Moooovies, Muppets, Puppets and Shakers...

I've been rather preoccupied over the last ten days, so forgive ANOTHER short break in posts, but we have just wrapped the annual Bermuda International Film Festival and it's taken up a lot of my head space since I volunteered to be PR Director back in January. My, my, what a challenge, particularly with a full-time job, but loved every nano second!!


Not only have I been busy with the press releases, Facebook posts and tweets but it's also taken up a lot of my free time this week as I managed to catch a lot of films and I've certainly had my mind expanded. Saw my first subtitled firm, my first shorts, a very interesting documentary about the racial undertones of the post-Hurricane Katrina elections in New Orleans, a great film directed by David Schwimmer from Friends and my first ever sex scene involving a dead body. All very enlightening and now I'm a total convert, not to Necrophilia I hasten to add, but to this whole indie film scene. 


As a fellow Brit expat in Bermuda bloggers writes in "Dog or Affair", it is not till you are starved of culture, that when you get offered a smidgen you star jump on it from a great height. I lived in London for nearly four years and when you are spoilt for choice, you barely notice culture in a crowded room. I worked on the same road as the theatre where Phantom of the Opera played for over a year and still I've never seen this West End classic (although I have seen the film and know all the words to all the songs of course). My taste in film has always been very mainstream but I now definitely see the value in catching a movie on the road less travelled. 


And it's not just the films, BIFF brought some fascinating people to Bermuda and some of the fascinating people already here, out of the cedar woodwork. The jurors for the competition features alone were an interesting bunch including Oscar-winning producer Hans de Weers (Antonia’s Line, Best Foreign Language Film, 1996) and screenwriter Larry Gross (48 Hours, Streets of Fire, Another 48 Hours and Geronimo). Then I was attending one of the post-film social events and I was introduced to Whitney Kimmel from the jury, an entertainment and awards publicist from L.A. who has represented The King's Speech, Buitiful, and Precious, to name a few, as our introducer said "we do the same thing." Now this was a huge compliment for me but for her I imagine not so much. I PR insurance, cable TV and financial planning; she PRs Colin Firth and Javier Bardem. Some people have all the luck!! 


But as I sat hearing about the time she met Tom Cruise, on the other side of me, a new good friend of mine who I've been working alongside for weeks happens to mention she is daughter of the co-creator of the mighty Fraggle Rock, Michael Frith. HOLD THE PHONE, MAKE LIKE TOM & CRUISE. Now this is cool!! He was also editor of the Sesame Street book series and was employed by Jim Henson as a creative consultant for The Muppet Show and Muppet Babies. And I learned something I never knew, the Rock setting in Fraggle Rock is inspired by Bermuda's Crystal Caves. As a HUGE Sesame St./Muppets fan, this was bigger news than any Hollywood star sighting. As a youngster I used to turn down offers to go out and play because I wanted to stay home in my Burt & Ernie slippers to watch the latest happenings from the Street and learn the alphabet/how to count along the way :-)





And if that wasn't enough exciting and wonderful randomness for one week, this is the moment when Star Wars met Stargate at our private filmmakers' dinner on Sunday night...

On the left is Kathy Mullen, a puppeteer whose accomplishments including working with Yoda in Star Wars: The Empire Strike Back. On the right is actor, Peter Williams, from BIFF Jury, who played arch-nemesis Apophis in the internationally syndicated sci-fi series Stargate SG-1 for five seasons. 


David Poland from BIFF's international advisory panel members was also in town for the festival.He is editor-in-chief of www.moviecitynews.com and for his online feature DP/30 he has interviewed huge names in the world of film including most recently Jeff Bridges, Natalie Portman and Sofia Coppola. Also in Bermuda for BIFF 2011 was Peter Rainer, a veteran broadcast who only this week wrote a glowing tribute to Elizabeth Taylor for Bloomberg.com.


I think that's enough name dropping for one post so I leave with the presentation of an Oscar Award for Best Headline of the Week to Bermuda Sun for a story about a floating farm of 1,500 cows arriving in Bermuda: "Cattle moo-ve across Atlantic to Bermuda" 


That's all for now moooovie fans :-)