We have a finished film. Now what?
Sound spot at the Hollywood Theatre.
Seeing it for the first time on the big screen, I cried.
Last month we had our final sound spot for Wine, Women, and Dementia, a quality control session where picture is married to sound and you make sure it's all in synch, volumes are perfect, and nothing's been missed. We decided to do it in an actual theatre so we could have access to the Dolby 5.1 sound, and hear exactly what a theatrical audience will hear. There were less than 10 of us in attendance, the best ears and eyes we could muster in the middle of a weekday to check everything one last time.
I was overwhelmed. I who crafted this tale. I who have lived this story. I who know exactly how it ends fought back tears (unsuccessfully) at the immenseness of the power and beauty in our caregiver stories.
I was taken aback by my emotions, but recovered enough by the end to proclaim "It's done!"
Now comes a whole new learning curve: the various paths to distribution to get Wine, Women, and Dementia to you. We've started with film festivals.
By the way, it's a ton of fun to apply for film festivals. I suspect it will be a ton of not fun to get a rejection notice, but for now it's all possible!
We've gone for the biggies like Sundance, woot! And others that just look like hella fun (looking at you Filmfort).
We have concentrated on the winter festival season, so subscribe to Wine, Women, and Dementia for all the info on where WWD will be playing in 2023.
And as for getting WWD out in the big wide world after that, well, we are still figuring it out.
In the meantime, I have been invited to present excerpts from Wine, Women, and Dementia at...
And The Other Girl is coming with me!
We are incredibly excited to be a part of The Care Colloquium, an event where leaders in the care economy are coming together to build innovate collaborations and tackle the big care issues in our country.
And I'm talking BIG CARE ISSUES like:
How best to support family caregivers that are balancing their career with care. (You know, besides my solution of "More wine please! I'm calling in sick tomorrow.")
How we can better address the inequities in care experienced among different genders, ages, races, ethnicities, socioeconomic statuses, and identities.
What technologies are emerging to help with caregiving and where could we use more?
Why are so many families experiencing a financial crisis when caring for an aging loved one? (I think we all know the answer to this one - because long term care is expensive! What I can't wait to hear is the solutions these caregiving gurus will generate to fix it.)
Wine, Women, and Dementia will close out the first day's festivities. I will give a short introduction about myself and context for the film, preview 30-minutes of amazeball caregiver stories from the movie, and then be a part of a dementia family caregiver panel immediately following.
The Care Colloquium takes place Monday, November 14th through Wednesday, November 16th, at The Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center in Roanoke, Virginia.
For more information and to check out the other amazing speakers haul your caregiving butt on over to The Care Colloquium website. Or if you already know you wanna spend an evening with The Other Girl and I after we've been alone together in an RV for the seven days it will take us to travel cross-country (sure to be a mess of sisterly resentment by then, def worth the price of admission) go ahead and Register now.
We would be absolutely thrilled to meet you there!