It's 4:30AM in Los Angeles as I'm still shaking off jet lag from a week in Melbourne with SEE WHAT I'M SAYING at The Other Film Festival. It was an extraordinary experience, and an honor to be in one of the premiere disability film festivals as the inaugural deaf program. This all-inclusive festival had Auslan interpreters (Australian Sign Language), ASL interpreters, audio description and captions for all of the films. We screened to a packed house at the Melbourne Museum. CJ and I did a Q&A after the film, and I was part of a panel discussion on directing deaf actors moderated by Ross Onley-Zerkel with Clayton Jacobson and his award-winning cast of I LOVE U. Highlights of the festival included getting to hang out with Academy Award winning director Adam Elliot, festival director and our host Rick Randall, the incredible festival staff (Dominque, Emily, Simone and others.) The other filmmakers' work were beyond inspirational, and it was an honor to meet Stella Young ("Carbon Whore"), Rob Spence ("Eyeborg"), Genevieve Clay ("Be My Brother") and the creators from the Restless Dance Company. The film that took home the festival award was "Nobody's Perfect," a mind-blowing documentary about 12 people affected by Thalidomide deciding to pose naked for a calendar. SEE WHAT I'M SAYING received an honorable mention at the awards ceremony, which was a huge compliment.

It was my first time in Australia, and I had an opportunity to pet kangaroos and hang out with the koalas at the Healesville Sanctuary. My new Australian friends taught me local expressions ("not to whing if I'm being shouted a flat white, lest I be bottled on Saturday arvo." - translated as "don't whine if someone buys me a cappuccino or someone will cut me with a bottle on Saturday afternoon." ) CJ had a chance to perform his comedy live at the Charcoal Lane restaurant after our screening to an appreciative crowd. I had an opportunity to audio describe SEE WHAT I'M SAYING to a sighted-impaired judge Tony, which was an incredible experience for me, as he was testing a theory that audio description is richer when coming from the director, although it was a unique challenge of balancing our subtitles while describing the action.

It was a great festival, a memorable week and an unforgettable experience. I'm already looking at ways to return with the film and more performers soon.

I realize I am a little behind in my blog. I've tried to keep up with posting all the news on our Facebook fan page and on Twitter, but since this is a holiday weekend and I have a few moments to reflect, I wanted to post a little update here.

These past few months have been unbelievable. After our breathtaking fairytale world premiere in Hollywood, we rolled right into two weeks of screenings at the Laemmle Theater in Los Angeles. My favorite part were all of the guests who showed up - all of the aerialists and musicians from the rock band Powder, Deaf West Theater, SAG, AIDS Service LA, actors, award-winning cinematographers, the deaf bikers who rode in from Arizona, the couple who drove up from Mexico, all of our volunteers and interpreters... and so many, many more.

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The world premiere was simply magical. It truly was a dream seeing so many people connected with the film come together to celebrate deaf entertainers. It was worth the wait to have it in Hollywood and was the perfect fit. I'm still putting together photos, stories and our glowing reviews while at the Laemmle Sunset 5 this week. I decided to be there all week to personally greet every audience and be available for questions after each screening. Folks are driving down from as far away as Arizona to see us at the Laemmle Sunset 5 and celebrate the first open captioned commercial film in American history.

Here is some of our fan mail. Re-posted with permission.

Sent: Fri, Mar 19, 2010 3:38 pm
Subject: The Premiere Was AWESOME!!

Hi Hilari,

I met you at an event featuring documentary film editors a few months ago. We were sitting next to each other and chatted, exchanged cards, etc.. Well I joined your mailing list and I went to the premiere of See What I'm Saying last night and HOLY COW, was I blown away. I studied Hearing and Deafness in college as my minor, worked at a Deaf/Blind center, and took ASL so obviously I enjoyed the film. What I really want to point out is that I brought my boyfriend along with me who has never even met a Deaf person before, and knows next to nothing about Deaf Culture. Not only did I enjoy the film, but HE was also completely blown away by it. I kept looking at him and he was laughing at the high parts and was so invested in the lows. He said the most interesting part for him was when Robert DeMayo was walking down the busy street and you could hear what the world sounded like from his perspective. We talked well into the night about many aspects of the film and what both of us learned, but he kept coming back to the point about beginning to see the world through the eyes of your four incredible main characters. I have to agree, the stories were so well developed. It's easy to make a great film like Avatar when you have a $50 million budget. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you weren't given millions of dollars and support from a major studio, and yet you produced a wonderful, quality film product that is accessible (physically and cross-culturally) to so many if people just buy the ticket. I've been encouraging many of my friends to go see the film, both those who have experience with Deaf culture and those who don't. I am just so glad that someone (YOU!) took such a huge chance in making this movie because even aside from the intriguing subject matter, it is simply this-- A GREAT FILM.

Thank you (and I really mean it-- Thank You),

Crystal

-- Crystal Riportella-Crose