YOUNG TALENT SCREENS AT FILM FESTIVAL

LONG DISTANCE, a 16mm UCSB student produced short, will have its Northern California film festival debut at this year's Sacramento Festival of Cinema. The film, a hilarious comedy about a young man who answers a ringing payphone only to discover God is calling on him to save the universe, was produced in Santa Barbara through the Film Studies 106 Film Production class. It was screened at the 20,000 Leagues Under the Industry Film Festival in Cleveland, Ohio and was one of the highlighted shorts at the Channel Islands Indie Film Festival in Oxnard, CA. The crew for the project was entirely student run. For many it marked the first experience for this young group learning to develop, produce, and finish a short film.

The crew's producer, Elisa Iovine (now working at Santa Barbara Location Services) has been very pleasantly surprised by the film's reception. "You work this hard in a vacuum and you never know what you have until you get reaction and feedback from all these festival audiences." For Greg Hirsh, the film director, the festival acceptance has been a great reward. "This is my second short that I have directed while at UCSB, and now I am ready to tackle the Real World." Greg, a recent UCSB graduate has just finished working as a production assistant on a USC thesis film Berzerker. "It was a great experience, with all the funding and equipment they had, but still I can't imagine a more rewarding one than working with the crew of Long Distance."

The project was created under the guidance of instructor, Dana Driskel (a UCSB alum), and is one of only four projects picked to be produced this year. The shooting of the film was used as a focus in a recent documentary on UCSB student films, called My First Movie. The digital doc followed the crew from its pre-production phase up to its debut screening. At the screening the film won the Golden Elmo award. Since then it has also won the Sherrill and Dorothy Corwin Award for Best Screenplay.

Long Distance will be playing with the feature End of The Law, Friday October 3rd at 9:30 pm.

Schedule info and ticket purchase: www.sacramento.org/film
916-456-8600 EXT 176

Media info:Martin Anaya 916-456-8600 EXT 177