New Beijing International Movie Festival organizer Peter Sallade gives us a peek behind the silver screen

Home

9:00am
Grumpily roll out of bed to half-heartedly exercise and wholeheartedly check email. As always the messages get sorted into (a) crises (b) interesting and (c) inquiries

10:00
Go back to bed.

10:30
And up again, my friend and business partner is waiting at the gate to accompany me to our lunch meeting.

Media Matters

11:30
We meet with a media company to discuss distribution opportunities for the movies we’ve received from festival submissions, particularly the 12 greatest short films in the world, coming to us this month. Not everyone in Beijing is going to be able to fit in Yugong Yishan on Sep. 22 to see the Manhattan Shorts program, so we need to secure a channel for general broadcast and possibly a DVD release.

12:30pm
The conversation shifts from distribution to translation/subtitling. We translate and subtitle in Chinese all the incoming movies. To cover expenses we offer this service commercially.

1:00
Meeting over and there was no food involved. My partner heads off to get his lunch, but no time for me to eat. It’s a taxi and subway and taxi across town to attend another meeting about just such a commercial subtitling contract. We’ve got a big budget Chinese movie that just hit theaters this summer to add English subtitles to so it can play at foreign film fests and hopefully many other theaters too.

Subways and Subtitles

2:00
An abundance of phone calls: in the subway, at the movie studio, in the taxi, on the street. I wander blindly shouting into my cell phone. Nick Mason, director of the Manhattan Shorts Film Festival, calls from the U.S. to check in on our preparations for September 22 at Yugong Yishan. He has the best f#%ing movies ready to go. Even f$%#g better than Martin f#$%ing Scorsese!

Moving Movies

3:30
Still lunchless, I head over to Yugong Yishan to drop off promo copies of the movies. There is a folk music class on their stage wailing away on guzhen, pipa and erhu. If I wasn’t so hungry I’d stay to appreciate it.

4:00
Finally lunch! Lanzhou la mian! I pull out my laptop and greasily begin to answer emails.

Emails, Emails and Emails

5:00
I relocate to Club Obiwan and continue to reply to the deluge of emails. Our promotions team is supposed to show up for a meeting at 6pm, but I’m hoping they’re late so I have time to catch up with more emails.

7:00
I discuss with the promotions team the importance of maintaining a steady presence on Douban, Xiaonei, City Weekend, QQ and a ton of other channels filled with anxious ears just waiting to hear about the grand bounty of 12 of the world’s finest short films coming their way.

9:30
How the hell is it 9:30pm and I’m still at Club Obiwan? Oh, it’s because friends and acquaintances keep showing up to talk movie-making, movie-watching, movie-promoting and all the rest of the down and dirty film fest bagua (gossip). We’ve got new volunteers, new sponsors, new venues, new movies and a bright outlook for the rest of our fall series and 2010. Now if only we had someone else to update the website at www.beijingfilmfest.org.

A Late Night Snack

11:00
I grab dinner on the way home from Club Obiwan: noodles with a portion of Corny Pine Nuts dumped all over it. Now I have to update the website because the backend software is crap and no one else has the patience to deal with it. Argh!

Website Worries

2:00am
I hate the website. I hate the Joomla software. The New Beijing International Movie Festival is actively seeking a dedicated webmaster. Familiarity with Joomla preferred; must be able to read Chinese at least a little bit. We have no money but can pay you in indie movies: www.beijingfilmfest.org.