Washington, DC - A Film Town

Who said that Washington, DC wasn't a film town? On my way to the screening of American Fusion, I had trouble finding a parking space around the Landmark E Street theater because of all the movie trailers taking up the street parking. Apparently, Antoine Fuqua was shooting his latest film, Shooter, with Mark Wahlberg and Danny Glover a couple blocks away. After circling the block a few times, I finally found parking and walked into the E Street theater to set up for that night's screenings. Soon, several people of Hispanic descent came in and I assumed they were here for our screening of American Fusion, a film starring Esai Morales who plays a Mexican dentist who develops a relationship with Sylvia Chang, a Chinese divorcée with a quirky family. They would come up to us and ask for tickets for Babel. We quickly find out that E Street was having a preview screening and several members of the Mexican Embassy were invited to attend. Also, we soon discover that the director, Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros), would be present to do a Q&A afterwards. I was very tempted to leave my post and sneak into the screening, but was committed to making sure the screening of American Fusion went well. The audience laughed at all right times during American Fusion and we gave out t-shirts from MTV Chi and The Anime Network, a subscription to Giant Robot, game cards to ESPN Zone, and a gift certificate to Sea Catch Restaurant at the end. Afterwards, I passed my responsibilities to the event manager for Waterborne, a well-made film detailing a terrorist act on a major city that unfolds in unexpected ways. As the Waterborne screening got underway, one of the organizers of the Babel screening invited us to attend the Q&A. Some of the staff went in to watch as Iñárritu gave interesting and intelligent answers to the questions that were asked. We took a photo with him and gave him a souvenir bag from our festival. Several of us took posters for Babel that were available as our female staff began to drool over the pictures of Brad Pitt and Gael García Bernal.

We have a few highly anticipated screenings left. Our shorts programs at the Goethe Institut contain some outstanding films from filmmakers you'll hear more from in the future and our closing night film is Eve & the Fire Horse, a wonderful Sundance film that has received numerous awards. Our film festival is coming to a close, but we are working with some other film festivals that are coming up that I'll write about soon. And did I mention some of our staff hung out with John Singleton and Jimmy Smits on Tuesday night. It's an interesting time to be in DC for film.


Eve & the Fire Horse trailer