Fritz Donnelly’s ‘tothehills 2′ Gets ‘Awesome’ Screening in Times Square
Filmmaker and performance artist Fritz Donnelly has gone from selling thousands of his short films on the streets of New York to screening in the cinema. Donnelly made a reputation on tothehills, a collection of short independent films that he shot, directed, wrote, and stars in. Now his series about dreamers, professionals, hustlers, and “people like you and me,” as Donnelly puts it, will screen this Thursday, October 23 at 9pm at Times Square Arts Center as part of From Here to Awesome, a conglomeration of distributors that identifies cool films and helps them go from ‘here’ to the next level, ‘awesome’ by partnering with YouTube, MySpace, NetFlix and Amazon. Tickets for the screening can be purchased at http://timessquareartscenter.com/events/event_view_popup.php?event_id=479&ret_link=index.php?.
“Making art is a compulsion. Sharing art is a choice. Everything we have—our language, our clothes, our money—we’ve gotten from other people, so I believe in sharing. From Here To Awesome is a way for filmmakers to share their fans with one another. I’m a fan of fans,” said Donnelly.
From Here to Awesome, an open-source discovery and distribution film festival that kicked off July 26th in Los Angeles and rolls out over a six-month period with stops in New York, San Francisco, Boston and London, showcases its 12 selected features, including tothehills 2, in all forms of distribution from theaters to living rooms to computers and mobile devices. Filmmakers retain all the rights, see direct revenue from each of the outlets and enjoy global audiences. The goal is to create a direct connection between the audience and the filmmaker.
tothehills 2 presents short films in an enterprising way. Between character-driven episodes of “Financial Advice,” and “Awkward Social Situations,” orange and blue clones fight their way through a Kafka-inspired world, one very like our own. Many of the shorts have won acclaim at festivals such as the audience award at the High Concept Low Budget Film Festival in San Francisco and the curator’s choice at Rooftop Films Summer Series 10 year’s Best Shorts Program in New York.
In addition to making films, Donnelly hosts tothehills movie nights and open mics at venues such as the Glasslands in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and at HiChristina in the Lower East Side, where he presents music, films, and performance art. Donnelly also presented Vidopedia, a ‘counter-conventional’ encyclopedia that illustrates verbs, at the New Museum of Contemporary Art on October 11, commissioned by Rhizome.
For more information on “tothehills2,” visit www.tothehills.com and also on From Here To Awesome at http://showcase.fromheretoawesome.com/2008/07/tothehills-2/.
To purchase “tothehills 2″ on Amazon.com, visit www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EZKZTW/.
