All The Lonely People

Immigration Timeout

2012-04-11T12:15:00.001-07:00

Yep, let's take some time out to talk about this. Especially for those of you who are thinking of coming to Central America for a volunteering period or an artistic residency.

If you are not a Central American citizen, from what is called the CA-4 space, you have to leave the region every 3 months. This means that on entering any one of the four countries comprising CA-4 space (remember the Schengen space in Europe), you have 90 days to leave that space, not just that country.

So far so good. The problem is that the nearest borders depend on where you are. I am currently in Xela, which has a border close by with Mexico. However, Mexico requires you on your first visit inbound, to say 4 days before you return to CA-4 space via the border with Guatemala. Afterwards, you can easily go in and out in 24 hours.

This I discovered to my detriment, on an odyssey that took all day. I went to Tecun Uman with the intention of crossing the border to Ciudad Hidalgo about two weeks ago. I was spectacularly unsuccesful. I wanted to exit as an Australian citizen from Guatemala, and go in and out of Mexico the same way, but re-enter Guatemala with my DUI. I failed. For many reasons.

What is a DUI you may ask? It is the Salvadorean identity card, which I obtained in December last year, just for this purpose. Whaddya mean, I hear you wonder. Well... this is the deal: El Salvador is part of the CA-4 space. As a citizen of a member country of the CA-4 space, I have 90 days in each country, separately, not collectively. This gives me a bit of leeway in the space, which means that instead of having 90 days in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, I have 90 days in Guatemala full stop. I also have 90 days in Honduras, full stop. And 90 days in Nicaragua, full stop. Plus, no need to show a passport, only the DUI. So far so good.

Well, that was not the case on the Mexican border, even though, legally I should be allowed to enter Guatemala as a salvadorean with my DUI from any border. I am not sure if I was told a barefaced lie by the people who usually do the transaction at the border or not. These were not immigration officials. They were guys who do this for money. So maybe they just wanted money out of me. This little joke cost me a whole day's journey to Tecun Uman, plus the bus fares to get there, the tuk-tuk fare from the bus terminal to the border and back and the return bus fares to Xela. It was crazy. It was also highly uncomfortable. Which was why I decided to regularise my status ASAP.

You want to know how I did that. Easy. Not. Back in March 2012 I queued up to get my passport issued. The salvadorean one. Little did I know. This turned into another Ulyssian effort. The passport office told me my DUI only had one last name. This was unacceptable to them because on the database my last passport showed up as having two last names. Paternal and maternal.

For the uninitiated to Latin American names, all of us carry our paternal and maternal last names with us legally and pass on our paternal names to our children. Ad nauseam. Ad infinitum. So, usually, a document of identity with only one last name is deemed incomplete.

So the passport office sent me to the DUI Centro to change my DUI. They were huffy about it and sent me to the equivalent of the Attorney General's Department to get my name changed legally with a Statutory Declaration.

When I got there, they told me that was the wrong thing to do and sent me to another government office: the Register for Natural Persons. They gave me other advice and told me that they could give me a statutory declaration that I didn't need a name change and that I could elect to use both my parents' names on my DUI. You would think this would be a same day thing. Uh, uh. No way.

They told me to ring in a week to see if the document was ready. I did. Nobody answered. I rang the following week and finally, the guy who was delegated to draft the document answered. He told me he needed a week or two to look at my file and draft the document, so I told him I would come and see him before Easter. I did. The guy still had not drafted anything coz he needed to discuss it in person. Argh!

So, when we met up in person he gave me two options:
(a) keep my documents all with two last names and get my DUI modified through an authorisation issued by his office; or
(b) get my birth certificate modified and have everything with one last name.

I decided to take option (a). I was leaving for Honduras the same day, so I had to pick up the authorisation the Tuesday after Easter.

Finally, I picked up the document, went with it to the DUI Centro and queued up for 2 hours until they finally gave me what I wanted: my modified DUI with two last names. I then headed off to the passport office, where I had to wait for 4 and a half hours before I could get my passport issued. But I got it. Finally. Now, I don't have to worry about my immigration woes anymore...Until the next 90 days are up.

Day 4 at the Theatre of the Oppressed Festival

2012-03-20T23:02:00.000-07:00

The posts are getting shorter, I know, but I am trying to make good my promise to Ana Braconnier (one of the organisers of the festival) before the year gets under way and while all the attendees are still reading the Festival blog.

I will just cover the warm up games, coz really, at this stage the workshop consisted of honing the piece of theatre we were preparing to perform in front our fellow workshoppers:

We pretended to try and catch a fly, passing it on to the person next to us, going round and round in a circle.
We did a collective primal scream.
The first person in the circle clapped and passed on the clap to the person next to their neighbour, while their neighbour crouched, the neighbour would then stand up and pass the clap on the person after their neighbour, and so on.
We also created a tight little circle and bent our knees deeply, trying to sit on each other's laps.
We ended the workshop by giving each other massages in pairs and in threes. Our facilitators called these massages washing machines, because we were meant to give massages resembling an automatic car washing machine. We scrubbed and pounded each muscle until they were completely relaxed.

Day 3 at the Theatre of the Oppressed Festival - delayed report

2012-03-20T22:54:00.000-07:00

I'll keep this short and sweet. Our workshop on the third day consisted of debriefing initially about the play 3000 Mujeres, from the day before. We then warmed up to our workshop by checking in with a sound and a movement (that ring a bell to anyone doing Playback Theatre or Applied Theatre?)

The next game was fast paced: the leader would start off saying yes to the person next to them and that person would have to reply Yes. If the person wanted to move the sequence in the opposite order, they would have to say No. This would then be repeated ad infinitum in the circle of performers.

Then came mirroring, which is quite a standard physical theatre exercise in my experience. You basically mirror the action your partner makes. If they place their hand on your shoulder you place yours on theirs. The workshop facilitators added a twist: they called out the actions and we had to do them, no matter how ridiculous. At one point, they had us touching bum to bum, hand to shoulder, shoulder to shoulder, nose to nose. It got REALLY intimate.

The inevitable next step was to get into rehearsals and analysis of the piece of theatre we were developing. Olivar and Luiz, our facilitators from the Rio de Janeiro Centre for Theatre of the Oppressed, gave us feedback on the character portrayal, the dramaturgy, even our set design. After the feedback session, we dispersed off to lunch with 500 other participants, in the largest mess hall I've seen in a looong time.

In the afternoon, I dropped in to see Alas de Mariposa (Butterfly Wings) by Nicaraguan Theatre of the Oppressed outfit Ventana. They performed the story of Lucero, a blind girl who is eager to go to her new school, but due to misconceptions and discrimination against blind people in her school, is turned away at the door. The interventions all seemed to center around the same moment: when Lucero meets the school headmistress. It is at this crucial turning point that Lucero can enforce her rights in the new Nicaragua.

Although the actors wore the subtext on their sleeve, the acting was fresh, authentic and believable. Despite the large amount of exposition, and the abundance of dialogue, it was very touching and Lucero's character was well established. It was a very satisfying performance.

That evening's performance was Detras del Cuadro (Behind the Frame). It is the story of a single mother living with her mother who keeps her lesbian partner a secret until the day that her five year old daughter requests her mother invite her partner to her birthday party. After much to-ing and fro-ing, she does so. She tries to warn her mother that she is inviting her partner to the party, only to find that her mother assumes it is a man. When confronted by the same sex relationship, her mother throws her partner out of the house and threatens to take away her granddaughter from her daughter because of her "immorality". This brought on a plethora of responses, including one clueless guy who was trying to explain to the daugther that the single mother's friend was actually her partner.

More about Day 2 of the Theatre of the Oppressed Festival

2012-03-20T22:30:00.000-07:00

I have an apology to make. To those amazingly wonderful people who gave up their time, blood and sweat (as well as sleep) to organise the 2nd Latin American Theatre of the Oppressed Festival. I should have been writing all along but it just got way too intense to keep up. And I wasn't even partaking of the parties every night, like the peeps who had bussed it from Costa Rica, Honduras, Chiapas and so forth. They were all bunking down at the venue, which happens to be a technical school. Drafty, cold, bare bones. The bathrooms were beyond basic. In fact, the members of Escenica X from El Salvador were working wonders taking cold showers in the freezing Xela weather in January.

Missed telling youse all about the Colombian play Viento Nocturno (Night-time Wind) as well. Here goes: a one man play, the protagonist is a 14 year old growing up in 1980's Colombia with two left-wing brothers. His hero is Che Guevara. He even writes a letter to Cuba, signing himself as a revolutionary. It is his only infraction. In the Cold War climate of Latin America which made McCarthyism look benevolent, the slightest whiff of communist leanings could turn ugly. We're not talking defamatory or even discriminatory here. We are talking full torture. Solitary confinement. Bullet to the head territory. The performer is at once the torturer, the tortured, the troops taking the kids away to a School of the Americas torture chamber and the survivor coming out the other end. It is a gruelling play to watch. Perfect example of Theatre of the Oppressed. Except that there is no forum. There is no way that you can actually change what happened. Colombia in the 80's was every bit as scary as Central America. The Cold War had frozen any chance at real democracy, human rights and diverging points of view in the Americas.

As a performance, it started off well, with symbolism used quite heavily, but the portrayal relied heavily on narration. The overt amount of exposition detracted heavily from the powerful topic it was touching on. Lighting design was superb. It did away with any need for stage design. Using gels, filters and even strobing lights, the audience absorbed the moods ranging from fear, horror, violence to relief. Sadly, the subtext was on the surface, something I am beginning to observe happens a lot in theatre here in Central America. I like my subtext just the way it's supposed to be, under the surface, not coated so thickly on it, you could mistake it for Vegemite on your toast.

As a way of provoking discussion however, it was masterful. It is rather timely, as the discussion centered around torture used as way of inducing terror. There was a historical overview of how so many paramilitary groups in the Americas were schooled in torture as a means of striking fear into the populace by the School of the Americas.

It used part of Boal's method of Forum Theatre but diverged greatly from it, as there was no possible alternative you could use or find to rescue the oppressed in this case.

One thing I did admire was the warm up exercises the performer used to get the crowd involved:

breathing exercises
individual and group reactions to the scenes
dancing together in total chaos
creation of a tableau and its transformation character by character
creating an ensemble from the audience where each person would join the tableau separately and add to the story on stage
the use of ritual to dissolve emotions and celebrate catharsis

That same evening, I went to see the Mexican play 3000 Mujeres, about the human traffic that tricks young girls into prostitution. In Puebla alone, 3000 women disappeared in one year and the authorities did nothing about it. This play is about Lorenza, a 17 year old girl who hooks up with a human trafficker unwittingly. Her friends are suspicious of the new boyfriend, but by the time they realise that this aloof, macho guy who showers her with dubious gifts and takes her clubbing is not what he appears to be, Lorenza is deeply ensconced in some two bit brothel.

This was proper Forum Theatre. There was a turning point in which Lorenza could have managed to avoid the trap. It was at this juncture that several interventions happened in the forum. Others tried to intervene at a later stage, through the police, which turned out to be a futile exercise.

The performances were subtle. Italia (the performer) was a convincing Lorenza: head over heels in love with this older guy who took her to exciting places and bought her nice things. By the time she has been inducted into the brothel it is way too late for her to get help. The only distraction was the set. It was covered in red with photographs stuck on it. It detracted from the performances themselves, which were coherent, had strong character development and maintained the suspension of disbelief right til the end. I would have given it four stars (in At The Movies parlance).

Day 2 at the Theatre of the Oppressed in Xela

2012-01-25T07:30:00.000-08:00

This is going to be one whirlwind post peeps. I'm afraid that I was way too tired yesterday from all the exertions so you get an abridged post today.

After a little debried yesterday on how our first day had gone, Olivier, our facilitator, took us through some basic stretches. Then we got into the theatre games. Oh joy! No irony here. First one was called "casa,terremoto, morador" (meaning house, earthquake, inhabitant). I'm not kidding. In a land where earthquakes reign, we played a game with it. Two people are the house, one is the inhabitant. When the facilitator says house, the people who comprise the house run around seeking a new partner and a new dweller. When the facilitator yells dweller, the inhabitant runs around looking for a new house. When he yells earthquake! we all run around like chooks with our heads cut off.

Fun and games I tell ya.

The next one is more of a physical theatre exercise. We stand in a circle, and the first person becomes a cog in a machine that fabricates one emotion, eg: hate. Every other participant then joins in, making a sound and an action in that same vein. In the end you have a machine that makes hate noises and movements. The interesting part was when we became the opinion machine, on the subject of life in Latin America. I jumped in and swam upstream. Other people became working peasants on the land. Others dancers, others cooks, others paramilitary troops, others politicians. It was a sight to behold, but we couldn't see it ourselves. You can watch parts of it on Ustream at the conference website.

The next game was to pair up and lead our partner through an imaginary trip, using our imaginations. My partner led me on a mountain climb up the Everest. This wasn't entirely clear to me. I just knew I was walking, I was holding onto a surface and I couldn't let go. That part was interesting. It had become clear that I had to hold on or perish.

The next one was an exercise in semiotics: giving banale objects a new meaning or context. We were given a bottle, an orange cloth, a table and a chair. My partner and I enacted a kidnapping. Yes, a bit drastic, but we our task was to show a social issue current in Latin America. Two girls enacted a birth, they started out the traditional, horizontal position for birthing, and ended up in the indigenous style: standing up.

Forum Theatre was up next. We had an example of it, by putting four actos up who were marching in unison and a fifth actor dancing and singing. The marchers then tried to pummel the dancer into submission. The group was then asked to give several alternatives to what had happened. What could the dancer do to achieve their desire to dance and sing? Some people came up with mass demonstrations of dancing and singing, others tried to make the marchers dance and sing and I pulled in two members of the audience after pretending to cower from the pummeling to help me divide and conquer.

Following that we worked on the dramaturgy of Theatre of the Oppressed. It works slightly differently to the usual 3 act structure. Although we begin from the protagonist - antagonist conflict, the narrative arc begins by establishing the backstory with the unfulfilled desire of the protagonist. This then escalates into a Chinese Crisis (danger coupled with opportunity), where the protagonist has the chance to turn things around, but the eventual ending is failure. The audience then has to provide alternatives.

Stay tuned, up next is my review of a one man show from Colombia on torture in the eighties and a Mexican Forum Theatre performance called 3000 women.

Day One at Theatre of the Oppressed in Xela Pt 2

2012-01-23T20:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I skipped a few things before, like giving you a bit more info on Theatre of the Oppressed and on the Forum itself. Well, it's been in the pipeline for a while, the first one was in Buenos Aires and it took roughly 3 years to organise. You heard right. Or rather, you read right. In 2006 there were only 5 or 6 practitioners of Theatre of the Oppressed in Argentina and the easiest way they saw to network with other theatremakers around the continent was by email. Eventually, they all went for labs, workshops, internships or residencies in Rio de Janeiro and came out fully versed in the mysteries of Theatre of the Oppressed. That's the long and the short of it.

Then came the others, the Bolivians, the Peruvians, the Colombians, the Costa Ricans, and somewhere in there, the Salvadoreans and the Guatemalans. Today there are 60 + participants from Central America, when in 2009 there were only 2. The power of ideas huh? This is one powerful medium. Particularly when it comes to Forum Theatre.

That's what you've been waiting to hear all about. Especially after the last teaser in the last post. What is Forum Theatre you ask? I found out today for the first time. We worked up to it, too... and so shall you, so sit back, relax and grab a martini. Shaken, not stirred. Nick Cave in the background would make a great soundtrack to the explanation. I'm listening to him as I write. So here we go.

The fabulous gentlemen from the Centre for Theatre of the Oppressed took us through this step by step, starting with an exercise in which we all pair off and look like we're frozen as we shake hands. Then, one of the pair breaks off, looks at the alternative stories that can be told by their counterpart's body language and embody a new story, taking on a new position. Their partner waits for them to settle into position, then moves away, checks out their body language and responds accordingly. Repeat ad infinitum. Once we got that right, our facilitators or Kuringas, took us through the next stage, of trios doing this exercise. Once we had mastered that stage, all of us joined into one mass frozen scene, slowly joining into a scene after watching it and making sense of it in our heads. Once we were all into position, our facilitators went around asking us who we were and what we were doing. It was very interesting. The Spaniards all thought they were part of a demonstration in which the police was manhandling the protesters. The Central Americans all thought it was an indigenous village that was being raided and its villagers killed because they were unjustly accused of crimes. Our collective histories reflect our points of view and how we interpret actions, obviously.

The next step was to start weeding out personal stories to create a piece of theatre collectively. Oh how I love ensemble work, when done properly and guided by professionals. We listened to each others' stories of personal oppression until we settled on the most urgent one. It happened to be a Guatemalan man of K'iche origin who is HIV positive, a single father and suffering discrimination from every sector. Although it was moving to listen to other's stories, his carried such a systematic abuse of human rights that we could not ignore it. We get to turn it into theatre tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, I went to two works in that vein: La Petaca, from El Salvador [based on the short stoy by Sallarue] and Coisas de Genero from Brasil. Although they were both fantastic, there was an immediacy and realism to La Petaca that I recognised the scene they set immediately. A physically deformed girl in her teens suffers from beatings and verbal lashings at the hands of her family, who want to rid her of her hump so they can marry her off, as her mental retardation prevents her from helping effectively around the house. The way they speak is vintage farmer Salvadorean Spanish. It touched a chord deep inside me. Sometimes it was almost comical, if it weren't so true. A Guatemalan lady didn't seem amused by the expressions that caused me a bit of mirth, as opposed to the situations. The Kuringa then went through the whole of the work and deconstructed it with the audience's assistance. Between the subtle performances of the actors and the incisive analysis of the various types of violence and discrimination perpetrated, it was a highly effective piece of applied theatre. It made me proud to be these actors' countrywoman.

Coisas de Genero was grander. It took place in the Municipal Theatre, a Neoclassical jewel, that has European style wooden booths. It had lighting and stage design. It had a live Bossa Nova orchestra, that also dabbled in Brasilian indigeous and candomble rhythms. The scenario was one well known around the world: boy and girl are born without prejudices. Their parents then condition them into wearing certain clothes, playing with certain toys, getting married and dividing tasks by gender. Of couse, this turns into bitter war right at the end, with the wife getting the short end of the stick. The dancing and choreography were superb. Corporal expression through movement was beautiful. The costumes were breathtaking and imaginative. It was just a little too long for my taste. The point had been made 10 minutes before the ending. No matter, after that it was time for the Forum. Eh? What? Yeah, you'd forgotten that's what I started with: Forum Theatre. This was definitely an example of that and so was La Petaca. In both cases, audience members who suggested alternative courses of action for the oppressed character were invited to come onto the stage and perform their suggestions. Each performance was then deconstructed again from various perspectives, until either a solution was found or conciousness about the issue was raised.

Don't think it was all academic blah blah though. Real people with real opinions and examples would stand up to speak. And to top it all off... we all danced to Bossa Nova afterwards. I kid you not. The live orchestra kept playing and invited the audience to come up and dance. Truly magical stuff.

Theatre of the Oppressed in Xela Pt 1

2012-01-23T14:20:00.000-08:00

Bit of a jump from last post innit guv? Well, it's just a quickie, to let all of you know a bit about today's happenings at the Theatre of the Oppressed Forum happening right here, right now, in Xela. The day started cold, foggy and bloody cold, and we didn't start warming up til 10 am, when the actual workshops began.

After a bit of a slow start, with people eating their breakfast while they listened to the plenary, we all found our classrooms and got stuck into one of the most fascinating genres of applied theatre I've seen in a while. No, I'm not an expert. No, I have not been through an Applied Theatre degree [ I leave that to the Griffith University kids back in BrisVegas] but I've dipped my foot in Theatre of the Oppressed once before and trained in Playback for a year and half, so I kinda think I know the lay of the land, even if I still take the odd wrong turn.

We began by trying to demechanise our bodies, which required us to do opposing actions with each limb, not always successfully. Then we had to pair up, follow our partner's hand around the room, and viceversa. Then - this I had never seen before - we had to lead and follow at the same time. Bedlam did not ensue, thank God, as everyone had some theatre background to carry them through.

Our facilitators were the real deal, Brazilians from the Centre for Theatre of the Oppressed in Rio de Janeiro. Their creative and artistic director had been none other than Augusto Boal for 20 years. What a score!! At $5 US a day to participate, I can see scores of Aussies getting on the next plane for the next forum. That includes all our meals, by the way. BYO plates and cutlery though, we might be poor, but we're green.

After that we did a rhythm and sound game, where we paired off again, the counted to three between two of us, then had to substitute the numbers for a sound and an action, which the other would replicate when it was their turn to do the number. Confused yet? We were. It took a while to get a rhythm going.

Then came the trust exercise, we had to lead our counterparts around the room with a sound only while they kept their eyes closed. I bumped into half the world coz my partner had chosen a sound 3 other people liked as well.

Finally, we began working on Forum Theatre, which I had not yet explored in my first foray into Theatre of the Oppressed but which I had learned in Playback in pair work.

But more of that later tonight, after La Petaca, a salvadoran work that goes on stage in 5 minutes.

Quetzaltenango Pt 1

2012-01-22T20:34:00.000-08:00

Ok, so here I am. Finally. In Quetzaltenango, otherwise known as Xelaju. It didn't take this long to get here, no. In fact, since my last post, it was another two weeks of waiting for the weather to subside before I came to the place I was meant to be working in. And the words "meant to be" are not by chance.

Where do I begin? Xela, the other moniker Quetzaltenango goes by, is an awesome place to live. It is in the safest corner of Guatemala. It nestles comfortably in a highland, surrounded by mountains, at 2500 m above sea level. It is cobbled. I kid you not. Really, truly, the streets are cobbled. It's amazing, though it's a killer on a pushbike. I don't even have my trusty old mountain bike with me. I'm borrowing a second hand racer that the project officer for Cultural Survival lent me. On occasion. To go further than the 15 minute distances of the huge La Democracia market. Scoff at me will ya? Have you tried walking long distances at high altitude? It's exhausting.

Back to the wonders of Xela though. It's a city that charms you slowly, beckoning to its heart with small, cozy, funky cafes. Try and ignore the grandiose buildings in Neoclassical style and the interspersed ArtDeco bits and pieces and you will fail. Terribly. Its central plaza houses something like Roman amphitheatre, except that is fully round with no atrium. The Cathedral overlooking the plaza is like something out of a Baroque fantasy. Surrounding it are homes from colonial, post colonial and German plantation days. Excuse me? German plantation days? Yep. At one point, one of the presidents of Guatemala gave away large tracts of land to German settlers who married local indigenous women and set up house here. There are now a bunch of kids who can trace their ancestors to Germany. Very very weird.

Back to the funky cafes, coz that's where the city pulses. At places like El Cuartito, Cafe Baviera and Artesano, NGO workers and backpackers studying spanish huddle over their laptops, making use of the free WiFi. At less foreigner-oriented places like Cafe RED and Tilde, you find the artsy types of Quetzaltenango. They organise festivals. They play music. They do hip hop. They graffiti. They write poems. They do murals. And they are, almost all of them, Guatemalan. If you want to hang with the heavies in Guatemala's cultural capital, this is where they are. My first month in Quetzaltenango I spent every late afternoon and evening there, getting to know the heavyweights for future reference and boy, did that come in handy!

I bet you wanna know what happened with ArtCorps and Cultural Survival and the mayan kids that want video skills. All in good time. Tune in for the next post, which will have a mixture of that and the 2nd Latin American Conference on Theatre of the Oppressed, coming live to you from Xela. In the meantime, I leave you with the videos I took of the 12 of October march in the capital.

Guatemala Post 3 - The Weather

2011-10-18T13:08:00.000-07:00

This you did not expect. The weather. It is such a prosaic topic in the rest of the world, unless some major disaster happens, like the Brisbane floods this year. Yet in a place like Guatemala, that sits in the path of hurricanes most of the time, the weather is very important.

At present, the rains have loosened bits of soil around the country and caused so many landslides that most of the country is cut off from itself, let alone neighbouring countries. I was meant to have left for Quetzaltenango, where I am based, a week ago. I am stuck in Guatemala City, trying to make the best of a crap situation.

Why is it crap you ask? Well... public transport here tends to be frequented by highwaymen. I am not kidding. Violent thugs climb onto public buses and demand at gunpoint to have everyone's wallet or mobile phone. How do normal people survive, you ask? They risk life and limb every day to go to work. And yes, the do get mugged.

So, because I'm about a foot taller than everyone and fairer skinned than most people on the buses, my cousins have convinced me to avoid public transport. I've taken it once or twice in a group of people, in fact, with the outfit I'm working with: Cultural Survival. I'm still hesitant to go by myself, but I'm going to have to do it.

Guatemala Post 2

2011-10-13T19:28:00.000-07:00

Back on the interweb peeps. How's it been? Where did we leave off? Oh yeah. Returning to Guatemala after 24 years.

I stopped off in LA to see my cousin Christian before continuing onto the land of eternal spring. We had not seen each other in 9 years and Christian had been instrumental in helping me with grant applications in the States. He's been a pillar of strength and support in all this. It helps that he knows the industry. So I hung out with him and his family for a few days, preparing myself for the cultural shock that was to come - which I was forewarned about.

It's a funny thing, culture shock. You expect it to happen, but you never know what form it will take. I have been away from Central America a very, very long time. I had expected a few things to have changed since then. Some had. The physical landmarks I knew in Guatemala City were gone. What is now the Westin Camino Real was not there in Zone 10 last time I was here. The highway to El Salvador did not look the way it does now. It was a lot less built up. These were physical changes. It was the cultural changes I was hoping to see.

The weird things is, when you're a 17 year old girl coming from a very strict religious background Guatemalans seem so liberal. When you're a 41 year old woman who's been round the traps quite a few times, you realise that you've changed but they have not. In so many ways.

Women still ask their husband for permission to study, or to go on a social engagement, or to take part in a performance. Husbands still need their wives permission to go to a yoga class. I am not kidding. Women still have to fit a certain set of expectations about being a woman: angelic, sexy but still pure. I break that mold without even trying. There are also tactful, indirect ways of speaking, which I had forgotten. Formulas that you say as part of small talk and politeness, forgotten.

Wives still look after children and the home single-handedly while holding down a job. Their duty is to look after husband, children and any guest that crosses their threshold, even to their own detriment. This, too, I had forgotten.

Then there are the things I didn't know about Guatemalan culture. These could fill volumes and I'm discovering them as I go along.

So, do I have culture shock? Not shock really, surprise and wonderment. Sometimes I feel slightly inadequate to deal other times I feel 100% comfortable. And sometimes I forget how much just comes naturally that is apparent when someone who is not from here mentions it.

Guatemala Post 1

2011-10-11T19:14:00.000-07:00

Hey there, it's been a while. I know. I was busy. You know how it is: packing house up, straightening out tax matters from 10 years ago, reactivating an insurance claim from 11 years ago, getting closure for broken relationships, packing bags, making a list, checking it twice, trying to get everything done and not really succeeding.

Woh. Woh. I hear you. Slow down. Yep. I hear you. Where am I going? What am I doing? Why am I chasing my tail faster and faster? Ok. I'll explain. In 2009 I applied for an artistic residency with a bunch called ArtCorps. They are a Non-Government Organisation that places artists with community organisations based in Central America. It took 6 months of a rigorous recruitment process which I thought didn't cover enough and asked all the wrong questions. But enough of that. I answered everything. I ticked all the boxes. I got the supporting letters. They liked. They really really really liked.

So they placed me with an environmental protection organisation working with the indigenous peoples of Guatemala in the Peten jungle, in 2010. Then the organisation got its funding pulled and my residency with them was axed. Yep. Another victim of the GFC. I shrugged, took in on the chin and went about my business.

Then, ArtCorps contacted me again to see if I was free to go to Guatemala in 2011. After protracted negotiations we agreed on a date for my arrival which just barely fit in one quarter of the year with another organisation called Cultural Survival. Better fit, stable funding. It was all good, except that my other half was not so sure about me going for a year, so we negotiated it to six months. Then as the time approached, he bailed for many reasons, one of them quite probably that he couldn't imagine living in Guatemala. I could.

After all, I had grown up next door. No big deal. So it was the second most dangerous country in the world after El Salvador. Whoop De Do. I was from El Salvador. As I said, no big deal. Once you know how to handle yourself in that environment, it all comes back pretty quick.

So here I was, embarking on a pilgrimage to a place that had mythical qualities in my imagination. Back in the annals of time, when I was just a wee girl of 17, I had been on a road trip through Guatemala with my classmates, where we saw Mayan ruins, jungle, rivers with crocs in them, and your run-of-the-mill guerrillas hijacking tourist buses on the way to Tikal, the largest Mayan city left in the world.

I had promised myself I would return to the land of eternal spring, as Guatemala is called. I had fallen head over heels in love with a country right next door to mine. I just never knew it would take 24 years before I saw it again.

Learning how to write for comedy at The Edge

2011-03-22T05:32:00.000-07:00

For all those people who lamented the effect that the Brisbane floods had on The Edge, that groovy multimedia facility next to Queensland Sate Library, do not fret. The Edge is a resilient creature, that took shelter behind the skirts of that venerable QSL until its own facilities were restored to a more "livable" condition. Thanks to the persistence of The Edge Catalyst, their workshop series has not been cancelled.

Today, I attended the Stereotypical workshops, an exercise in teaching inexperienced writers how to write comedy scripts for stage and screen. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? The best part I thought, was that it is free. I was wrong, the best part is that they have someone teaching it with industry experience and who has a focus on writing with a focus on diversity: Candy Bowers. As a multicultural writer (what hogwash - that just means I'm not entirely white), I was intrigued by someone wanting to show that you can portray characters who are three dimensional, believable and from diverse backgrounds accurately.

She did. First lesson: connect with your own true self. Ask yourself what do you want right now. Ask yourself what you wanted at various stages in your life. Then ask yourself what you want in the future, on a long term basis. Don't forget you have to bust all these preconceptions people will have of you based on their own prejudices and the ideas they form when they first meet you. So take these preconceptions into account. Debunk them. Challenge them.

How, you wanna know? You'll have to wait for me to upload the recording of the class to soundcloud for the benefit of all writers.

Memories triggered by the Queensland Floods

2011-01-20T20:52:00.000-08:00

It was all over the internet. All over the world news. All over the television. I'm sure you didn't miss it. Totally. The whole world knew 75% of Queensland was under water. Which is why I didn't post anything last week. I was offline. Seriously. Cut off from power and the internet. All I had was a mobile phone and a television to keep me updated. The telly wasn't even mine. It belonged to a good Samaritan called Megan. She, like many other unsung heroes in Queensland, took it upon herself to help those which she knew would be affected the oncoming floods. On Tuesday last week, she showed up on my doorstep and offered me help. In any shape or form that I needed it. This included somewhere to store anything I wanted to get out of the water's way, transporting it there and letting me crash at her place for as long as necessary. It was incredible.

Megan was not the only one offering out her help. My friend Candice rang out of the blue when she was evacuated from her work, asking if I needed help. I so did. I took her offer up and she packed all my clothes with me and took them to Megan's place. Then there were Tim and Susan, who were riding around West End looking for people to help. Same thing. They carried all my furniture and breakables and perishable furnishings up to my neighbour's flat out of harm's way. Then there was my neighbour, Marvin, offering refuge for anything people in the building wanted to secure. My mate Ljubo rang up just to ask if it was too late to help.

An army of volunteers from all over Brisbane descended on my street to help clean it up. I'm still in awe. And exhausted from hauling crap back and forth for a week. It made me realise how much crap I accummulate and how much I need to shed before I can get one bowl, one robe. It also restored my faith in humanity. A very special man, my partner Matt, couldn't get to my place in time and so he helped his neighbours. He shovelled mud and scrubbed walls in houses affected by the flood. His fourteen year old son was there beside him, helping his community get back on their feet.

It was incredible. The whole city rallied together and made an effort. Then we all went back to work, to keep the wheels of the economy turning. To keep the engine of this embattled stated turning.

I want to thank everyone who helped clean my street. I want to thank everyone of my friends who expressed concern and who gave a hand. My heart is full with your support and love.

Making a difference in developing countries

2011-01-05T23:10:00.000-08:00

I hear a story that really moved me just before Christmas. One of the members of the Playback Theatre troupe in which I participate and with whom I've been training for over a year gave me an insight into the mindset of your average person. He is 40, has started his own business successfully and has an active social life. He believes in social justice but he is also a pragmatist, like most Australians. Donating to charities, other than ones where he could actually see a difference, did not convince him that he was effecting change.

He went on a holiday to India and while he was there he hired a motorised rickshaw to go sightseeing. He befriended the driver of the rickshaw and learnt a lot about this man's hopes and dreams. The driver hired his rickshaw from the rickshaw company and by the time he paid off his rental fee, petrol and taxes, had only the barest minimum to take home to his family. My friend asked him if he had any dreams or ambitions. The rickshaw driver said he dreamed of having his own rickshaw, so that he would only have the expense of petrol and maintenance and would therefore be able to keep the profits to feed his family.

My friend asked him how much money the rickshaw would cost and how much he needed to support his family. The driver said the rickshaw would cost 10,000 Rupees. It sounds like a lot but this is only $220 Australian dollars. Not a lot in the scheme of things, my friend thought. He said his rent cost 2000 Rupees, which used up all of the money left over after paying the rickshaw rental fee. He barely had enough money to feed his family.

This gave my friend food for thought. Here was a chance to make a difference in someone's life with an amount of money he could easily afford. So he took the risk. He withdrew $220 from his bank account and went to see the driver. He told the driver that he was giving him money to buy a rickshaw and that it could only be used for that. Setting aside the slightly dictatorial nature of the bequest, what really struck me was the motivation for the gift.

As my friend put it, he could quantify easily the difference it would make to this man's life if he he helped him in this way. He knew it would not only benefit the driver but his family as well. It would be an asset to passed onto a son later on and if the driver had any business acumen he would later be able to buy a second one. It fired his imagination. It gave him hope that his actions could make a difference.

Although I do not propose to go around giving money to people in need around the world and telling them how to spend it, I do agree that being able to see how your effort will have a measurable effect on someone else's life is very rewarding. See, I'm not kidding myself. Human beings, no matter how altruistic, are bound by their egos in many different ways. I like helping people. It gives me a kick to solve someone's problem. It makes me happy to make someone else happy. Which is why I'm fired up by social entrepeneurship and small independent not-for-profit organisations that give people the tools to create sustainable change for themselves in a culturally sensitive manner that addresses their needs and ability to choose.

Twentieth Anniversary of E.T.

2010-12-26T23:26:00.000-08:00

Correct me if I get this wrong but I thought E.T. the Extraterrestrial had been released in 1982. But here I was, seated at GOMA in the year 2010 celebrating its 20th anniversary. Something's not right with this picture. I figure it has something to do with suspension of disbelief - a necessary condition to enjoy any film. So let's suspend disbelief for a moment and look at the film itself.

When it came out E.T. was a follow up on Steven Spielberg's earlier works about extraterrestrials, such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It showed a fascination with aliens, science fiction, NASA, the Area 51 programme and of course, a deep understanding of a child's need to connect to something greater when he has lost a father. However, it goes deeper than the usual children of a divorce plot that had been extensively explored in the 70's.

E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind are films that deal with issues pertinent to today: how the machinery of government tends to dehumanise everything - to the point of making a man forget what it was like to be child himself and to have connected to something greater and unimaginable. If you look at E.T. in the light of the era it was created in, Steven Spielberg was commenting on society, on the Cold War, on what it means to be a "grown up" and on how the only people an extraterrestrial can trust are all under 18 because they are yet to fall prey to greed or bureaucracy.

This is not the reason why E.T. transported me back to a different age. It's not the reason why I relived my tweens all over again while watching it on the big screen. It's not the reason why it touched every single child in my generation and the one that followed it closely. No, the reason why it touched us, is because it presented a world in which all you had to do was to believe in the nameless, unknown, magical creature that could you "unlimited power". This creature, E.T., could levitate objects, use toys to re-create technology from other galaxies and it could give you the ability to feel its emotions, to connect without using words or language.

E.T. made every 10-12 year old in the world who watched it believe they too could do anything. They too would be delivered from a reality in which they didn't belong. They too could escape an almost unbearable reality that disturbed and scared them.

This 12 year old believed as firmly in E.T. as she did in the Force, that nameless power from Star Wars. She wasn't the only one. Steven Spielberg referenced Star Wars in so many ways during the film that it goes beyond product placement of merchandise for a fellow filmmaker: George Lucas. It is also a revealing statement about the power of imagination in Spielberg's life.

Which is why you found me on Boxing Day 2010 at GOMA watching a film that is not yet 20 years old on its purported 2oth Anniversary. Because this alien had phone home and been transported from an unbearable reality to a place it could understand.

Tango 3.0 Tour

2010-12-04T06:04:00.000-08:00

There is a new religion. It is called Gotan Project. I was just a fan you see, before I saw them live. Now that I've seen them from second row at the Brisbane Powerhouse, all I can do is weep with joy. I had not heard the new album Tango 3.0 but I had La Revancha Del Tango, Lunatico and Inspiracion, Espiracion. I could sing along to most of the songs, until the new ones came on. Except that there are time when they modify an existing song for a live audience and it just blows you away.

Philippe Cohen Solal walked in last on stage, after the first song had been playing a few bars. Each entrance was timed perfectly. We were spellbound from start to finish. What can I say that will do this performance justice?

All I can say right now, still under the influence of their incredible music, is that I believe in the power in music. This was better than sex, a massage or anything you could imagine. Each song transported us to a different world, a different time, a different story. We ceased to be individuals and we became a collective. We became one with Gotan Project.

Although there were fancy visuals, the focus was on the music at all times. It was less Piazolla more Gardel, with hip-hop, techno and other genres mixed in each time. I could have kissed Cristoph Mueller. I yelled my head off asking for more, shimmying my sequins, tossing my head, letting my body give in to the magic of tango and electronica.

Next time, you need your troubles to melt away, all you need to do is book a live show of theirs. Oh yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Their homage to Julio Cortazar, Rayuela, arrested the breath in my lungs, making my heart beat wildly.

The opening song just melted my insides, letting the music flow through me into the night.

My first Crowdfunding endeavour

2010-11-29T00:15:00.000-08:00

OMG. I'm so excited. After a month of having to watch my project languish in crowdfunding site Kickstarter because only US residents can use Amazon Payments [their only payment method], I switched to IndieGoGo.

The interface is slightly different, but the end result is very similar, with one big bonus. Even if I don't reach my funding target, I still get to keep the funds pledged. So very very excited.

What's this all about you ask? Well, it's a writer's nightmare. What started out as a fully paid artistic residency in the jungles of Guatemala has now turned into a fundraising exercise because of the global financial crisis. The US-based Non-Government Organization ArtCorps used to pay for their artists to fly to Central America and then covered the cost of the accommodation and food, as well as gave them a $1000 US budget for the artistic project they were undertaking. Fast -forward to our post global financial crisis situation and that is no longer the case. Unfortunately, I only found this out very very late in the picture.

I had applied to go to Guatemala with ArtCorps this year, to a place very close to Tikal, my dream paradise. Alas, the host NGO which was collaborating with ArtCorps lost their funding from the Ford Foundation when Ford went bust. Watch the rug get pulled. Watch me fall by the wayside. Watch ArtCorps promise to try again for 2011. This all happened in December last year.

I then spend most of this year working on getting my doco off the ground. It's still grounded, but the engine is almost ready for takeoff. The wings are getting built. The engineers are nodding in agreement at the blueprint. It's all good people. Then in September this year, I hear back from ArtCorps. They want me to start in January 2011 and they need my security deposit and my airfare right smartly.

Well... a little more notice would have helped. I was broke. Then I lost my part-time job. And then something happened. The universe smiled. ArtCorps refused to take no for an answer. They negotiated with new NGOs, with me, with whoever was willing to listen. The next thing I know they are asking if I will consider doing a six month project instead of a yearly project. I'm still broke mind you. However, something inside me shifts. Call it The Secret, the Law of Attraction, "creative visualisation", faith, whatever you want. I suddenly remembered, I had travelled through British Columbia in 1997 with $30 CAD to my name for one week. I also remembered I climbed on a plane to Japan when I was 21 armed only with the airfare I had borrowed from my boyfriend. In 1998 I had moved to London with no job, landing on one Ishan Muthalib's doorstep to his chagrin. Yet, I had overcome. I could overcome again. So I took a leap of faith.

I started looking for grants, funding schemes all sorts of things. In the middle of all this, crowdfunding went nuts. I discovered that the Queensland Government will fund professional development for artists, including their travel costs. I found a short-term contract with Dimension Data, an up and coming IT outsourcing company. ArtCorps granted me a reprieve. They allowed to pay only part of the deposit upfront and to come up with the airfare in January. It was as if the universe was saying: you're getting on that plane to Guatemala. No buts, not ifs. So I accepted this turn of events and began my fundraising effort by posting a project on IndieGoGo and reading through the Arts Queensland application form.

Wish me luck peeps, I'm about to embark on that nightmarish voyage that is a grant application. Between that and the crowdfunding platforms, I should be sorted. Oh, I guess you must be wondering how I came up with the money for the deposit. It was the generosity of one amazing woman: Nina Birch, who as she puts it, believes in karma. She lent me the money, bless her. I aim not to disappoint her.

What does physical theatre have to do with it?

2010-11-21T22:48:00.000-08:00

I was asked recently why I'm training with Playback Theatre. Oh yeah. Forgot to tell you. I'm training to be a Playback performer. What is that?, you ask. Well, it's a troupe of artists enacting stories from the audience using improvisational theatre and music.

It sounds very vague. I know. That is because like any performance art, it comes to life on stage, face to face with an audience. It cannot be translated onto the page or the screen.

It involves listening to a member of the audience tell their story and then bringing it to life in front of them. It uses a variety of dramatic techniques and forms to create living sculptures, Greek choruses, pantomime, tensions between a pair of actos just to embody the emotions and the essence of the story told.

As a writer, I'm gaining a better understanding of how to writer for performers by learning how to enact using the body as a tool.

This past weekend was about just that. Anna Yen, a physical theatre practitioner, trained us in her particular style of physical theatre, allowing us to give flight to our imaginations using tried and tested methods used in Europe and Asia.

The most important thing we learnt was that the shape of the spine creates dramatic tension. Nobody had told us that when you make a spiral which moves and transforms, you affect the viewer. You create story through action. This has inspired me to learn how to direct physical theatre, which means learning it, really.

The closet choreographer inside of me revelled in the idea that you can almost dispense with dialogue and with stage directions and you can create of piece of theatre just from a treatment or a short story even.

My only dilemma now is how to translate it onto the page for another director. Suggestions are always welcome.

BIFF is over for the year

2010-11-14T17:37:00.000-08:00

It's been a fairly intense BIFF for me this year. I was trying to get my own doco done, blogging done, an extra project and a sizzle reel. It all kinda went pear shaped but I still managed to watch a few films.

Leap Year, which I watched on Saturday was a social realism piece from Mexico, delving into the loneliness of a woman who leaves her family and hometown for the big smoke to work in magazines, only to find out she can work from home. This gives her certain freedoms but also makes her life intensely lonely. A compulsive liar, she pretends to everyone that she is happy until it all reaches its nadir. I won't spoil the ending but suffice it to say that it wasn't just one scene in the film that was shocking but several. Apparently it belongs to a genre of films shown in the early hours of the morning on independent digital television channels in Mexico. Which is almost depressing. If low budget films with experimental narratives bordering on expressionism can find a television audience in Latin America, why can't Aussie films find an audience here?

Howl then cleansed my mind from the depressive after effects of Leap Year. Everything from the editing style, to the acting, even to the surreal psychedelic animation lifted the soul. It was inspiring to see that a work of poetry had such a strong impact on a decade that smacked of McCarthyism and conservatism. It was also quite ironic that the defense attorney also appears as Don Bradman in MadMen, another 1950's story.

Friday night I was silly enough to watch Kaboom, the latest Greg Araki young body exploitation film. It was entertaining, but had a lot of unnecessary sex scenes, though beautifully shot. I normally wouldn't object to so many beautiful bodies gracing the screen, but this just felt like a soft porn with a vague plot to call it a film.

On the other hand, Reign of Assassins, John Woo's latest, had the smallest amount of nudity as tastefully depicted as possible. However, the character development was shallow with not a single character evoking an emotional response from the audience. The main saving grace were the martial arts choreography and the sword fighting. It was John Woo trying to do Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but without Christopher Day's help. There was great potential for an epic film but it just fell short of that mark. Having said that, I was on the edge of my seat during every fight scene. I would call it essential kung-fu watching.

I sadly missed out on seeing Orchids: My intersex adventure, but I will obtain a copy from the Executive Producer, Faramarz K-Rahber who assisted in the birthing process of the film.

This was a strange Brisbane International Film Festival. There were a lot of big names, commercially viable films and less than ten days duration. The Regent was no longer the main hub of the festival, losing a bit of edginess and character in the process. Although the Tribal Theatre took up the torch, as the former George St Dendy, the atmosphere had changed. Same faces, different ambience.

The Regent is dead. Long live the Regent. BIFF is over. Long live BIFF.

Machete Maidens Unleashed

2010-11-12T01:22:00.000-08:00

The other day Veronica Fury sent me an invite to the Brisbane International Film Festival screening of Machete Maidens Unleashed! I went to the screening not really expecting a Who's Who of Brisbane Filmmaking.

After all, I had not run into anyone yet at the other screenings.

How wrong I was. From the director of My America, Peter Hegedus, to the famous zombie filmmakers the Spierig brothers, anyone who is anyone in Brisbane was there. Mark Hartley was a wee bit nervous in front of a savvy audience that wanted to see what he'd done to the intellectual baby spawned by Trash Video's own Andrew. Of course, Trash Video is now defunct and Andrew is instead doing a PhD on the original subject matter: Weng-Weng, Filipino secret agent.

It was a highly entertaining documentary, told in classical Hartley style: talking heads interspersed with archival clips illustrating the sound bytes. It was all good fun, especially the competition to count the amount of breasts featured on the film. Everyone got it wrong. It was 182.

Among the moviegoers there were a few other writers, filmmakers and film students who I got talking to and ended up repeating everything I had heard at the National Young Writers Festival regarding e-book publishing. Forget Vanity publishing. We're talking Smashwords here.

Smashwords is a website that has created a unique platform. They turn your text manuscripts into the right format for any e-book reader and then publish it to the relevant retailer's website, as content ready to be bought and downloaded. All for a very tiny commission, particularly compared to what book publishers take in royalties.

My own friends, Peter H and Axel Grigor also asked me about other digital content vehicles like Twitter and blogs. After reading, re-reading and listening to Yaro Starak talk about creating relationships of trust with other bloggers and other Tweeters, I finally get it. It's about a tribe of like minded individuals who don't plug a product unless they believe in it and do so only in an impartial manner, whether they get affiliate marketing out of it or not.

So, my own take on this all is based Yaro's blog, Entrepeneur's Journey: go read other people's blogs, go read other people's Tweets and interact with them. It's a conversation. Social media is just that: social. It's not a one way street, like traditional advertising. You want an audience? Win their trust first. Show them you're one of them first. The rest will follow naturally.

Sound like a lot of work? Then don't blog or Tweet. If you wish to have no readers, then write all the time but you'll get no traffic. If you want your stuff out there being read by other people, then make it interesting to them, talk to them. Listen to their needs. Pretty simple stuff really.

Now, back to Machete Maidens, Unleashed! It all started out as The Search For Weng-Weng. It is now a major motion picture. I'm really glad I took up Veronica's invitation now. And for the record, I paid for my own ticket.

William S Burroughs

2010-11-10T20:01:00.001-08:00

My name is Patricia and I'm a Beat generation addict. No, I'm not into the hallucinogenics. No, I don't take heroin and no, I'm definitely not into berets. However, talk to me of Ginsberg, Kerouac and William Carlos Williams for days. I will not complain. I will talk back. So, when I saw the Brisbane International Film Festival was screening two films about the Beat Generation, my interest was sparked immediately. Not one. But two. And not just any two.

The first one was a documentary about William S Burroughs. It used animation in novel and experimental ways to give a sense of the trippy consciousness of the man himself. This feature length doco was a pastiche of styles. It convinced me that I can go out there and flaunt the rules on documentary making with Not A Chance. But enough about me. Let's talk Burroughs.

This is a man who influenced everyone from the Doors, to Kurt Cobain, from Sting, to Andy Warhol. His unapologetic political agenda shone through in his books. He coined the work junkie. He appropriated the work "queer" for a whole movement, in an era when homosexuality was so closeted and secretive that there was no such thing as gay rights. He unpacked the whole idea of using drugs as an artist. He called it "junk".

And then, there's Howl. Allen Ginsberg was taken to court for obscenity because of Howl. To think a poem would make it to the Supreme Court of the United States, because of obscenity charges is well...obscene. Howl has informed and inspired the writing of so many authors in the last 50 years that I've stopped counting. My first encounter with his poetry chilled me. It confronted me. I just can't wait to see the film.

Thank you BIFF, for these morsels that feed the soul. I imbibe them gratefully.

Crowdfunding

2010-11-08T22:33:00.000-08:00

The word's been kicking around for a bit now. I had not really paid it much attention, but now that it's taking off, I have had to sit up and take notice.

What is crowdfunding, I hear you ask? To put it simply, it's harnessing the power of communities through the internet to fundraise. In the last few years, quite a few films have been made using crowdfunding. In fact, community projects, inventions, art installations, all sorts of other things are getting off the ground using crowdfunding.

How do you go about it? Well, that's the funny part. Some pretty smart entrepeneurs out there have cottoned onto the twin concepts of social networks powering the idea behind raising cash. Instead of begging everyone through facebook to lend you money, you set up a project in one of the popular crowdfunding sites. You create your own funding tiers with various returns for the money, whether it be social value or material goods, you give something in return for the investment. The people who have already signed up to these new fundraising networks then pledge a certain amount of money to your project and if you meet your fundraising deadline/goal, the money is transferred into the account created for the project. Too good to be true? Not at all.

The success stories abound. From the film DAY which surpassed its funding goal of $3500 on IndieGoGo, to the Glif, an iPhone4 tripod stand raising $137,417 on the site Kickstarter, the stories keep coming. The most well-known ones are IndieGoGo, Kickstarter, Fundbreak, FansNextDoor, Profounder and CreateAFund.

As with all forms of fundraising, how successful you are depends much more on your own publicity efforts than on the actual website. They all have their own quirks. Some of the website don't let you collect the funds unless you've reached your target, others take a cut or a percentage of your funds towards the cost of hosting your fundraising platform. Some are more industry specific than others. IndieGoGo is aimed at film. Profounder is more a business entrepeneurship site.

The things is, there are no shortcuts. If you know how to drive traffic and attract audiences, you're set. If you don't, you need to learn really fast if you want to use these platforms.

I'm about to embark on two or three fundraising efforts. One is for an artistic residency in Guatemala, using the Kickstarter platform. The second one is raising funds towards completing my documentary and the third one is to raise enough funds towards making PodTales (my production company) a going concern, with some staff and infrastructure.

Stay tuned. I'll update you on when the funding campaigns go live and how well I go. I'm sold on this idea of fundraising. After all, I just pledged $20 towards the Glif. If they can do it, I can do it and so can you.

Wasted On The Young

2010-11-07T05:00:00.001-08:00

My friend Janelle just spent the better part of her life the past year getting Wasted On The Young ready for viewing. I see why now. I also think I need to start making money so I can afford to employ Janelle. Wasted On The Young is a disturbing film about the extremes to which spoiled rich teenagers will take bullying and cliques. Bully meets Skins, and then some. I think it marks a coming of age for Australian films. The DOP captures mood with his lighting, his framing and quite definitely colour. It feels like a Kiwi film. No offence, but our cousins on the other side of the Tasman are famous for cinematography and particularly for dark tales of the soul. Wasted On The Young transcends the usual teenage angst, taking violence, ambition and unchecked egos to a place they should never be. It holds a mirror to today's society where parents don't want to know what their children are doing.

I left the Palace Centro, where it was screened for the Brisbane International Film Festival, with a sick feeling in my stomach. My visceral response means only one thing: it is an amazing script and film, despite glamourising grammar schools and teenage drug use. I wanted to punch the director. If I didn't know Janelle, I would have completely bagged the director, but her integrity as a producer makes it impossible for me to believe anything other than in the authenticity of the script.

To all those who moan about Australian scripts today, you can stop now. Wasted On The Young signals a turn for the better.

Getting all hippie on you

2010-10-26T22:03:00.000-07:00

Run for the hills. Now. I'm about to get all warm and fuzzy on you. The truth is, I needed to at some point. I know where my heart is: yoga. Now, now. Don't scoff. It's the IN thing you say. Oh... but even it if were the IN thing, I actually think it's so widespread now, it's not just a fad. It's here to stay.

So to ride on the back of Elsie's Yoga Kula, Hilary Rubin's Yoga Podcasts, the 20 Minute Yoga downloads and so forth, I'm working on, yes you guessed it! Another yoga podcast. Isn't it enough with the existing ones, I hear you ask? Nope. Not like this. I can't spill the beans just yet, but it's a niche market for a niche need that is only serviced very perfunctorily and not in Australia directly. Once we're ready to roll, I will post the url and where to find it. We'll be all over Podbean and definitely on iTunes Store.

On another note, we didn't win the Live and Love thing. Boo hoo. Well, I'm dusting off and getting back on the horse. Now there's another comp on from mishmash. I'm going to kill two birds with one stone and use the Getty images/footage/music for the sizzle reel for my doco. Totally cool or what??? So, stay posted and look occasionally at the Not A Chance blog, for the trailer that will be hitting screens across the world soon.

In the meantime, I've started to look at bedtime stories. Not naughty ones. Children's lullabies, the kind of thing you want to hear when you're under six. So if you have kids, post me a comment, I want to hear the kind of things they're into.

The legals

2010-10-20T20:46:00.000-07:00

It's all a matter of paperwork these days. Writers are forever doomed to dot i's and cross t's. So it is with me. Post National Young Writers Festival and pre-production of documentaries, as well as post, contracts need to written, invoices sent, tax returns read. Gawd! Will it ever end.

However, thanks to the guys at My Artist Career, life can be that much easier. Also thanks to AbaF. Those of you who have not yet heard of the Australian Business Arts Foundation, check out their website. It's aimed at visual artists but we can all benefit from it, including that lonely creature: the writer.

Both websites have templates for contracts, budgets, proposals, all sorts of those nifty things we hate drafting and should leave to the legal eagles. They also have info on all aspects of becoming profitable artist. Yes, there is such a thing. I used to live with one and am now in the process of working towards becoming one. So peeps, really, start reading up.