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?
- July 18th at 1357 5th Street in Oakland: Brainwash Zombie Night and Premiere Party (RSVP to Zombie Night at the Drive-in on Facebook)
- July 31st at either 1357 5th Street or 18th and Mandela: RSVP to Brainwash (night 1) on Facebook
- August 1st at either 1357 5th Street or 18th and Mandela: RSVP to Brainwash (night 2) on Facebook
Buy tickets in advance on TicketWeb. Hope to see you there!