GEARING UP FOR HIS LEAD role in Stephen Folker’s apocalyptic thriller To Survive, LA-based star Burt Culver is walking 200 miles from his character’s hometown Gary, Indiana across Illinois to Davenport, Iowa, where filming begins next week.
Culver says in a statement that he’s aiming to “get into the mindset of the character Jonathan by retracing the journey the character took,” to “experience the feeling of isolation, exhaustion, and understand the perseverance necessary to make such a journey.”
The trip covers public walking paths including Old Plank Road, the I&M Canal Trail, and the Hennepin Canal Parkway.
To Survive, about a group of survivors banding together after the collapse of civilization, also stars Ramon Bailey, Berkeley Clayborne, Glenn Harston, Paul Berge and Jessica Murillo.
A MONTH INTO the national self-release of his multi-award-winning drama Patang, Prashant Bhargava is editing Radhe, Radhe: Rites of Holi, a film he shot in March at the Holi “Festival of Colors” in Gujarat, India, the mythic birthplace of Krishna.
The film will accompany a new composition by pianist Vijay Iyer, commissioned by the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Carolina Performing Arts, where it’s set to premiere on March 25, 2012 as part of the centennial of Igor Stravinsky’s “Rites of Spring.”
ROBERT BESHARA is in post-production on IIII (“Four”), which he describes as “the first digital no-budget feature-length trans-film shot entirely in Hyde Park” about a painter, a poet, a musician, and a dancer “who help one another grow through friendship.”
Beshara’s wife, production designer Maria-Constanza Garrido stars with Kevin Baylor, Kymberly Harris, and Billy Joe Mills.
SHOOTING ON A 100-DEGREE-plus day in mid-July, Bruce Janu has completed a music video for “If I Only Knew,” a song of adolescent love gone wrong, starring Arlington Heights high schooler Anthony Fragale, from Pennsylvania rockers Tom Flannery and the Shillelaghs’ debut album “Teen Angst and the Green Flannel.”
Flannery and Lorne Clarke wrote the score to Janu’s 2007 documentary Facing Sudan. Flannery will screen the video at an August release party for “Teen Angst.”
SEPTEMBERFEST AT ST. MATTHEW’S Catholic Church in Glendale Heights is accepting inspiring, moving, uplifting and innovative feature-length and short film submission for screening during the weekend of Sept. 6-9. All content should reflect positive images (i.e. faith, hope, motivational) with no violence, profanity or nudity.
Deadline is Aug. 11. Fee is $25 for a feature; (50 minutes or longer) and $15 for a short (50 minutes or less). Click here for rules and entry forms for this non-competive event.
