Dear Festividder 2019-2020
Info about this year's exchange. Signups are open for one more day.
Dear Festividder and anyone who might like to make a treat -- complete with sales pitches and pictures:
LONGMIRE (TV)
Sales pitch: Rural Wyoming sheriff's department investigates crimes, often interacting with residents of the neighboring Cheyenne reservation. Lead roles besides the requisite white dude include Katee Sackhoff and Lou Diamond Phillips. Featuring: Heartbreak! Hope! Landscapes! Horses! Boots and hats! Six 10-episode seasons streaming on Netflix; the last season was released a year ago. Based on books by Craig Johnson.
Lots of recurring and guest roles for Native actors include my current crush Zahn McClarnon as the Cheyenne tribal police chief as well as A Martinez, Graham Greene, Julia Jones, Irene Bedard, Gary Farmer, David Midthunder, Eric Schweig, Raoul Trujillo, Michael and Eddie Spears, Q'orianka Kilcher, Tantoo Cardinal, Rena Owen and Apesanahkwat.
Also take your pick of fan-favorite guests and cameos such as Callum Keith Rennie, Peter Weller, Pete Stormare, Mary Wiseman (Cadet Tilly on Star Trek: Discovery), Gina Rodriguez, Anne Dudek, Richard Speight, Jr., one of the older guys from Brooklyn 99, and more.
Caveats: Male posturing, gradual increase in soap-opera plots over episodic mysteries, insert your opinion here about Lou Diamond Phillips playing a Native American.
Vid ideas:
- I 100% watched Longmire for Mathias, and if you could manage to string together a coherent vid about him, you would make me very happy. It wouldn't be easy, though, with his limited appearances and the fact that he usually looks annoyed, angry or sad because we only get to see him when he's dealing with white people and/or criminals and/or victims. So no worries if this doesn't appeal to you.
- Retell some of the story from a Cheyenne perspective. That's the tack I took last year, heh.
- Who is Jacob Nighthorse, really?
- Walt's department or otherwise: Stuff about teamwork and trying to do what's right to help people. Grappling with grief and hardship. Being there for one another. Struggling for justice.
- Can you reframe so it doesn't look like Cady made bad choices at every turn?
- Want to go 'shippy, or friendshippy, or frenemy-y? I'd enjoy, in no particular order, Walt/Henry, Henry/Cady, Mathias/Walt, Mathias/Henry, Mathias/Cady, Walt/Jacob...
- Pick an episode or arc to focus on. I especially liked the Gab storyline, and Henry/Hector Lives. Maybe Bob and his son.
Things I am less into: Walt/Vic, Walt/Lizzie, Cady/Branch, Ferg/Meg, Walt vs. Branch, the Irish mob plot, the Return of Chance Gilbert plot, the pregnancy plot, Zach's anger management issues, Travis' Nice Guy-ism.
Also not super into Vic vids since there are already so many of these on YouTube.
QUEEN MARGOT (1994)
Sales pitch: Gorgeous costumes! Intricate court politics! Passionate sex like only the French can do! Strife between Catholics and Protestants! A night of stunning bloodshed! Sibling-sibling and mother-son incest, if that's your thing! Isabelle Adjani, Pascal Greggory, Vincent Perez, and even baby Thomas Kretschmann! A Patrice Chereau film, based on the Alexandre Dumas novel.
Caveats: See above re: incest. Also one instance of sexual assault or attempted/implied sexual assault, depending on which version of the film you see.
Vid request: This movie has such beautiful, rich imagery that it just begs for vidding. Anything you make will make me happy, including a whirlwind portrait of the color and blood and passion and perversion and deviousness. Personal favorite parts are the massacre, the hatred-to-love story between La Mole and Coconnas, and Anjou's face. Plus, generally, all the homoerotic undercurrents.
THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI (BOOK)
Sales pitch: A woman made of clay meets a man made of fire in turn-of-the-20th-century New York. There's challah baking and desert flashbacks and sexy seduction and supernatural possession, and, just in time for Purim, evil viziers. Beautiful, comforting prose.
Vid request: I still can't talk about this book without drawing little hearts around it. One of the things I loved was its vibrant setting, its creation of an atmosphere I wanted to wrap around myself forever. I think what I'm hoping for in a vid is a sort of mood piece, where you feel like you're in this magical 1900-ish Lower East Side or Central Park, where things are-as much as I make fun of it in movies-teal and gold like the cover of the book. (The closest movie I can think of for visual inspiration of the city is Gangs of New York, but I'm sure there's lots more out there I just haven't seen. The books Forever and Winter's Tale, which held the same sort of early-NY magic, aren't going to be much help, alas.)
And maybe you will give an impression of this large-boned Eastern European woman and this elegant Arab man (I mean, I don't expect our imaginations of Chava and Ahmad to be the same, so I look forward to whomever you choose for your fan-cast, if you fan-cast them). Maybe there will be a bakery and a metalworker's forge, or a desert and a temple, or Jewish and Syrian immigrant communities, or impressions of seduction or murder or enslavement or the clash between subservience/suppression and dominance/recklessness, or maybe there are other aspects of the story you want to highlight, or nothing so complex because it all seems very intimidating. Whatever you make, it's going to be wonderful.
I just ask that you please be sensitive if you choose to cast Schaalman or Schall. No Hollywood stereotypes of giant-eyebrowed, pointy-eared, scheming Jews. Thank you. <3
WILDLIKE (2014)
Sales pitch: Ella Purnell, who played young Maleficent! Bruce Greenwood, who played Christopher Pike in the Star Trek: Reboot movies and was in lots of other stuff! Alaskan landscapes from Juneau to Denali! A hurt/comfort story that progresses to the unlikely connection between a teenage girl and a gruff older backpacker!
Caveats: Molestation of high school-aged girl by uncle; mention of spousal death from cancer.
Vid request: I would be so happy to have a vid of this movie that simply told the story, focusing on Mackenzie and René's developing relationship and taking advantage of the visual splendor of the Alaskan setting. Or whatever focus and structure appeals to you. FWIW, the emotional high point of the movie for me was René's protectiveness once he found out what really happened with Kenzie and her uncle, specifically when René bundled her back into the ferry cabin. I like to think he made good use of the bear spray when he made that stop in Juneau. :)
FRONTERA VERDE / GREEN FRONTIER (TV 2019)
Summary: A murder mystery with supernatural elements set in the Colombian Amazon and featuring two female leads, a white male villain and lots of indigenous characters. Helena Poveda, a detective from Bogotá, is flown out to investigate what first appears to be a quadruple and soon proves to be a quintuple femicide. She gets enmeshed in local police politics/corruption and is drawn deeper into tales of an uncontacted tribe that may be tied to her own childhood. Meanwhile, we follow the story of two members of that tribe, Yua and Ushe, as they try to protect their secrets and their lives. The story moves back and forth in time in a way that is at first confusing but soon comes together. 8 episodes streaming on Netflix. In several languages, mostly Spanish, with English subtitles. Directed by Ciro Guerra, who also made the striking movie Embrace of the Serpent.
Sales pitch: Gorgeous cinematography! Lots of centered compositions, beautiful scenery, lingering shots of faces, visual echoes and juxtapositions. (I wish I could screencap it for you to really show it off, but time constraints mean we are stuck with these promo images.) An engrossing mystery with distinctive characters! A dude and a lady detective team who aren't being shoved into a romantic plotline by the showrunners! A jungle as a character in itself!
Caveats: Graphic violence, discussion and depiction of slavery (rubber plantations) and mistreatment of native people by Catholic missionaries, fatal house fire, pregnancy complications, Nazis. Intertwining of ancient indigeneity and magic. Increasing focus on white savior vs. white villain plot. Strobe lights in the final scenes, IIRC.
Here's the better of two trailers on IMDB:
Vid request: Pretty much anything you do would be lovely. Recruiter vids welcome, as is anything that shows off the beauty of the filming and/or plays up the mystery, hopefully going for intriguing without being totally opaque. There's also lots to play with in the Ushe-Helena connection. I ship Ushe with Helena's parents, if you're into constructing OT3s. :) And with Yua, of course. Feel free to focus on Helena and Reynaldo's partnership, as long as it's not about them being in love or whatever. Character studies also cool, although I don't particularly want a vid that focuses only on Joseph, unless it's from Yua et al's POVs.
THE LESSER BLESSED (2012)
Sales pitch: Larry is a sullen, withdrawn high school student in the Northwest Territories. He likes classmate Juliet. New guy in school Johnny (Kiowa Gordon) likes Juliet too! Larry also likes Johnny! And Juliet likes them both! ~dynamics occur~ Meanwhile, Larry struggles with past trauma and a schoolmate who knows his secrets, and his mom is trying to heal as well. Based on a book by Richard Van Camp, who, like his protagonist, is Dogrib/Dene First Nations.
Caveats: Heavily implied physical and sexual abuse of child by parent, fatal incident involving fire, drug and alcohol use, bullying, discussion of death of an animal.
Vid request: SOMEONE PLEASE MAKE ME A THREESOME VID FOR THIS MOVIE, THANK YOUUUU
Larry/Johnny/Juliet is my dysfunctional OT3. Make use of all those lovely 2+1, 1+2, and 3-shots of them, and mess around with the chronology however you want to make it work.
If that's not your jam, a character study would also be nice.
I realize vidding this movie is a tall order, considering Larry has Donnie Darko face the whole time, but I believe in you, vidder.
Feel free to leave out the stuff about his bio-dad. Unless you want to focus on it; that's okay too.
General notes, if they are helpful:
I like celebrating shows and movies that make me happy, but just as much I like queering texts, whether it's pairing characters who aren't paired in canon or inverting themes or highlighting kink or drawing attention to minor characters or changing the tone or telling a different story using the same footage. I like joyful and I like dark and I like sexy.
Music-wise, I like folk from pretty much any country, rock, classical, instrumental, bluegrass, movie scores, Celtic, "world," choral, country where it intersects with folk and rock, some pop, dance, hip hop, indie... Not fond of ska or reggae or discordant stuff. Possibly one of the only people in vidding fandom who doesn't like Florence + the Machine, sorry. I'm open to spoken word etc., but if you mix dialogue with music, please make the dialogue very clear/easily audible.
Thank you for making something for one of these newly or long-loved sources.
Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/392350.html, where there are
comments.
Dear Festividder and anyone who might like to make a treat -- complete with sales pitches and pictures:
LONGMIRE (TV)
Sales pitch: Rural Wyoming sheriff's department investigates crimes, often interacting with residents of the neighboring Cheyenne reservation. Lead roles besides the requisite white dude include Katee Sackhoff and Lou Diamond Phillips. Featuring: Heartbreak! Hope! Landscapes! Horses! Boots and hats! Six 10-episode seasons streaming on Netflix; the last season was released a year ago. Based on books by Craig Johnson.
Lots of recurring and guest roles for Native actors include my current crush Zahn McClarnon as the Cheyenne tribal police chief as well as A Martinez, Graham Greene, Julia Jones, Irene Bedard, Gary Farmer, David Midthunder, Eric Schweig, Raoul Trujillo, Michael and Eddie Spears, Q'orianka Kilcher, Tantoo Cardinal, Rena Owen and Apesanahkwat.
Also take your pick of fan-favorite guests and cameos such as Callum Keith Rennie, Peter Weller, Pete Stormare, Mary Wiseman (Cadet Tilly on Star Trek: Discovery), Gina Rodriguez, Anne Dudek, Richard Speight, Jr., one of the older guys from Brooklyn 99, and more.
Caveats: Male posturing, gradual increase in soap-opera plots over episodic mysteries, insert your opinion here about Lou Diamond Phillips playing a Native American.
Vid ideas:
- I 100% watched Longmire for Mathias, and if you could manage to string together a coherent vid about him, you would make me very happy. It wouldn't be easy, though, with his limited appearances and the fact that he usually looks annoyed, angry or sad because we only get to see him when he's dealing with white people and/or criminals and/or victims. So no worries if this doesn't appeal to you.
- Retell some of the story from a Cheyenne perspective. That's the tack I took last year, heh.
- Who is Jacob Nighthorse, really?
- Walt's department or otherwise: Stuff about teamwork and trying to do what's right to help people. Grappling with grief and hardship. Being there for one another. Struggling for justice.
- Can you reframe so it doesn't look like Cady made bad choices at every turn?
- Want to go 'shippy, or friendshippy, or frenemy-y? I'd enjoy, in no particular order, Walt/Henry, Henry/Cady, Mathias/Walt, Mathias/Henry, Mathias/Cady, Walt/Jacob...
- Pick an episode or arc to focus on. I especially liked the Gab storyline, and Henry/Hector Lives. Maybe Bob and his son.
Things I am less into: Walt/Vic, Walt/Lizzie, Cady/Branch, Ferg/Meg, Walt vs. Branch, the Irish mob plot, the Return of Chance Gilbert plot, the pregnancy plot, Zach's anger management issues, Travis' Nice Guy-ism.
Also not super into Vic vids since there are already so many of these on YouTube.
QUEEN MARGOT (1994)
Sales pitch: Gorgeous costumes! Intricate court politics! Passionate sex like only the French can do! Strife between Catholics and Protestants! A night of stunning bloodshed! Sibling-sibling and mother-son incest, if that's your thing! Isabelle Adjani, Pascal Greggory, Vincent Perez, and even baby Thomas Kretschmann! A Patrice Chereau film, based on the Alexandre Dumas novel.
Caveats: See above re: incest. Also one instance of sexual assault or attempted/implied sexual assault, depending on which version of the film you see.
Vid request: This movie has such beautiful, rich imagery that it just begs for vidding. Anything you make will make me happy, including a whirlwind portrait of the color and blood and passion and perversion and deviousness. Personal favorite parts are the massacre, the hatred-to-love story between La Mole and Coconnas, and Anjou's face. Plus, generally, all the homoerotic undercurrents.
THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI (BOOK)
Sales pitch: A woman made of clay meets a man made of fire in turn-of-the-20th-century New York. There's challah baking and desert flashbacks and sexy seduction and supernatural possession, and, just in time for Purim, evil viziers. Beautiful, comforting prose.
Vid request: I still can't talk about this book without drawing little hearts around it. One of the things I loved was its vibrant setting, its creation of an atmosphere I wanted to wrap around myself forever. I think what I'm hoping for in a vid is a sort of mood piece, where you feel like you're in this magical 1900-ish Lower East Side or Central Park, where things are-as much as I make fun of it in movies-teal and gold like the cover of the book. (The closest movie I can think of for visual inspiration of the city is Gangs of New York, but I'm sure there's lots more out there I just haven't seen. The books Forever and Winter's Tale, which held the same sort of early-NY magic, aren't going to be much help, alas.)
And maybe you will give an impression of this large-boned Eastern European woman and this elegant Arab man (I mean, I don't expect our imaginations of Chava and Ahmad to be the same, so I look forward to whomever you choose for your fan-cast, if you fan-cast them). Maybe there will be a bakery and a metalworker's forge, or a desert and a temple, or Jewish and Syrian immigrant communities, or impressions of seduction or murder or enslavement or the clash between subservience/suppression and dominance/recklessness, or maybe there are other aspects of the story you want to highlight, or nothing so complex because it all seems very intimidating. Whatever you make, it's going to be wonderful.
I just ask that you please be sensitive if you choose to cast Schaalman or Schall. No Hollywood stereotypes of giant-eyebrowed, pointy-eared, scheming Jews. Thank you. <3
WILDLIKE (2014)
Sales pitch: Ella Purnell, who played young Maleficent! Bruce Greenwood, who played Christopher Pike in the Star Trek: Reboot movies and was in lots of other stuff! Alaskan landscapes from Juneau to Denali! A hurt/comfort story that progresses to the unlikely connection between a teenage girl and a gruff older backpacker!
Caveats: Molestation of high school-aged girl by uncle; mention of spousal death from cancer.
Vid request: I would be so happy to have a vid of this movie that simply told the story, focusing on Mackenzie and René's developing relationship and taking advantage of the visual splendor of the Alaskan setting. Or whatever focus and structure appeals to you. FWIW, the emotional high point of the movie for me was René's protectiveness once he found out what really happened with Kenzie and her uncle, specifically when René bundled her back into the ferry cabin. I like to think he made good use of the bear spray when he made that stop in Juneau. :)
FRONTERA VERDE / GREEN FRONTIER (TV 2019)
Summary: A murder mystery with supernatural elements set in the Colombian Amazon and featuring two female leads, a white male villain and lots of indigenous characters. Helena Poveda, a detective from Bogotá, is flown out to investigate what first appears to be a quadruple and soon proves to be a quintuple femicide. She gets enmeshed in local police politics/corruption and is drawn deeper into tales of an uncontacted tribe that may be tied to her own childhood. Meanwhile, we follow the story of two members of that tribe, Yua and Ushe, as they try to protect their secrets and their lives. The story moves back and forth in time in a way that is at first confusing but soon comes together. 8 episodes streaming on Netflix. In several languages, mostly Spanish, with English subtitles. Directed by Ciro Guerra, who also made the striking movie Embrace of the Serpent.
Sales pitch: Gorgeous cinematography! Lots of centered compositions, beautiful scenery, lingering shots of faces, visual echoes and juxtapositions. (I wish I could screencap it for you to really show it off, but time constraints mean we are stuck with these promo images.) An engrossing mystery with distinctive characters! A dude and a lady detective team who aren't being shoved into a romantic plotline by the showrunners! A jungle as a character in itself!
Caveats: Graphic violence, discussion and depiction of slavery (rubber plantations) and mistreatment of native people by Catholic missionaries, fatal house fire, pregnancy complications, Nazis. Intertwining of ancient indigeneity and magic. Increasing focus on white savior vs. white villain plot. Strobe lights in the final scenes, IIRC.
Here's the better of two trailers on IMDB:
Vid request: Pretty much anything you do would be lovely. Recruiter vids welcome, as is anything that shows off the beauty of the filming and/or plays up the mystery, hopefully going for intriguing without being totally opaque. There's also lots to play with in the Ushe-Helena connection. I ship Ushe with Helena's parents, if you're into constructing OT3s. :) And with Yua, of course. Feel free to focus on Helena and Reynaldo's partnership, as long as it's not about them being in love or whatever. Character studies also cool, although I don't particularly want a vid that focuses only on Joseph, unless it's from Yua et al's POVs.
THE LESSER BLESSED (2012)
Sales pitch: Larry is a sullen, withdrawn high school student in the Northwest Territories. He likes classmate Juliet. New guy in school Johnny (Kiowa Gordon) likes Juliet too! Larry also likes Johnny! And Juliet likes them both! ~dynamics occur~ Meanwhile, Larry struggles with past trauma and a schoolmate who knows his secrets, and his mom is trying to heal as well. Based on a book by Richard Van Camp, who, like his protagonist, is Dogrib/Dene First Nations.
Caveats: Heavily implied physical and sexual abuse of child by parent, fatal incident involving fire, drug and alcohol use, bullying, discussion of death of an animal.
Vid request: SOMEONE PLEASE MAKE ME A THREESOME VID FOR THIS MOVIE, THANK YOUUUU
Larry/Johnny/Juliet is my dysfunctional OT3. Make use of all those lovely 2+1, 1+2, and 3-shots of them, and mess around with the chronology however you want to make it work.
If that's not your jam, a character study would also be nice.
I realize vidding this movie is a tall order, considering Larry has Donnie Darko face the whole time, but I believe in you, vidder.
Feel free to leave out the stuff about his bio-dad. Unless you want to focus on it; that's okay too.
General notes, if they are helpful:
I like celebrating shows and movies that make me happy, but just as much I like queering texts, whether it's pairing characters who aren't paired in canon or inverting themes or highlighting kink or drawing attention to minor characters or changing the tone or telling a different story using the same footage. I like joyful and I like dark and I like sexy.
Music-wise, I like folk from pretty much any country, rock, classical, instrumental, bluegrass, movie scores, Celtic, "world," choral, country where it intersects with folk and rock, some pop, dance, hip hop, indie... Not fond of ska or reggae or discordant stuff. Possibly one of the only people in vidding fandom who doesn't like Florence + the Machine, sorry. I'm open to spoken word etc., but if you mix dialogue with music, please make the dialogue very clear/easily audible.
Thank you for making something for one of these newly or long-loved sources.
Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/392350.html, where there are
comments.