Wow! Things have been busy. It’s kind of hard to keep track. Good thing I have a calendar and a lot of scribbled notes scattered across the desk. Currently, Stro: The Michael D’Asaro Story has been accepted into ten different festivals. Three of them, I’m excited to say, are International Festivals. You’ll be able to watch our film in Polish, Italian, and Canadian.

This week Oct 11-17, Stro is in three different festivals. The Marina Del Rey festival wraps up on Oct 15. If you have a Roku, there is still time to watch the festival there. The Orlando Film Festival starts up on Oct 29. It will run through Nov 5. I don’t have many other details  from Orlando at the moment. I think they might be having a problem getting all the details in order at this point. As I have heard from many festival organizers, this year has been tremendously difficult as they all  have to switch gears and put on virtual festivals. I will post more details on the Stro social media pages about the Orlando Film Festival as they become available.

If you happen to be in Warsaw, Poland this week, which is where I wish I was, you can watch Stro: The Michael D’Asaro Story in an actual theater. There are three opportunities to do this. The movie is scheduled to show on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. As an extra special bonus, I will be participating in a live Question and Answer session. Through the miracle of technology, while I am sitting in a friend’s house in Manteca, CA, I will get to answer questions from the audience at the Kinoteka in Warsaw. They will have a translator standing by. You will be able to watch the Q&A on Facebook on the Warsaw International Film Festival’s page. The show will start at 8:28am pdt Sunday morning, Oct 18th. I have to go to a friend’s house, since my internet speed is crap at the moment. If I did it from my house, there would be lots of frozen screens.

This is the link to the Warsaw Film Festival Page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/warsawfilmfestival

Our next flurry of activity will start on Nov 1. Originally, the Director’s Cut Festival was supposed to start right after Orlando, but they have pushed their festival back. They will now start on Nov 1 and run through Nov 15. During that time, you can also catch Stro at the LA Live Film Festival on November 7 and at the Ojai Film Festival on November 9. Also one of the to be named later festivals will run from Nov 9-13. I will give you one hint. The subtitles will be in Italian. 

Then we have a bit of a break. The next festival will be the Los Angeles Motion Picture Festival. I don’t know yet if there will be any screenings around the LAMP festival. It’s centered around handing out awards from a panel of industry insiders. The idea behind LAMP, I think, is to recognize films in the hope that people from the Motion Picture Industry will take notice of those films. 

If you would like to see the documentary portion of the Burbank International Film Festival awards show, here it is. The main reason I like it, is that Martin Kove from the Karate Kid movies does the announcing. Spoiler, Stro did not win, but at least our name is on the screen.

 I’m also including the blooper real from my acceptance speech for the Burbank IFF. Everyone had to make an acceptance speech ahead of time. If they won, the speech was played during the ceremony. For whatever reason, my speech was difficult for me to make. It took hours. There were technical difficulties. There were a lot of outtakes. I share them here with you. Enjoy my struggles.

The Boston Film Festival was kind enough to film Doug, Mike Tarascio, and I doing a Q&A about Stro, as well. I’m including that here so you can get an idea about all the magic that goes into filmmaking.

That’s all the festivals I know about at the moment. I still have about 30 to hear from. I’ve entered a few more festivals since they gave me waivers or I really want Stro to appear in a certain city. I’m looking at you San Francisco. But none of the upcoming months will be as busy, I think, as October has been. It’s been wild trying to keep everything straight. Please do keeping checking up our social media sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for the most current information.