The festival season means there is a lot of waiting. At this point, I have entered Stro: The Michael D’Asaro story into over 50 festivals. I did a first wave of entries to about 30 festivals. Then I paid to have Stro: The Michael D’Asaro Story promoted through Film Freeway. They send out a weekly email to festival Organizers. For a fee, they will add your promotional material. 

I did this and immediately received a hundred emails, asking me to submit the film. This didn’t mean Stro was accepted, it was just an offer to enter. What made the offers appealing was they also came with a fee waiver on the entrance fee. I entered into a lot of festivals I never would have even considered because the entrance fee was under ten dollars. Which is how I find myself entered in the Anatolia Film Festival in Turkey and the Buddha Festival in India. Granted, I would have to seriously consider going to Istanbul if I am selected. Istanbul is awesome. And you don’t turn down the Buddha.

The Anatolia Film Festival makes their announcement this Saturday. It will be the first one. I was supposed to hear from a festival in London today, but that was mysteriously pushed back to July without any notice. It’s either a precautionary move because of the ongoing pandemic or it could be they didn’t get enough entries. Although, I’m able to see where the film is being watched, no one in England has screened the film, yet. However, Kudos to the people in Warsaw for taking the time to watch the film.

Film acceptance announcements will, like I said, start this weekend. They will come in every few weeks for awhile. Notifications will really pick up steam in August and September as the Festivals try to fill up their slates. I have plenty of waiting in my future.

While I wait, I’m going back through the footage for Stro and pulling out stories that didn’t make the final cut. We interviewed 51 people for the documentary, recording over 80 hours of footage. There are lots of stories in there. I set a bunch to the side while I did the editing. Now, it’s time to give those stories a little polish and send them to the world. It seems only fair that if people were kind enough to tell me these stories about Michael D’Asaro, the least I could do is share them.

Up first is the story told by Vinnie Bradford and Greg Massialas with some help from Peter Schifrin and Soren Thompson about what happened to Stro during one of his lessons at San Jose State. I hope the title doesn’t give it away.

Please enjoy ‘Tracheotomy”