This past Tuesday’s screening of Dangerous Crosswinds at Plymouth State University (as part of their International Film Series) went extremely well. Though not a record-breaking crowd by any stretch, the evening was especially gratifying on many levels. First, the Q&A session was rock solid, interesting and very thought-provoking questions pertaining to the many facets of the film – from the tempo of the editing, the excellent quality and use of Jeff Rapsis’ musical score, the origin of the storyline, the personalities of the various characters and so forth. I’d like to pass along a special thank you to PSU Professor Dr. Peter Drexel and his staff for organizing the event (they had previously screened Old Man Dogs back in 1998) as well as for Marc Vadeboncoeur, the DP of Dangerous Crosswinds, who made the trek with me and participated in the Q&A. An additional bonus was the high number of DVD’s that were sold as nearly half of the audience ended up purchasing one – and this occurred after they had viewed the film.

Screenings like this mean a great deal to me and give me hope that there actually might be some theatrical life in Dangerous Crosswinds yet. At a NH Film Office Roundtable event last month in Portsmouth which focused on guerrilla distribution Vermont filmmaker Jay Craven spoke how most small-scale independent films never run the risk of becoming over saturated. For example, he mentioned that his 1994 film Where the Rivers Flow North can still draw audiences today. I’d like to think/hope that Jay is right and that, in the years ahead, all of us filmmakers who self-distribute in this region are able to continually and successfully screen our films to audiences – no matter how “old” the film has become. Perhaps once we complete the new DVD transfer of Old Man Dogs we can then arrange a short tour of theaters screening it as part of a doubleheader with Dangerous Crosswinds, that might be a nice lead-in before we launch Death & Glory. We’ll see…