We had a great show of A Thousand Thoughts at the National Opera House in Athens! Wow – what a venue! It was a free show put on by the Summer Nostos Festival. It was our first time presenting this piece in a country where English is not universally spoken, so I was unclear how it might resonate. Would the humor translate? Was it too “American” to be meaningful to a Greek audience. They projected subtitles, and it seemed to all work fine. It was a packed house and a great audience – big standing ovation for the Kronos Quartet. Thank you to Christos Konstantakopoulos for making the screening happen.  We’re off for the summer now – more screenings in the fall and then 2019. Check out https://athousandthoughts.film/shows/ for details.

Just got back from great screenings of A Thousand Thoughts at the Barbican in London and the Brighton Dome in Brighton. In a few weeks we head to Athens, Greece to do a show at the National Opera House. This photo was taken last month after a show we did at the Castro Theatre as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. It was a great hometown event, and we won the festival audience award to boot! (Photo: Pamela Gentile)

If you’re at the CPH:DOX film festival in Copenhagen, I’ll be yakking about live cinema with Thom Powers on March 21st. Should be an interesting conversation – hope you can make it!

Absolutely thrilled about the premiere of A Thousand Thoughts the other night!! Two sold out shows, standing ovations, wow! With a film you never really know what you have until you experience it with an audiences. Profound thanks to everyone who helped make it happen: Joe Bini, Kirsten Johnson, Josh Penn, Janet Cowperthwaite, Kronos Quartet, C41 Media, Tommy Kriegsmann, Pete Sillen, Brendan Doyle, Evan Neff, Ayumi Ashley, Rich Bologna, Sierra Pettengill, Anna Hudak, Work-Order Design, Carl Williamson, Gary Hustwit, Jessica Edwards, Yoni Brook and many, many others!

Last couple of shoots for A THOUSAND THOUGHTS as we sprint towards the finish line and the Sundance premier next month. Filmed with Laurie Anderson the other night – she was a mesmerizing presence!

I’m happy to announce that  A Thousand Thoughts, my new live cinema collaboration with the legendary Kronos Quartet, will be premiering at Sundance in the New Frontier slate along with my recent short,  Julius Caesar Was Buried in a Pet Cemetery. Can’t wait to perform this new work!

We were thrilled to recently announce the recipients of the 2017 Sarah Jacobson Film Grant: Alyx Arumpac and Ja’Tovia Gary. Their projects knocked us out and you can get more details about both of them here. I’m grateful to Katie Bradshaw for help with the grant and the two panelists this year, Veronica Majano and Natasha Mendonca. For those of you who don’t know, Sarah Jacobson was a great underground/indie filmmaker and an inspiration and dear pal of mine. She died of cancer in 2004 and we’ve been doing this grant for ten years now to keep her spirit alive. She’d be thrilled by this year’s grantees and to know that her name is helping to get radical and feminist work out into the world.

Deep in the editing of my new film A Thousand Thoughts – a live documentary collaboration between myself and the legendary Kronos Quartet. I was telling someone recently that I feel like if this were a marathon, I’d be at mile 18 — you’re deep in it and on some level you know you are going to make it, but at the same time, you know it’s gonna get ugly between here and the finish line. There’s a lot of ground still to cover. Editing is intense. I love it though. And Kronos is a great muse.  I always say to Kat, “This is the hardest film I’ve ever made – I’m not sure I can do it.” And she always says, “You say that with every film.” And I say, “Really?” And she says, “Yeah.” But this one really is the hardest!