August began with Annette Baran’s incredible memorial service in Santa Monica. With many of Annette’s dearest friends traveling across the country to attend, from Joyce Maguire Pavao to Martha Hulbert, as many Californians traveling hundreds of miles, from Sharon Roszia to Karen Vedder to Nancy Verrier and Sarah Burns, those of us from the adoption […]
On July 11th, 2010, all of us in the adoption reform movement lost one of the most significant pioneers in our history. Annette Baran is one of a handful of individuals who changed the way our society would look at adoption. As a social worker, for a quarter century, in her own words she bought […]
June was a whirlwind, climaxing in the New Jersey International Film Festival, where the film received honorable mention in the best documentary category, and an emotional response from the attending audience. The film was attended by both Dave Kiley and Joe DeGironimo, the primary subjects in “For the Life of Me”. The dinner held before […]
I’ve been on the road for six weeks, and had a good time, despite swine flu and a propensity to lose things (like my boom pole, my phone, my flash drive, my mind). The best thing of all was that my youngest son, Jonathon, graduated from Penn (yippee!) and so there was much partying and […]
Okay. This has been a long time coming. April was a great month, starting off with turning 55 (born in ’55, so it seems like a special year somehow). Mid month, I headed out to Connecticut for the Kent Film Festival. I was blown away by the fact that Larry Newman, my sponsor, and Pam […]
3/26/2010 The feature premiered to a FANTASTIC audience tonight at the Cleveland International Film Festival. It was thrilling to be there, and to have had such support from the staff at CIFF, at Adoption Network Cleveland, and from individuals like Betsie Norris who put me up for five nights, CIFF sponsors Laura and Chris Blake, […]
Screening For the Life of Me in Sacramento at the American Adoption Congress conference was awesome – topped only perhaps by getting to dance with a cardboard cutout of FTLOM sponsor Elise Lewis who was unable to attend. Elise – we learned you are not a wallflower… There are many new faces at AAC and […]
The Sedona International Film Festival… rocks! For the Life of Me screened twice, to sold out theaters and appreciative audiences. Other attendees included celebs from Michael Moore to Tim Daly to Jane Seymour, and the festival organizers feted us all with galas and opportunities to link up with other filmmakers from across the country. Some […]
FTLOM (short version) receives SMOGDANCE FILM FESTIVAL Audience Award for Best Picture! The short version of For the Life of Me – a 29 minute cut of the feature film focusing solely on the story of Dave Kiley – premiered at the 12th annual Smogdance Film Festival (which runs concurrent with Sundance) on January 24th. […]
Making a film, like writing a book or any creative endeavor, feels like giving birth. One hopes that everyone else will love ‘one’s child’ and see the potential in it. As one filmmaker recently said to me, “We are all so in love with our subjects that we expect everyone else to be too.” Rejection […]