Channels of My Imagination

We watched television last night that made me wish for more.

I was asked to be a judge for Cinefestival this year. The task of a festival judge is to view and make critical decisions scoring projects by the strength of the story editing direction etc.

It is a most imperfect process but one that is necessary when you need to assign values. Filmmakers’ long months of complex work researching and building their productions are reduced to points, quantifying by necessity the creative work that, thrillingly and by definition, escapes number assignments.

We saw stories of homegrown music and art that grow like cactus around here, with only a little rain and total disregard from mainstream, commercial mass media.

What is missing in the current rain storms of media flowing to us from the Internet, satellites and cable that are currently replacing the managed mainstream offerings that television has had for 50 years is a curator. Without a curator, we are blind in a storm and thus we may find we are going in circles instead of forward. Luckily, last night we had a curator, who selected the submissions for us to judge, festival director, Manuel Solis. He is busy organizing the 40th edition of the indie festival at The Guadalupe Theater July 5-8 this summer.

Watching the lineup of documentaries last night reminded me how much I miss local creative documentary productions. I imagined how amazing it would be if we had a steady supply of locally-sourced productions:  Imagine a Narciso Martinez channel beside a Neil deGrasse Tyson channel. A Sandra Cisneros channel beside a Chris Rock standup comedy channel. A mad mix of mainstream and mini-stream.  In this way, the media we consume would be a well-proportioned plate of delicious fresh food, a balanced diet that helps us grow stronger in ideas, actions and identity, looking inward as well as outward. 

There needs to be an app for that.

I need an algorithm to find more works about our city and region.

But first, before that, I need an algorithm that supports local artist to create more videos about our city and region.

And before that, I need an algorithm that, more importantly, sparks in the minds of artists notions about local and regional topics to be explored creatively with outcomes or endings unknown: A journey taken for whatever insight and learning may be revealed in the process.

At the very start, I need an app for video documentaries that ask more questions than provide answers. Documentaries whose arc evolves in the process of interviews and the editing timeline as much is in the minds of the producers.

I need an algorithm that sorts the entertainment available in the lineup that comes in from the current curtain of rain. One that promotes local and regional productions and collects some for us to pick and view some nights on the couch, so we can learn more about this place we live in, drive across and spend our lives drawing our breath from.

I had a taste of that future last night.