KAVI

Wow! it has been an absolute whirlwind since last week…but the results are in and Kavi won the Gold medal at the Student Academy Awards!! The Academy packed days leading up to the ceremony full of all kinds of meetings, dinners & events with Academy members, The Writers Guild of America (WGA), The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) and the Academy Board of Governors (will write more about these amazing experiences)… it was such a magical and surreal experience that these filmmakers I’ve always admired are telling me how much they enjoyed “Kavi”! Many  said they had no idea slavery was so pervasive and they were really touched by the story.

Then at the awards ceremony and Gary Oldman (The Dark Knight, The Professional, etc) presented me the gold medal at the award at the ceremony. Couldn’t have been a sweeter icing on the cake!! Thanks to all who have been so supportive!

Here are some fun photos from the evening: http://tinyurl.com/kw538e

Here’s an unbelievable review… my jaw dropped: http://tinyurl.com/kavi-TFTreview and the follow up: http://tinyurl.com/l7nuej

A Daily Trojan article… it’s kind of accurate: http://tinyurl.com/kavi-DT

More soon!

If you’d like to attend the awards ceremony for the Student Academy Awards (this Saturday, June 13th at 6PM), FREE tickets & more info is available here: www.tinyurl.com/SAAtix

In addition to the ceremony, they’ll be screening the Gold medal-winning films for each category, so you’re guaranteed to see some great films.

ALSO, there’ll be a free screening of ALL THE WINNING FILMS this THURSDAY, June 11th. Kavi will be screening in the afternoon section. More info HERE

Fantastic News!! Kavi won a Student Academy Award!… and it feels bizarre that this is happening so soon, given that we only finished the film recently. It seems like this kind of thing happens at the end of a festival run, but it’s actually happening near the beginning. Crazy!

This means that Kavi has won either a Gold, Silver or Bronze… and we find out at the awards ceremony on June 13th in Beverly Hills. Feel free to come to the ceremony and the screening… it’s free and open to the public. If we win Gold, then they’ll screen the Kavi… but you should come regardless, because it’s guaranteed to be a fantastic evening of films no matter who wins. Here are the details: 

Tickets for the 36th Annual Student Academy Awards ceremony, at which the Gold Medal-winning films and the Honorary Foreign Film will be screened in their entirety, are free and available now. A maximum of  four tickets may be requested online at www.oscars.org, in person at the Academy box office, by mail, or by calling the Student Academy Awards department at (310) 247-3000, ext. 130. The ceremony will be held on Saturday, June 13, at 6 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater, located at 8949 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Doors open at 5 p.m. All seating is unreserved.

Found out today that after several rounds of stiff competition that Kavi is now one of 9 finalists for the 2009 Student Academy Awards! What a sweet way to start Kavi’s festival circuit! Not sure when the final results are announced, but they will screen the winning film on June 13th at the Academy theatre in Beverly Hills.

What a fantastic opportunity to raise awareness & let people konw that slavery still exists!

Got a call on Saturday morning that Kavi had won the award for Best Short Film and the Grand Jury Prize at the USA Film Festival… and could I come to Dallas TOMORROW with a finished copy of the film for the awards screening?!

I didn’t even know that Kavi was in the festival! Apparently it wasn’t… there is a festival section and then a competition section. The cool thing is that this is an Academy-Qualifying festival, so now we can official enter Kavi into competition for the 2010 Oscars under the short film category. Sweet!

More on the festival experience soon…

In any case, I hope that this will some how lead to great opportunities for people to watch Kavi, learn that slavery still exists, and take action to help abolish slavery once and for all!

Talk about cutting down to the wire!… The LA premiere at the Indian Film Festival is tomorrow and we’ve just printed Kavi to film. Went to Deluxe film lab today to check our final 35mm print… it was an amazing experience. It was absolutely incredible to see 2 1/2 years of work finally projected on film. It looked beautiful, the surround sound was engulfing and I was filled with all kinds of emotions.

The whole room was a buzz afterward, and it was only a handful of us… it was so neat to hear the three Deluxe guys say how much they enjoyed the screening & they had already seen it three times! I couldn’t help hugging & giving high fives… I walked outside with Brandon Griffith (additional sound editing), and as we talked about how awesome it was to finally see & hear Kavi in its full glory, I started tearing up… I couldn’t hold back. Tears of joy. What a ride it has been.