The New Hampshire Film Festival needs your help! PLEASE VOTE for NHFF for The Provident Bank’s “Our Community, Your E-Vote” program.  NHFF is honored to have been nominated again to receive a portion of $20,000 donated by The Provident Bank. Last year we received significant funding through this program that allowed us to bring over 90 independent films to the seacoast as well as celebrate a thriving community of filmmakers here in the granite state. Help us do it again! Your vote means the world to us and we can’t thank you enough for taking a minute to continue to support us. Click on the BIG VOTING BUTTON on our home page!

Awareness UNlimited, Larkin Ltd, and a713productions present a screening of the short film, Trouble along with guest speakers at the Portsmouth Public Library, on Sunday, May 6, from 1-3:30 p.m. Trouble is a film about children in trouble and how in the modern world children must cope with inner strength in difficult times. Directed by Mark Constance of a713production, and shot in Portsmouth, the film stars New England based actors Lucas Ardagna, Nate Krawshuk, Eliya-Quaye Constance, Jordan Celli, Drew Rydell, NHFF sponsor through the Provident Bank Steve Scott, and NHFF screenplay competition director Dana Myskowski-Biscotti.

Speakers at the event are Fran Page, a theater artist and activist based in Portland, Maine and James Reilly, a special education instructor at Cooperative Middle School in Stratham. Don’t miss this enlightening afternoon at the Portsmouth Public Library.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The 12^th annual New Hampshire Film Festival is only five months away, and it is shaping up to be the most prominent festival to date.  NHFF takes place over four days in four screening venues and multiple event locations across downtown Portsmouth.  The event grows every year, drawing upwards of 9,000 festival-goers.  This massive cultural and artistic event is simply not possible without support from a range of sponsors. Each year as we increase in size and enhance in prestige, we need to reach out and include more local and corporate sponsors and advertisers.

By advertising with/sponsoring NHFF, you’ll align your company’s brand with New England’s premier film festival — an established cultural event that reaches a range of stakeholders. Depending on the level of sponsorship, your benefits will vary.

Sample Benefits:
-Brand placement on our website
-Inclusion in print and web articles/advertisements
-Tags, check-ins, shout-outs on social media pages
-Brand visibility on banners/billboards/outdoor signage
-Advertisements in our program
-Venue/Event/Award naming rights
-Inclusion in presentation announcements
-Onscreen logo placement prior to each film
-Distributing samples of your product to festival participants and attendees
-Logo placement on hundreds of t-shirts worn by volunteers, and festival enthusiasts
-Radio and television exposure
-Announcements at year round events and screenings

Be a part of NHFF this fall when Portsmouth rolls out the red carpet and takes center stage on the international film festival circuit.  To take a look at our sponsorship kit or to create a custom package designed specifically to compliment your brand, please contact Nicole Gregg: nicole@nhfilmfestival.com.

In 2011, the British Organization The Wine & Spirit Education Trust officially declared that May was National Wine Month.  They released a website, www.maketimeforwine.org, and the restaurant event buzz skimmed across the pond to the US. Not wanting to miss out on the excitement this year, we started preparing the NHFF clubhouse for a month of fermented fun, however, we didn’t realize that the Brits hadn’t kept it up for 2012. The website domain has been repossessed by www.godaddy.com, no one has tweeted since May 31^st last year, and there is no current press coverage anywhere.  The more I researched the one-year wonder, the more perplexed I became.  But alas, I am happy to announce I have decided that no matter what happened with the organization and their lack of upkeep of wine month this year, we at NHFF are still celebrating.  We will stock our office/clubhouse with the appropriate products, hold semi-daily Francis Ford Coppola wine tastings, and drink while we work, like good stewards of a sponsorship should.  (If sponsor NH Liquor Commission is also reading this, we’re kidding about drinking while we work.)

Host your own Francis Ford Coppola wine tasting:

Choose your tasting to mimic what you would get at the actual winery.  You can choose from these three options:

The Rosso and Bianco table wine tasting:
Rosso
Bianco Pinot Grigio
Shiraz
Chardonnay
Moscato

Cathy’s Portfolio:
Diamond Collection Sauvignon Blanc
Director’s Cut Pinot Noir
Director’s Cut Cabernet Sauvignon
Francis Coppola Reserve Syrah

Family Flight:
Diamond Collection Pavilion
Sofia Rosé
Director’s Merlot
Diamond Collection Alicante Bouschet

Preparation:

Use a white tablecloth to easily be able to distinguish the colorings of the wine. Any wine glasses will do, but a thin rimmed glass with a thicker middle that is deep enough to be able to swirl without splashing is ideal.  It is best to use separate glasses for each wine, but it is also acceptable in a casual setting to use one and lightly rinse after each wine, so a pitcher of water should be provided.  Don’t burn scented candles or potpourri, or anything else that will interfere with the scent of the wine, as smell is the second most important sense for wine tasting.

Chill whites between 50 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit and reds between 60 and 65.  Include some palate cleansers between each tasting — french bread and lightly salted mozzarella work really well.  At a wine tasting, you’re not technically meant to swallow the wine so as to keep your senses completely aware and alert, but I don’t think that method is any fun. If you do desire to provide your guests with this option, you can use coffee mugs as spittoons for each person.  A large bucket or pitcher centerpiece for waste and leftovers should be included. Paper and pens can be helpful for taking notes about each wine, or you can choose to keep everything verbal.  Each person should receive about an ounce and a half to two ounces of wine per taste.

The Tasting: Four Main Components

Examine: Look at the color, determine clarity/opaqueness, check for floaties.

Swirl: The swirling motion is said to release aromas, it also coats the glass which lets you see the wine’s thickness.  The faster the droplets return to the bottom the thinner the wine.

Smell: Don’t be shy — stick your nose right in the glass to inhale the released aroma.  Take notes on what scents comes to mind, or shout them out.

Taste and Savor: Take a sip and hold the wine in your mouth, remaining extremely conscience of the pending analysis, swish it around every part, and slowly take in some air through your teeth to vaporize the wine’s essential tastes.  Use a spittoon, or swallow and enjoy.

Keep your comments centered around the aromas and signature tastes, the texture, the balance of the flavors, the aftertaste, and how it lingers on your palate.

If you’re new at this, I’ve compiled some conversational tips:

Do use these words and phrases: light, crisp, full-bodied, soft, rough, smooth, fruitful, There’s a great harmony of its components, Does anyone else taste a bit of chocolate? I’m getting some oak.

Don’t use these words and phrases: grapey, Does anyone mind if I chug?, Is that a hint of cumin?, Can’t we just drink Kool-Aid instead?

Further educate yourself with this online wine dictionary.

We’d like to thank Francis Ford Coppola Wines for their continued sponsorship and support, their wines are available at every NH Liquor Outlet, and at their online store.  Happy wine month, please drink responsibly!

American Animal was one of my favorite films at the festival last year, I really enjoyed the complexity of themes taking place amidst a background of simplicity.  The entire set consists of one loft apartment, taking place over one day, with a cast of just four people, but wastes no time diving into questions of why we do the things we do, the difference between reality and perceived reality, and an analysis of an entitled generation.

The synopsis from American Animal’s website: Jimmy is a terminally ill young man. He is also quite eccentric, bordering on plain old crazy, and starting today he has decided that he is ‘happy’ and no longer sick. Jimmy’s roommate James is a healthy, dreamy young man. They’re best friends. They live together. They don’t do much of anything and they seem very happy that way. Today, they have a couple of female friends over to their downtown Los Angeles loft for just another day of drinks, drugs, board games and casual sex, among other things. All seems well. But trouble arises when it gets revealed that James will be leaving for a new job in the morning. Jimmy, feeling betrayed, is not pleased by this development. He sees it as nothing short of the destruction of the perfect little world that they’ve set up, and a humorous battle of wills ensues as James prepares for the real world and Jimmy falls deeper and deeper into his world of illness, isolation, and make-believe.

In Slant Magazine’s Review of the film it is called “uncompromising” and like a lazy writer I’m  going to concede to the fact that Slant got it totally and completely right and stop searching the thesaurus for an all encompassing synonym for edgy, crazy, forceful, and insightful.  Because the film does not care about the cringing, and laughing audience, in fact it continues with no care for any audience reaction at all, but instead is completely driven by a strong cast that stays true throughout.

We had the pleasure of having writer, director and lead actor, Matt D’Elia in attendance, who was so very far from the Jimmy of American Animal, that it was shocking.  As D’Elia conducted his Q&A, it was amazing to me how he kept all three of his film entities separate, never compromising on what he as an actor would be comfortable with as oppose to what the script he wrote called for, and continually pushing himself as the director to get to the right intensity as Jimmy.  It was fascinating.

The film was picked up by Screen Media Films and opens on May 18 at the Village East Cinema in NYC.

Don’t miss this film.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In celebration of Earth Day, we at NHFF would like to give a special shout-out to our sustainability partner, EarthTec.

EarthTec is an environmentally conscious clothing shop.  From their facebook page: “EARTHTEC is a sustainable lifestyle apparel brand. We produce top quality garments from the most innovative eco textiles in the world.”

The eco textiles are really quite amazing and Earthtec prides itself on only using recycled or renewable fabrics: Organic Cotton, Natural Wool, and Recycled PET.

Organic Cotton means genetically unmodified cotton grown without the use of herbicides, pesticides, or synthetic fertilizers.   EarthTec wants to specifically work with and support farmers with the health of the earth on their mind, reducing the amount of chemicals, and improving the fertility of the earth’s arable soil.

Natural Wool comes from EarthTec’s hand-selected ranchers who treat their animals humanely, and are as green as possible when processing their raw wool fibers.

And perhaps the most interesting is Earthtec’s Recycled PET. PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, is used in almost all the plastic packaging in the US.  It is the most reusable in the form of water/soda bottles, which about 150 billion of get tossed into landfills around the world every year.  With a new innovative technology EarthTec is giving these plastic bottles new use, by turning them into a polyester hybrid fabric.  The condensed (and easier to explain) process goes like this:  The bottles are ground into poly flake, the poly flake is melted down and extruded into fiber, and the fiber is woven into fabric. This waste plastic finds new purpose as a polyester yarn in fleeces, jackets, and hoodies.  About 12 bottles are used in each one of Earthtec’s recycled PET garments, keeping them out of landfills, starting to minimize waste.

Last year EarthTec generously donated 30 NHFF logo’d fleeces and vests for the 2011 festival, (See photo of NHFF Board Chairman Zac Gregg in his EarthTec fleece vest with Tommy Chong and Executive Director Nicole Gregg) and contributed plastic bottle collection bins at all of our venues as part of their Earth360 program.

To celebrate today’s holiday EarthTec launched a 20% off sitewide/storewide sale that started Thursday 4/19 and continues through until today 4/22. They are also holding a photo contest on their facebook page today.  The best photo winner will receive a free Earth Tec T-shirt, contest results will be announced on Monday.  To enter, post a photo of what’s blooming in your yard on the store’s facebook page.

So if you weren’t able to plant a tree this Earth Day (and even if you were) get some green living in and visit the store at 76 Congress St.  or browse/shop their online store.  Happy Earth Day!