A bit about the film: CHOCH
Choch is a feature length narrative film, independently produced and shot in Calgary by the award-winning creator of Generation Why (2009), Brendan Prost.
The film is a
portrait of a man struggling with an unattractive and misleading “choch”
identity he’s developed for himself over a number of years. Day after
day he recoils at the things he says and does, but is confined to
complacency and self-hate by the same insecurities that birthed his
false persona in the first place. A cycle of regret and resignation
seems doomed to repeat itself until circumstance manifests a
confrontation between the outward and the inner self, suggesting that
perhaps there is hope for this partially assembled soul to be more than
what he pretends to be. Combining
vérité photography and ostentatious new-wave editing
with internalized and heavily improvised performances, Choch offers a
highly symbolic and sparingly evocative portrait of a post-modern self
in crisis.
The movie was shot in the summer of 2010 on a budget of approximately $1300 drawn from the filmmaker's personal finances. It was made in collaboration with a limited number of talented and dedicated non-professional actors and crew members, all of whom participated in the production while working other part or full-time jobs. It was edited over the span of six months while the filmmaker was attending school at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.
Choch is now finished and has screened four times theatrically in Calgary, and is now seeking to reach a larger audience via film festivals and other distribution channels. If you didn't see the film during the screening series, you can now watch it online for free. After you've seen it, decide for yourself whether or not this is a film you'd like to support.
Why this matters
Choch is unabashedly personal film. I've always considered my passion for filmmaking as an effort to find and share emotional commonalities with other people. My earliest love for movies was spawned from a recognition of my own personal thoughts and feelings being made manifest onscreen by a director or screenwriter. When you see something in a film that you relate to or understand, that there is an affirmation of the experiences that you've shared with others you've never even met.
For these reasons, I want only to share what we have made with as many people as possible. The best way for this film to find an audience outside of Calgary I believe is to pursue screenings at various film festivals, which is at present financially unrealistic for me to explore without help. I would also like to offer a DVD of the film for those who like it and want to show it to their friends and family at their leisure, but I don't have the resources to replicate a batch of proper discs.
What I would like to do to is enlist your help to share Choch with a larger audience, and hopefully provoke an understanding of the thoughts and feelings I have tried to express from more people than might be possible on my own. Without your help I am concerned that the film will circulate only within a small circle of individuals in Calgary, and fail to accumulate any broader cultural relevance.
What we need help with
The $1000 we are trying to raise is going to be used in two ways:
$400 will be spent replicating a snazzy DVD that we will author and design ourselves. Those who contribute $15 or more will receive a copy of this DVD once it is ready. So basically if you donate $15, all you're doing is making a pre-order of the Choch DVD. And $15 for a brand new DVD is a pretty good deal, no?
The remaining $600 will be spent on film festival submission fees. Some of you may not know, but submission costs for festivals these days are quite high (ranging on average between $15 and $50). This is especially steep considering that you have to submit to a fair few number of festivals to have any shot of being selected. I intend to be very strategic and cost-effective about picking where we submit to. From this amount of money I think we should be able to make about 30 submissions, and of course our odds go up if people contribute more than we anticipate.
We are offering people a chance to watch the film and then decide for themselves whether they like it enough to support it. If you decide you like the film and want to help it reach a larger audience, than you can get a lot of cool stuff in return. Check out all our perks listed on the right hand side for details!
Ways to make it happen
We understand of course that budgets are tight right now, and that not everybody can afford to contribute to a campaign like this financially. But there are lots of other ways to help us meet our goal. Use your social network to tell your friends about our film and direct them towards our campaign. Use Facebook to share the link, Tweet it, write a Tumblr or Blogspot post about it, VLog your response to the film and post it on Vimeo and/or YouTube, write a review of the film, call your friends up and get them to watch the movie. Tell your rich relatives about this fabulous investment opportunity! Arrange a screening of the film in your town by contacting us and setting it up.
Use your imagination, be persistent, and have fun with it. Art and media is becoming increasingly democratized, and the power to determine which works succeed and which fail is at your fingertips.
THANKS IN ADVANCE!
