Month: July 2009

Brainwash Trailer & Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – July 18, 2009

Contacts: Dave Krzysik, 415-273-1545
Jason Gohlke, 510-684-6100

Brainwash Movie Festival to show 25 shorts, 1 feature

15th Annual Drive-in Bike-in Walk-in Festival starts tonight in Oakland, continues 7/31 & 8/1

The New York Times says the Brainwash Movie Festival “pirat[es] a piece of that old Hollywood magic and challeng[es] conventions on the role of public space in the process.” (Now Playing, a Digital Brigadoon, 7/29/04, Chris Thompson)

“We project movies onto a tarp in West Oakland,” counters festival director Shelby Toland.

The sometimes thought-provoking, often wacky, but always original Brainwash Movie Festival returns in the summer of 2009 for what could be the best festival ever.

“These are movies that know they’re movies,” claims festival judge Jason Gohlke. “If you like the art of storytelling, if you care about the suspension of disbelief, or if you just like watching moving pictures on a screen, you don’t want to miss Brainwash this year.”

Attendees to the festival are encouraged to either drive, bike, walk, or take public transit to the venue, where movies are screened in traditional drive-in movie theater fashion, complete with FM transmission and a full-service concession stand.

The fully juried festival will screen 23 original shorts in two separate programs (see http://www.brainwashm.com/2009/07/2009-brainwash-program/). There will also be a Premiere Party — Brainwash Zombie Night — on July 18th at 9 pm at 1357 5th Street in Oakland, which will be the West Coast Premiere of the feature film “Doctor S Battles the Sex Crazed Reefer Zombies: The Movie.” Filmmaker Bryan Ortiz of San Antonio, Texas, will be in attendance for Q & A.

The 2009 15th Annual Brainwash Movie Festival will be held July 31st and August 1st at 9:00 p.m. in Oakland — check BrainwashM.com for location details. (Tentative location is the Steel Building at 1960 Mandela Parkway @ 18th; backup location is 1357 5th Street.) Moviemakers to attend include Mark Thimijan, creator of “Mister Coffey.”

Admission is $9 per person per night OR $30 for a Double Brain Pass, which gets two people into the entire festival including a special exclusive preview night. Buy tickets at http://www.ticketweb.com/snl/EventListings.action?orgId=16986 or at the gate.

For more info, see http://brainwashm.com/.

Brainwash Movie Festival: 7/18, 7/31, 8/1 in Oakland!

Brainwash logo I’ve been spending lots of my free time — even when I was on vacation and out of town — working on the Brainwash Movie Festival. (Here’s Brainwash on Facebook — become a fan!)

That would be the Bay Area’s own original Drive-in, Bike-in, Walk-in Movie Festival, held within spitting distance of the West Oakland BART station.

2009 marks the 15th annual festival (founded by the mysterious Shelby Toland and one of my co-workers, Dave Krzysik), and I’ve been helping out for at least the last five years. Sometimes it’s felt like 500, but this is not one of those times. This is the first year I’ve officially been a partner in the festival.

I launched a new website (which still needs some images and stuff) when I happened to be out of town, designed some new flyers, put us on Facebook, helped judge the movies and set up the program (and 24 of the 25 shorts are actually really GOOD), and then this past weekend helped shoot the trailer for this year’s festival (finally). It’s all been a lot of fun but pretty exhausting. Hopefully we’ll get a good turnout, but it’s always hard to know what’s going to happen.

The venue is actually a little up in the air, which is a humongous pain, a problem for promoting the festival, and a story I (or Dave) can tell you some other time. Parts of the festival will almost certainly be at the Steel Building at 18th and Mandela — we will know if we have to move it on Thursday.

But I can say with confidence that if you come to the festival you will enjoy it.

When, and where?

Buy tickets in advance on TicketWeb. Hope to see you there!

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