ON FIRE ON OXFORD

February 10, 2007

Just when you think things can't get any better...

The Oxford Film Festival has been amazing. Really, really cool people running the show here. Lots of great parties.

Logan, Ben, Sam, Daniel and Darius made it to this festival in Oxford, MS. We rented a wheelchair-accessible van in Atlanta (thanks, Buddy and Lucy Allen for contributing to this enormous expense). We arrived on Thursday night and chilled at the hotel after a long, exhausting ride.

Unfortunately, we had problems with Darius's pimped wheelchair and had to find a place to repair it. Luckily, we'd brought the manual as a backup. "The wheels on my electric wheelchair DON'T go round and round..."

Friday evening was our first showing. The theater was almost packed, and the audience was very enthusiastic. In the crowd were many of the crew's friends from Athens who attend Ole Miss: Russ Green, Alex Kidd, Jeremy Bright, and Samuel Thomason. Katherine Duncan also drove up from Athens to see the film (outside of the crew, we're pretty sure she holds the record for seeing it the most). Almost everyone stayed afterwards for the Q&A, during which he Oxford Film Festival committee presented Darius with a tube of wasabi! Everyone thought that was hilarious. Later, we put some on popcorn and tricked him into eating it.

Today's show at 1:00 PM was equally crowded and the audience equally enthusiastic. Good friend and huge DGW supporter Allie Henson drove over from Memphis (she goes to Rhodes College) to see the film for the third time. Afterwards, we picked up Darius's wheelchair, which is running better but still isn't turning like it should be. We may have to leave it in Atlanta on the way home for some more serious repair work.

Tonight was the highlight of the weekend. At the awards ceremony, we won BIG!!! In fact, we won two awards: Best Documentary (a juried award) AND the Audience Choice Award! We were blown away. What a huge, huge honor!

All of the winning films are shown again tomorrow in an encore performance, so we're looking forward to another great audience.

Sam, Daniel, and Darius head back to Athens on Monday. Logan and Ben fly out to Calgary, Canada to accept an honourable mention award at Picture This, a disability festival.

As for now, we've got some celebrating to do!!!

DGW...Know about it!