3rd Biennial Dixie Dingo Super-8 Invitational Film Festival

Julie Lara Kahn, Brook Dorsch & Barron Sherer Present the
3rd Biennial Dixie Dingo Super-8 Invitational Film Festival

8 Strangers Invited to Make 8 Super-8 Films,
with Opening and Closing Sequences Created by Miami’s Clifton Childree
and Afterparty with DJ Lolo (Sweat Records)

Friday, August 8, 2008 at 8 pm
Dorsch Gallery, 151 NW 24th Street, Wynwood
Admission Free and Open to the Public
Donations are welcome to support the Festival and Faktura Pet Projects
For more information, call Julie Lara Kahn at 305-775-6417 or Brook Dorsch at 305-576-1278

Julie Lara Kahn, Brook Dorsch and Barron Sherer announce the third biennial Dixie Dingo Super-8 Invitational Film Festival at the Dorsch Gallery on 8/8/08 at 8:00 pm. The DDS8IFF is a free one-night festival on Super-8 films by Miami strangers. The festival celebrates the 5th birthday of a stray Dixie Dingo puppy named Logan who appeared on the steps of the Dorsch Gallery on 8/8/03. We adopted him and he changed our lives forever. The festival pays homage to the creative possibilities of such serendipitous meetings with strangers. The evening will benefit Faktura Pet Projects — a non-profit organization run by artist Jacquelyn Johnston dedicated to using the arts to enhance community by raising awareness, funds and support for the rescue of stray pets. This year’s 8 filmmakers are: Freddie Free, a 52-year-old with 22 kids and no tv; Atena Komar, a member of the Miami League of Paranormal Investigators; Nicole Marshall, a former art student and soon-to-be expat; Collabor8; Ryan Mesch, a 10th grader studying ballet and gymnastics; Brian Peterson, general manager of a car rental agency in downtown Miami; Eduardo Rubio-Garcia, a waste management administrator; and Us Not Them, a local collaborative. The festival also features a bonus film by Jacquelyn Johnston, founder/director of Faktura Pet Projekts as well as special opening and closing sequences by Miami artist Clifton Childree, known for his stop-motion animation films and recently name Best Local Artist by the Miami New Times.

This year, the cameras and film were distributed randomly to strangers throughout Miami by Brook, Julie and Barron with the help of Clifton, Jacquelyn, the TM Sisters and William Keddell. Each stranger was provided with a super-8 camera, a 3-minute film cartridge & a few weeks to shoot. The exposed film was the collected, processed and compiled onto a single reel without any editing beyond what was done in camera. The reel will be screened via old-fashioned projector with the help of Barron Sherer of Cinema Vortex at the Dorsch Gallery on August 8th at 8 pm. No one will view the films before the festival – not even the organizers or the filmmakers – we will all be virgins together. After the films are screened, the audience will vote for an Audience Choice Award Winner. The evening will conclude with a brief Q&A with the filmmakers followed by a dance party featuring DJ Lolo (Sweat Records) and an opportunity to mingle with the filmmakers and their guests.

The Dixie Dingo Super-8 Invitational Film Festival was founded in 2004 by Julie Lara Kahn, Brook Dorsch, Susan Caraballo and Mark Koven to build community by involving diverse South Floridians in the process of making and experiencing super-8 film. In its first two installments, the festival commissioned 16 short films by first-time filmmakers, reached over 200 diverse audience members, and garnered a top ten visual art event award from The Miami Herald. The festival is designed to open windows into diverse Miami stories, provide opportunities for fresh artistic voices, build new audiences for the arts, encourage stray pet adoption, and forge unexpected connections among disparate Miami subcultures. The films also serve as a time capsule for this particular moment in a rapidly changing Miami history.

Julie Lara Kahn is a Miami-based interdisciplinary artist who has received numerous grants for her participatory projects. She is currently a resident at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito. She has been awarded the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual and Media Artists, Florida Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, and a major grant from the Florida Humanities Council. Brook Dorsch is the owner of the Dorsch Gallery in Wynwood, home to diverse South Florida artists and a variety of cultural events including art exhibitions, music festivals, dance performances, and concerts. Barron Sherer is director on Miami-based Cinema Vortex, a non-profit organization showing Florida premieres of independent cutting-edge film & video. He is also the curator/archivist at the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives. The Dixie Dingo films are archived at the Wolfson Archives.

The Dorsch Gallery is located at 151 NW 24th Street in Wynwood. The event is free and open to the public. Donations are welcome to support the Festival and to encourage stray pet adoption through Faktura Pet Projekts. Free popcorn will be served. This program was made possible with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners under the fiscal agency of Gustavo Matamoros’ South Florida’s Composers Alliance and iSAW. Additional support provided by Grolsch. For more information about the third biennial Dixie Dingo Super-8 Invitational Film Festival, please contact Julie Lara Kahn at 305-775-6417 or Dorsch Gallery at 305-576-1278, or visit www.dorschgallery.com. Adorable images of the dog Logan are available upon request.