Hope for the poor film-maker—what’s up doc…umentary

Peter Evanchuck

Many of us have lived a rough and tough life full of characters with stories, some sad, others full of lovely moments that charm us. What to do? What to do with these stories? Digital has opened the world for the low- or no-budget filmmaker and festivals have given us wonderful outlets for feasting on our affection for movies.

Filmfreeway hosts an international festival platform where for a modest fee filmmakers can submit their films to innumerable international festivals with only a couple of clicks and if you have PayPal you can do it with fewer clicks. It’s so easy it’s impossible not to use these two services.

All this I discovered only about two years ago and last year my two documentaries did amazingly well, (“A Short History of Poverty” and “Searching for a Beautiful Bachelor”) winning numerous international awards and accolades. This year both my new social docs have continued this success (“In Sane” and “Poetry of Payne”).

“Nothing succeeds like success.” I’m not sure of that adage but it certainly makes a creative media artist carry on into what used to be a very dark area reserved mostly for the stars and big bucks―not so any longer.

Working with partner, Helene Lacelle, we’ve managed to cobble together these four successes over two years. We are now working on editing in post production what was called “Pig Girl” now called “Alice Unloved”―not a documentary but a drama about an independent woman who wants to find her voice and live life her way, but like many other women gets involved with and has affection for a pig. (Thanks to all Sandy Hillers who helped.)

As Albert Camus says “Maybe it’s not about happy ending. Maybe it’s about the story.”

See: movieshandmade.com