I'm late! I'm late! I'm STILL HERE at Silverdocs

Silverdocs, Silver Spring, Md. on Wednesday, June 23 and Thursday, June 24 — midday.

Calendar Shorts Program 2: STILL HERE and GO if you live in NYC or DC! It's hot and humid or rainy or too sunny or you just need a break, and these are some dynamite documentaries. Five of them, including Florian Riegel's 'Holding Still.'  Remember documentaries? You love them. You know you do. Sweet bites of nectar laden fruit. The glow on the moonstone. Haiku, plural. Halos of flickering cinema. Distillations. And you may be surprised if you attend. Isn't that almost too much?

Weezer has a cameo. You don't want to miss her. 

I would tell Roger Ebert if I were bold or brave. I'm not. But, read this Ebert piece and this. You'll love him, too.

'Holding Still' at Silverdocs

"Imagine if the last 20 years of your life were lived entirely in one room, yet you have the ability to see and photograph the world outside. This is the story of Janis, a woman whose artistic voice is remarkably unconstrained by physical obstacles or tragedies in her past. "

Imagine me ecstatic. Florian Riegel's film was chosen to screen at SILVERDOCS in SHORTS PROGRAM 2: STILL HERE on June 23 at 10:00 PM, AFI Silver Theater 2, and June 24 at 12:00 PM, AFI Silver Theater 1.   

I remember when we took this photo. It was a year the cicadas appeared. We had spent that sun dappled afternoon with the new camera making time-delay photos of ourselves at the weathered picnic table behind the house. As an adult, there are few bugs you care to play with. The ones that you might indulge on a wine soaked afternoon are vestiges of childhood — ladybugs, lightning bugs, crickets. Or shells of cicadas, the crackling remains of the insects snagged from trees. We played with them that day. Somewhere there are photos of me with exoskeletons stuck on my cheeks, climbing my arms, tangled in my hair.

Cicadas are noisy, the males outdoing the females by virtue of a body built for amplification of sound. Cicadas like heat, and that summer in Texas we had heat. An excess of heat. We were hotter than we needed to be. We were young. I have the photos to prove it.

Florian Riegel's short film 'Holding Still' has been chosen for competition at Silverdocs in Silver Spring, Maryland, this June. This film is a testament to that summer's heat and the personal fallout from that incendiary season. Thank you again, Florian, for documenting the lightning.

If you're in NYC or Washington DC or anywhere, come see this film. You're invited.

'Childhood living is easy to do...Wild, wild horses, couldn't drag me away.' 

— Jagger/Richards