youth of color who unite on New York City’s Lower East Side to create an original play based on their life stories. Reflecting on a range of issues that have colored and shaped their lives immigration, infidelity, abuse their stories inspire and empower others, and liberate the communities in which they are shared. They were first spoken across generations, and now they are performed for a sold-out show.

The plays were collaboratively directed by the Meerkat Media Arts Collective, an interdisciplinary group of artists dedicated to making media with a non-hierarchical and inclusive creative process. Only three years old, the collective has produced more than 20 short films, which have been screened across the country and broadcast internationally. STAGES, their first collaboratively-created documentary feature, is co-written, directed and produced by a team of 12 people.