Recorded at I.V. Lab Studios and produced by Manny Sanchez (Umphrey’s McGee, Patrick Stump), their new album, “Hayward,” builds upon the themes of their previous studio effort, taking the distinctive sound of Murley Shertz to new heights. Intricate melodies and solid grooves lay the groundwork for the group’s best work to date. Also featured on this album are Joe Hettinga on Piano, Rhodes, Organ, and Synth (Digital Tape Machine, Strange Arrangement) and Mike Racky on Pedal Steel Guitar.

Purchase “Hayward” now available on iTunes: http://bit.ly/ij3Joo.  The Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival is thrilled to have Murley Shertz as the Festival Centerpiece headlining band.  Opening for Murley Shertz, BWiFF is pleased to welcome back Chris Petlak.

Requirements for consideration are some basic knowledge and understanding of Microsoft Office products (i.e., Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc), Adobe Photoshop and Google Document sharing.  Interns must be self-motivated, passionate, detail-oriented and eager to learn.  Internships are part-time and unpaid, and may be done for school credit.

If you are interested, please send a resume to Ashley France [ashley@bwiff.com].  Interns will be selected in May 2013 for a June 2 – August 4 [nine-week] internship and expected to devote a minimum of 12 hours per week.  Click here for more information!

Mohan, a Los Angeles resident, is no stranger to film festivals.  he has had one short and two features screen at the Sundance Film Festival.  In 2011, Mohan’s short Ex-Sex won over the BWiFF audience.  In 2012, his latest feature Save the Date was selected for exhibition at Sundance and picked up for distribution by IFC Films.

On Sunday, July 21, the Blue Carpet Opening Night festivities will include a screening of Ex-Sex, followed by Save the Date.  After the screening, Michael Mohan will be presented with the Independent Filmmaker Achievement Award and participate in a Q&A with the audience.

“Why?” returned.

I opened my mouth to reply and found myself unsure. I’ve loved movies for my entire adult life. In fact since the summer of 1988 when I saw a movie more than once, more than twice, in the theater. When I managed to convince both my mother and my father that Who Framed Roger Rabbit was worthy of subsequent viewings (as well as the various products I was able to con them into purchasing for me) both at first run and all the way down to dollar theaters around closing weekends, I watched that film unfurl and I witnessed the breathtaking depth of what movie magic could be. In a film about the movies.

That was when I wanted to be a story teller.

But why are movies important to me? I suppose it’s just never been called into question. Most people just accept that I’m a “buff” or a “geek” and move along, figuring if they press any deeper I’ll probably tell a meandering story about the first movie that showed me something special. But it’s not just the movies I love that are important, though important they are, it’s the medium in general.

I go with “movies” rather than “films” as well. Because films implies a haughtiness, I think. I’ll even sashay down to the industry jargon “pictures” occasionally, though rarely without a drink in my hand.

Movies are unlike any art form ever created. They’re a perfect medium for an artist. That artist, the auteur, can paint with people, with light, with ideas, with music.

Books are glorious, and can be rapturous and engaging. You’re presented with the tale and you allow it to unfold in your mind. This is, for many, the signal of a higher art form. And many readers will scoff at the value of movies. But I argue that while books may carry more ability for the consumer of the art, movies can convey exactly what the artist wants to convey.

A play is a living creature, every night different, every line of dialog given with new inflection and meaning performance after performance. Cast members come and go, nuance is discovered and manipulated. A line that gets a subtle laugh may then be projected further to get a bigger laugh. Theatre allows for maliability, and evolution.

In a movie, these nuances are discovered before the presentation is put before the eyes of the casual consumer. These changes have been made, adjustments, alterations, lengthening, shortening. A filmmaker, the artist, he can give us as much, or as little information as he wants. He can allow us to be the ones to decipher meaning deep within, or he can present to us the answers to the mystery. He can also put a canvas in front of us so rich with detail, and so full of the very definition of humanity that we can never comb through it all. That we may spend the rest of our lives trying.

Above all, the beauty of the movie is that it does not change. (With certain…ahem…notable exceptions.)

When I sat down, three subsiquent times in the summer of 1988 and watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit unspool on the screen before me, it was exactly the same every time.

I was different.

Movies come to me as puzzles indeed. It’s for this reason that I adore the work of David Lynch, even though I’m rarely certain he even knows what the completed puzzle looks like. I’ll watch and rewatch and rewatch these puzzles, gathering information, pieces fitting more and more. Years may pass, decades even, and some change in my life will give me a key to the missing pieces, and it will all snap into focus. The movie was ready, I was not.

They can also be sources of tremendous comfort. Why so many of us watch romantic comedies after breakups, or why we sit down on Christmas with A Christmas Story running in the background on repeat, catching bits and pieces here and there. Movies are a shared language, they are our culture. They have reach that no other art form has. People who have never read a book, and would not set foot in a theatre, can be shown a movie and get it.

There is little I enjoy more in life than sharing movies that mean something to me with others. For a long time I had weekly movie nights, where I’d pull a stack off my shelf and one or two would be randomly chosen. Watching these movies that mean something to me (whatever the reason, the movies need not be important) with someone new. Seeing where they laugh, where they cry, where they jump and hide. All of this adds new depth, and I file away their reactions with the movie in my mind, and my experience is richer for it.

Why are movies important to me? Why is collecting movies really the only major vice I have, the only major expense in my entertainment budget? Because they can make me laugh, because they can scare me, confuse me, engage me, repulse me, horrify and enrapture me. From the most beautiful art films to the silliest of screwball comedies to the trashiest eighties slasher movies, there’s a time for all of them.

And unlike any other art form I know, no-matter my mood, there is a movie I can put on, be it something I’ve never seen, or something I’ve seen more times than I can count, and it will compliment that mood, or will take me back to the time when I first watched it. An instant time machine, that blocks out the troubles of the world, and suddenly I’m a nine year old boy again, blown away by the magic of a cartoon rabbit and a grizzled LA private dick. Wanting nothing more than to believe the world of that movie.

Allowing myself to believe.

Thank you to all Festival Pass Holders who attended the entire event from beginning to end.  We hope to see you again next year.  Filmmakers, please keep an eye out for our 2013 Call for Entries this August.

And the winners are…

Best of Fest
A.L.F.

Best Narrative Feature
A.L.F.

Best Documentary
5 Days in Denver

Best Short Film
Things My Father Never Taught Me

Best Music Video
In Your Arms by Greg Jardin for Kina Grannis

Best Animation
Machinehead

Best of Illinois
The Last Interview

Best Actor
Alexandre Laigner for A.L.F.

Best Actress
Molly Ryman for Things I Don’t Understand

Best Supporting Actor
Hugo Dillon for Things I Don’t Understand

Best Supporting Actress
Grace Folsom for Things I Don’t Understand

Best Director
Craig Foster for Parrot

Best Screenplay
Craig Foster for Parrot

Best Sound
Lauren J. Stephens & Michael Baird for I Am Bad

Best Editing
Brian Wessel for Like A Good Neighbor

Best Special Effects Makeup
Kristin LeClair & Crystal Portillo for Other

Best Cinematography
Yohei Tateishi for Quitter

Best Production Design
Micah Gallagher for Machinehead

Best Original Music
David Rackoff for I Am Bad

Promising New Filmmaker
Brad Rosier for Currency

Audience Favorite
Things I Don’t Understand

For example, The Hole (from South Korea) introduces us to a young man who hesitates to help a woman under attack and is haunted by his inaction to do the right thing.  A group of activists bound by a limitless empathy towards mistreated animals show courage to complete a mission they have been preparing for months in the eye-opening French film, A.L.F. (Animal Liberation Front).

This year’s festival will also feature motion pictures made closer to home, such as Andrew Morris’s Red Balls - a fully improvised mockumentary that shows the face of Chicago’s roughest and most intense underground dodgeball league.

The 2012 Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival has nearly 30 films to offer, as well as an opportunity that most festivals can’t: the ability to see every film selected for competition.  We only screen one film at a time to maximize the movie-going experience for our audience, as well as for the judging panel who will view each film for the first time with you.  The Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival is unlike any festival out there and we’d like to invite you to come see why.

Join us on Tuesday, July 24 for the festival’s free opening night concert, featuring Chicago’s Band Called Catch.  Official Selections will begin screening for audiences on Wednesday, July 25 and run through the evening of Saturday, July 28.  On Sunday, July 29, join us for a delicious Awards Brunch where the festival staff and judges will present the winners of the 2012 Festival.  See you there!

Being Bradford Dillman
Directed by Emma Burch

The Dance
Directed by Pardis Parker

The Diet Situation
Directed by Steve Coulter

Future.Inc
Directed by Martin Stirling

The Guy Who Lived in My Pool
Directed by Wyeth Taylor

The Hole
Directed by Joon Seong Ahn

Hourglass
Directed by Pedro Collantes

The Last Interview
Directed by Zachary Mehrbach

Like A Good Neighbor
Directed by David Lassiter

Machinehead
Directed by Micah Gallagher

Open
Directed by Tom Abray

Other
Directed by Daniel DelPurgatorio

Parrot
Directed by Craig Foster

Quitter
Directed by Garen Mirzaian

Things My Father Never Taught Me
Directed by Burleigh Smith

Time Dances On
Directed by Sophia Kruz

Webcam
Directed by Stefan Haverkamp, Jan Jaworski, Brenden Kramer & Tom Kropp

See below for the complete listing of the 2012 BWiFF FEATURE SELECTIONS:

5 Days in Denver
Directed by Todd Cassetty

A.L.F.
Directed by Jérôme Lescure

Currency
Directed by Brad Rosier

I Am Bad
Directed by David Rackoff

Kinderblock 66: Return to Buchenwald
Directed by Rob Cohen

Ordinary Joe
Directed by Carlo Gennarelli

Red Balls
Directed by Andrew Morris

Searching for Sonny
Directed by Andrew Disney

Things I Don’t Understand
Directed by David Spaltro

Christopher Abbott and Melanie Lynskey in "Hello I Must Be Going" (2012).

The Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival is proud to announce the Closing Night Special Presentation feature for the 2012 festival will be Todd Louiso‘s Hello I Must Be Going.  The film had its World Premiere at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in January.  Featuring acclaimed actress Melanie Lynskey (Win Win, Up In The Air, Away We Go) in her breakout role as Amy, a recent divorcée who seeks refuge in the suburban Connecticut home of her parents (played by Blythe Danner and John Rubinstein).  Demoralized and uncertain of her future, Amy begins an affair with a 19-year-old actor (played by Christopher Abbott) that jumpstarts her passion for life and helps her discover an independence and sense of purpose that she has missed for years.  Coupling Danner’s subtle, moving performance as a frustrated empty nester with Lynskey’s endearing and nuanced depiction of both the comic and tragic coming together at a crossroads, Hello I Must Be Going is a modern, unconventional love story infused with sex, humor and emotional honesty – everything Amy will need to get on with her life.

Photo by George Pimentel. Image Courtesy of GettyImages.com

The film is directed by Todd Louiso, who brought us Love, Liza with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Kathy Bates and The Marc Pease Experience with Jason Schwartzman and Ben Stiller.  His first short, The Fifteen Minute Hamlet, starring Austin Pendleton, screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997.  As an actor, Louiso has appeared in Scent of a Woman, Jerry Maguire, High Fidelity and Thank You For Smoking.  Sarah Koskoff was a 2009 Sundance Screenwriting Lab Fellow and penned Hello I Must Be Going, which is also her first screenplay.  Koskoff studied Literature and Anthropology at Sarah Lawrence College.  After graduating, she made the “natural transition” to working as an actress in episodic television and later wrote plays for the Los Angeles theater scene where she developed her voice as a writer.

Come out to BWiFF 2012 on Saturday, July 28 for the Illinois Premiere of Hello I Must Be Going!  More details about this years festival coming this week…

Wednesday, May 30 – Feature Film (Official Selections)
Thursday, May 31 - Short Film (Official Selections)
Friday, June 1 -  Music Video (Official Selections)