Lake Worth and beyond.

I owe you a few blogs. My tour is completed in Lake Worth. This tour has given me lots to think about, personal and for the film. Here’s the brief personal side trip. I‘m a Florida native. Squeezing 20 minutes at Hunting Island in SC was paying homage to a coastal environment that shaped me. The island’s thicket of pine and palm so closely resembled a Florida hammock I could have been in Sebring or Coral Gables. And the wild beach there is beautiful. When I got to West Palm I again stole a few minutes at the Atlantic. This time it was my Atlantic. The taste and feel and look of the water and beach were as familiar as the voice of an old friend. These are Gulf Stream warmed waters. That day the water was clear, the salt light. There were fat lizards, mangrove seeds, and sea grape leaves. I know I am not unique in the way I experience memory and indulge nostalgia. It is palpable, a gut punch and a caress. I know the capacity I exercise to indulge memory is the same one I use in my work--telling stories.


Okay back to the film. I met great people in Mobile, Montgomery, Baton Rouge, and Lake Worth. Sounds glib, but the fact is, people coming to see the film came knowing something about it and chose to be there. It was not the crap shoot of a festival film goer (Maybe this movie will turn out to be better than the one I couldn’t get into...) or of the filmmaker at a festival (Will anyone come? Will they be glad to be there?). I met former Third Ward residents, artists, designers, activists, politicians and city planners. I have begun e-mail correspondence with a few and expect to be contact with others. I can’t name everyone in this blog, but a few by example. Those of you with whom I talked but I don’t mention later, it is only for brevity.

My question is this: “How do I reach the people who will want to see and use this film?”
My partners and I want this film to reach a significant African-American audience and we think it can. We want it to reach artists interested in how their work can be more than an exhibit in a designated, central culture-temple. We want it to reach architects, designers, and planners who understand their work as a collaboration that makes city life (even rural town life) more livable. We want it to reach residents in other communities that may be facing some of what Third Ward residents face or have faced. We want it to reach people who will see this and ask how their own communities could be more satisfying, more stimulating, more of a neighborhood.

If you, reading this, have ideas of groups, listservs, organizations who should know about Third Ward TX, please write back and let me know.

Thanks,
Andy

"...That Flies to Montgomery"

Garrison here. Thanks to the way airlines are being run today, and compounded by weather, my 1 p.m. flight was delayed over five times. So I arrived in Montgomery 20 minutes after everyone had left the Capri theater. But six people stuck around to talk including theater director Martin McCaffery, community development activist Donald Jenkins, new city council member Tracy Larkin, an activist lawyer, a young architect named Mark and another young architect (I think) whose name I did not get, or it slipped out of my head. We went next door for a drink and to talk about Montgomery.

For me, Montgomery is legendary. Both good and bad. It is a southern cradle of the Civil Rights Movement and former bastion of demagogue politics of racism and very real violence. But these are only images. Flat ones at that. I wish had gotten in early enough to just see Montgomery; to experience it, a little at least, as a city--a place with mixed and contradictory history but a living place with a lot going on.

Raining and gray. I’m about to leave for Mobile.

Atlanta airport limbo

Garrison. First, let me say that watching a movie in a planetarium is wonderful. I love tilting back and watching the dome. I only wish we had the full sound system at the South Carolina State University planetarium, part of the I. P Stanback Art Museum--but the little amp and speaker sounded pretty darn good.

THIRD WARD TX got good marks. Ellen Zisholtz of the I.P. Stanback Museum had a survey for the audience members and I got 5 out 5 on 99% of them. The movie works. What is so incredible, of course, is Project Row Houses, but the movie gets that across.

And liked what little I saw of Orangeburg. Nice neighborhoods, great arboretum, and two of the best tacos I have had, including from my favorite Austin restaurants. Married to a former caterer and restaurateur, I can't not talk about food, when it is good. I recommend El Jarrocho to you. I had a pollo and a lengua taco. Lengua is beef tongue, too weird for some folks but actually delicious. All vegetarian readers are now keeling over and hitting their Delete Key. And at the screening, Nita (I'm sorry, I did not get your last name) made great chicken fingers fried lightly and perfectly in seasoned flour and bread crumbs.

Now my flight out to Montgomery has been canceled and I am waiting in the Atlanta airport..hoping to get a standby flight out earlier than 7 p.m. The screening at the Capri Theater in Montgomery is 7:30. I'd like to get there before the movie starts...or ends.

Beaufort

Garrison here. Last night I screened THIRD WARD TX in Beaufort. I drove from Columbia to Beaufort in the aftermath of a light rain, windows open, on Rt 21 and I-95. Memories spring to mind like a muscle stimulated by an electric current. The humidity, the soft quality of the air instantly passed the thinking part of my brain, triggering images and sudden emotions. What is it about sense memories that are so direct, so intense? A scent, the feel of the air, a sound or certain song, can contract time and space. I was driving on the road in South Carolina and acutely conscious of afternoons driving around Alligator Alley in then-rural western Broward County, Florida. Those cow pastures and orange groves paved over for more tract houses long ago and my driving companion died three years ago. Strange thoughts swirling around when I arrived at my first stop.

Bluffton High School. This has go to be the toughest audience for a the “visiting artist.” First of all , the main reason they are there is because they can get out of class. They haven’t selected to be there and have no reason to show a visitor any special respect. Second, teenage years are such a difficult time. Make the wrong move, laugh at the wrong thing, show enthusiasm for something everyone else might think is weird and suddenly you are an outcast. Better to not show any response and see what the others do.

Plus, I really liked most of the people I filmed and it shows. The film wants you to like them, too. Even the lady with the Rhinestone glasses holding her little dog in her arms—she cuts a slightly absurd picture but we still like her. Is it okay to laugh?

They didn’t laugh much, but they watched carefully, a good sign with high school students. Had their attention. The discussion after was pretty good. They wanted to show me their films and I wish they had them there. I was sorry not to see them. It would have been a good talk.

Beaufort is beautiful and felt very well cared for by my hosts. I managed to get a 15-minute beach visit on Hunting Island. Outstanding. The evening felt like something that might have happened if we were having a house party showing of the film. Many of the people in the audience knew each other and there were even technical issues. Charles, the technician working the theater that night, made a work around and we got to watch the movie. No problem tonight with people worried about showing their enthusiasm. One particularly gratifying response was from a Mr. Scott, a former Third Ward resident. He thought it got the picture of Third Ward right.

Leaving Athens, GA

Had a good screening last night in Athens. I wish had more opporutnity to look around. Mayor Heidi Davison and her husband Al Davison came to the screening and we had a good discussion about efforts being made in Athens to promote public art and low-income housing.

One of the attendees last night was a geography graduate student, who did some research in Third Ward and really liked the film. She had some interesting observations on the difference between The South and The West. My feeling is that there are some particulars to each region, but they overlap and intermingle and become less separable depending upon the sub-culture you are talking about and with. If you are reading this e-mail, would you please get in touch with me at info@ThirdWardTx.com?

Is this what filmmakers are supposed to be blogging about? You got me. It is a narrow slice as far as I am concerned. Better hit the road or I'll be late.

Pre-Tour - It is almost tomorrow.

Monday night and still a ton of things to have in place before I fly out on Wednesday. A grad student filmmaker, Jaime Cano, has been trying to help me get closed captioning files into the DVD master. Lots of conversations back and forth with Ed Premetz and T Tran at Captions, Inc. Finally, I think, we've got it. I'll know for sure tomorrow when I can try it on a real t.v.

I'm excited about seeing the audience response to THIRD WARD TX across the Southern Circuit. While not only a "southern" film--still, people in the South will recognize the houses and some of the flavor of the neighborhood and the city in a way that will be different from northeast venues or strictly western venues.

I wish my co-producers Noland Walker or Nancy Bless could join me on some stops. But Noland is shooting a dramatically recreated history of Haiti on location (!) and Nancy has fires to tend in Austin for Texas Folklife, the organization she directs.

A few more hours of work tonight before bed, then a long day tomorrow. I'll get to nap a little on the plane to Atlanta.

Andrew Garrison tours with Southern Circuit from Oct. 17 - 25

Listen to an audio interview with Andrew Garrison
Learn more about THIRD WARD TX and Andrew's tour