21st New Orleans Film Festival
I just returned from a long weekend in New Orleans and I wasn’t there for just the Creole! The 21st New Orleans Film Festival was screening my film The Lift and because I love the town I had to hop a plane down there and check it out.
Overall, a great festival, lots of filmmaker only events, tours and activities. Some of the screenings were held at this phenomenal theater called the Canal Place Theater where you could order food and drink from your seat while watching a movie. The seats where wide leather – New York has to do this!
Kat and I also attended a wonderful filmmaker’s brunch at Second Line Stages, a really swank new Hollywood quality sound stage in the heart of the city. They recently wrapped up filming The Green Lantern there.
I attended my screening on Saturday followed by a short Q&A, mostly I talked about my inspiration for The Lift. Kat and I realized that we needed a motivation for a character early on, which is why we went for a moral tale. Living in New York elevators are a big part of life, so is the etiquette around elevators. We decided on an old and young woman because it would reflect a theme related to respecting elders, a common Chinese tradition. I wanted to use a young woman simply because I wanted to animate that. After that you throw the ideas together and see what sticks.
Overall a really wonderful time at a truly top notch fest!
Woods Hole Film Festival
I am excited to announce that The Lift will be screening at the following festivals:
New Orleans Film Festival
First Glance Film Fest Philadelphia
Atlantic City International Film and Music Festival
Boston Film Festival
Toronto Independent Film Festival
Additionally I just returned from a wonderful weekend at the 19th Woods Hold Film Festival. Kathy, my co-writer also attended. I was lucky enough to have my film screened two times, once at the main screening then a second time at the 20 in 2 hours screening. At the main screening I did a short Q&A with the other filmmakers who were attending.
The festival also did this wonderful filmmaker’s brunch at a house out on Penzance Point which overlooked Buzzard’s Bay. The nightly after parties also made it progressively harder and harder to get up in the morning. We stayed in Falmouth which is just a hop-skip-and-jump away, in fact most days we just biked into Woods Hole for the daytime festivities.
Overall the Woods Hole festival was a class A experience, I had so much fun and all the people who were a part of the festival were just wonderful. There is one thing that you begin to appreciate about well run festivals, communication. Woods Hole never failed to keep me in the loop. I can’t wait to try and submit my next film in 2 years.
Premiere Party
Last week I turned 29 and had my premiere party for “The Lift”. All-in-all we had between 50-60 people at The Central Bar in their upstairs lounge. With an assortment of Irish brews, Duval brands and one of my fav’s, Brooklyn No. 1 we all celebrated what had turned out to be nearly a 3 year project 5 years in the making.
Thanks to all my friends and colleagues who came, you really made it a special night for me!
Check out some of the pics from the night, unfortunately my camera was near dead but we got a few memorable shots in.
Welcome!
After 4 years of sweat, tears and late nights, I have FINALLY finished my short film! I created this site as a single place to get more information on screenings of “The Lift” as well as explore how I made the film that kept me up many nights until 2AM. While creating a production blog would have been nice, my day job precluded me from doing both the film and the blog. The 3 posts prior to this were copied from my other site Kohrtoons.com.
Check out the Art section, I just added a bunch of screen caps. Also I finally got around to posting a Trailer.
Once again I have to thank Kathy Lien for all that she has done and without her help this site would sound like a 15 year-old high school drop out wrote it; I kid of course but she did help craft some wonderful one liners and descriptions.
Based out of Brooklyn NY, Robert Kohr is the owner of