Zak Forsman

Between 1970 and 1972, my dad was one of the premiere cocaine smugglers operating between South America and NYC. He was uniquely an independent practitioner, meaning he did not operate under ties to organized crime. And his innovative scams were all designed to protect the people carrying the load, so if it got hit, they had excuses down the line that allowed them to walk away. Here is an interview he did under the alias “Zachary Swan” to promote the book “Snowblind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade” by Robert Sabbag. A couple years ago, my brother made a digital archive of the recording which I’ve provided below.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Zachary Swan interviewed by Mark Dorfman on These Are The Times

20. Medicine for Melancholy (2008)
19. Cafe Lumiere (2003)
18. A Mighty Wind (2003)
17. The New Year Parade (2008)
16. Deep Water (2006)
15. Millennium Mambo (2001)
14. Y tu mamá también (2001)
13. Gerry (2002)
12. Before Sunset (2004)
11. George Washington (2000)
10. All The Real Girls (2003)
9. Lost in Translation (2003)
8. Elephant (2003)
7. Half-Nelson (2006)
6. Raising Victor Vargas (2002)
5. Uzak (2002)
4. Old Joy (2006)
3. Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)
2. Lilja 4-ever (2002)
1. The Son (2002)

some honorable mentions
Morvern Callar (2002), Children of Men (2006), In the Mood For Love (2000), 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), All or Nothing (2002), Code 46 (2003), The King of Kong (2007), Wendy and Lucy (2008), Punch Drunk Love (2002), There Will Be Blood (2007), Three Times (2005), Vera Drake (2004), 24 Hour Party People (2002), Four Eyed Monsters (2006), The Girlfriend Experience (2009), The Child (2005), Silence of Lorna (2008)

Someone thought enough of my short film to re-conceptualize it as a music video. I think that’s pretty flattering to say the least.

This poster has gone through a long evolution.

I have zero background in graphic design. I’m just one of those idiots who opens up photoshop and starts experimenting until he gets somewhere he likes. I have a film that I’ve been working on the poster and key art for, as time permitted, for the last two years — going back to it every now and then. The artwork has received some praise in terms of being pretty good for an indie, and I’ve turned down requests to do posters for other movies because I really don’t have professional chops (just a desire to not embarrass myself or the movie). Anyway, I took a stroll down memory lane and I wanted to share the progression of this film’s key art with you.

MID-2007, this was the tease one sheet I made up before we shot a frame of the film. That “Spring 2008″ release date was waaaaaaaay off the mark. We’re just nearing picture lock now.

LATE 2007, first mock-up of the poster. can’t believe there was a time when i was happy with this.

EARLY 2008, after a nice little mention on Ain’t It Cool News I went back and revised the key art to better reflect the vivid, raw nature of the film’s cinematography. This version lasted a long time.

EARLY 2009, after receiving some notes that the actor’s face wasn’t reading enough, I went back for one more revision.

And now the FINAL, FINAL (until it changes) pre-festival release poster.

I haven’t posted to this blog in a year. But I think the site’s recent revamp as more of a lifestream will keep that from happening again. Much has changed in a year. My debut feature, HEART OF NOW, has picture lock at 89 minutes and is getting state of the art sound design and mixing at SNAP SOUND. I directed an upcoming episode of RADAR for WBP Labs. I’m still editor at the NEW BREED. I’m an ambassador for INDIEFLIX, and a moderator at DVXuser and have a hand in coordinating the annual DVXfest short film screening. I’ve spoken on two panels this year about creative collaboration at DIY Days and about casting at the San Diego Film Festival. most recently, I’ve contributed two articles to the Filmmaker Magazine blog.

Right now, I’m focused on work with sound designers Zach Seivers and J.M. Davey. Over the next three weeks we will bring HEART OF NOW to a close. It has been a long fruitful road with plenty of valuable lessons learned along the way. In addition, I’m producing DEKLUN’s next album as well as a prequel comic called THE VERY HEART OF NOW by cartoonist Chuck McBuck

As we head into the final months of 2009, I can say it has been a transformative year for me and only the beginning for Sabi Pictures.

Just got off the phone with Lance Weiler, founder of the Workbook Project. He’s asked me to curate the new subsection there called “NEW BREED” – where filmmakers who embrace and experiment with the evolving realities of DIY filmmaking can give voice to their strategies, processes, successes and failures. I will be seeking out filmmakers making compelling and unique work in a very participatory and transparent way, and inviting them to share their experiences.

As I told Lance, I’m very proud to be a part of The Workbook Project. It is a unique resource in the indie filmmaking community and I look forward to helping expand its reach.

If you have a project, the motivation to blog about it and embrace all things DIY, send me an email.

Unveiling some new promos cut by Rodney Smith of Flyin’ Monkey Films for the upcoming DVXFest. The new films, centered around the theme of “loss”, will debut in March 2009.

The next DVXFest has been announced with the theme of “loss” and Sabi Pictures will be producing an entry. More info about the fest can be found at the official site or by clicking the poster below to go to our individual film’s thread on the DVXUser site.

DVXFEST – official site

Below, is a BREITBART article with WIKIPEDIA founder, Jimmy Wales. Some interesting points made, but the assertion that no one is doing it yet, is wrong, wrong, wrong. LOST ZOMBIES comes to mind. As does STAR WRECK and the WRECK A MOVIE project, and Matt Hanson’s A SWARM OF ANGELS. The emergence of interdependent filmmaking is underway, but what this article shows is a lack of global penetration on the scale of Wikipedia or YouTube.

SABI PICTURES plans to incorporate an elevated level of collaboration on its upcoming WANDERLUST feature-length motion picture by enlisting the talents of its audience/community and creative partnerships with other filmmakers.

Here’s the article…

The age of public collaboration over the Internet is still only in its infancy, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told AFP in an interview.
The 42-year-old web guru, in an effort to show Wikipedia’s impact thus far, referenced a recent trip to a slum in India where he “met this young man on the street who told me that he had used Wikipedia to pass his 11th grade exams.”

“Wow, that’s really cool, right? We’ve had some impact, even in such a place where I’m talking to this guy, and there’s mud streets, and cows, and it’s really quite a different environment from London.”

Wales’s popular online encyclopedia allows anyone with an Internet connection to make entries and edit content.

Speaking on the sidelines of an awards ceremony in London, Wales said: “We’re really just at the beginning, still, of collaborative efforts.”

“In video, right now, we’re still back in many ways in the Web 1.0 era,” he said, referring to the age before so-called Web 2.0, the peer-sharing model of the Internet of which Wikipedia is almost the definitive example.

“If you look at almost everything on YouTube, it’s individuals doing videos, either funny cat videos, or drunk girl videos seem to be quite popular there,” he said with a smile.

“What we haven’t seen yet in video is large-scale collaborative projects.”

Off the top of his head Wales suggested a 90-minute collaborative web video created by interviewing people from all around the world, giving their views on the war in Iraq.

He joked: “This isn’t going to be that popular, frankly, a 90-minute movie with people talking about Iraq — it’s going to have a small audience. This can’t be produced in the old-fashioned way. It’s totally possible now.

“That’s just one dumb idea of mine, right? Imagine what we could get if we could get 100,000 people thinking about collaborative video efforts to create documentary films, or comedy, or art, or who knows what.

“So, I think we’ve still got a long way to go.”