Doing the Cannes-Cannes with Cerise!
It’s been about three weeks now since Team Cerise (myself, Marinell, and Camiren) has [...]]]> A brief update about Cerise’s trip to Cannes Film Festival, backer DVDs, and our three nominations at this year’s Staten Island Film Festival!

Doing the Cannes-Cannes with Cerise!
It’s been about three weeks now since Team Cerise (myself, Marinell, and Camiren) has been back from the 64^th Annual Festival du Cannes on the always sunny French Riviera, where we were supporting our Josh Kermes and company at the Cannes Short Film Corner.

Unfortunately, the Corner was the part of Cannes that received the least amount of sunshine.

I won’t say much about the trip here, but in short, as far as experiences go, it was an experience to remember and to learn from. If you would like to read up in much more detail the exploits of our travails at Cannes, check out my post on Film Threat (re-posted courtesy of Film Courage.)

Backer DVDs Are Our Top Priority!
Crunch time! I’ve sent off the Cerise master DVD off to my good friend, Cerise Executive Producer, and co-owner of Triple Ace Productions Gregory Colletti so that he and his partner, my equally good friend Louis Affortunato, can get our DVDs done. The box art should be sent by the end of this week; Marinell is hard at work on putting that together (amidst myriad other marketing duties!) Then we’ll be mailing them away in late June/early July, so backers, please make sure that you’ve included an address on our IndieGoGo page or we won’t be able to mail ‘em out to you.

And the Award Goes To…
Despite a few rejections received from some film festivals while we were in Cannes, we also got word of some stupendous news: Cerise has been nominated for not one, not two, but three awards at this year’s Staten Island Film Festival (SINY for short––Best Short, Best Cinematography (nice goin’ Alain Aguilar!) and Best Actor (good stuff, David Arkema!)

Cerise will be the fourth film I’ve had screened at SINY (Perfekt screened there in 2008, and Ryan Mooney’s Something About Ryan and Lou Affortunato’s The Welcoming screened in 2009), but this is the first time one of my own films has been nominated for anything, so this is not only a milestone for Cerise, but a milestone for myself as a filmmaker, and I am super-stoked about it!

So mark your calendars, New Yorkers––Cerise screens at SINY on Thursday, June 9 at 10pm. Hopefully we’ll see a bunch of you there showing off your true color.

The Third Crusade Has Begun!
Well…unofficially, at least! This past Thursday, Alain and I had pleasure of being interviewed on Film Snobbery – LIVE where we chatted candidly about Cannes, shooting Cerise, and the nominations we’d received. Later on that night, Marinell and I saw that Cerise had received a contribution from our wonderful friend Michele Simmons! She’s proudly sponsoring our submission to the Calgary International Film Festival! Thanks so much for all your support, Michelle, and welcome to the Cerise Table (and yes, it’s Round, too!)

The Road Ahead
While I recover from the expenses of a two week trip to France, we will still (somehow!) be submitting Cerise to CIFF and some other film festivals across the globe. We also plan to officially launch the Third Crusade for Cerise in the weeks ahead, asking once more for your support in the form of love and dollars to help us spread the word that took Josh Kermes down. See you next time!

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Maroon [muh-roon] noun 1. dark brownish-red (from Dictionary.com)