Oh man!  We are still reeling from an unbelievable weekend.  We met so many great people and saw such powerful, funny, and delightful films that this one will be hard to beat.  Big thanks go to Melanie Miller, Cevin Cathell, and the rest of the amazing Jackson Hole team.

And wow, what a great group of new friends we made.  We spent most of the weekend with Vineet “Vinnie D” Dewan and Rob Connolly, whose powerhouse film Clear Cut, Simple won best Student Short.  We also had a lot of fun with new friends Siobhan Mahoney and Courtney Balaker, whose film Cute Couple won the Audience Choice award, as well as Alison Heather who was representing the land down under with her film Love On Track.  And you know we always get down with Jeremy Brunjes, who we met at the Phoenix Fest.  Adding to the insanity was a surprise showing by our old friend Alex Wagner, of 19 Arnold fame, whose organization Not On Our Watch was there for the Global Insight Summit.  She’s down with B.K. Moon.  No big deal.

We saw two shorts and two features that warrant special mention, as we could not stop talking about them.  The first, Pop Foul is a jarring, powerful and personal tale of the cycle of violence in urban America.  The story is beautifully told, and extremely well acted.  And the second short, I Love Sarah Jane, was just tremendous.  A sweet tale of what it’s like to be in love, when you’re twelve years old.  Oh yeah, and it’s set in a zombie post-apocolypse.  Incredible.

The first feature that stood out for us was a gorgeous, funny, sad, romantic Romanian film from Cristian Nemescu set in a small, backwater town in Romania during NATO’s time in Kosovo, called California Dreamin’ (Endless).  The second, and arguably the most affecting thing we saw all weekend, was a documentary called Very Young Girls.  This shocking film, about teen sex exploitation in America, was a real eye-opener.  Rachel Lloyd, the founder of GEMS (Girls Educational & Mentoring Services) in New York, the main subject of the film, was there to answer questions.  This is a movie everyone in America should see.

Thanks to everybody who came to see Parachute!  The weekend was nonstop, and we had an unbelievable time.  We hope to go back there in the future… Jackson Hole Film Festival knows how to do it RIGHT.