MAF Member and film maker extraordinaire Devi Snively was in the South Bend Tribune on Sunday, Feb 24th. The article talked about Devi’s recent activities in the AFI Directing Workshop for Women in Southern California, as well as some of her upcoming films (including her first feature film Trippin’). She also talked about some of her upcoming plans regarding her writing and film making career. A big congrats to Devi from all of us in MAF!

You can read all of the article HERE.

MAF member Jon Vickers has been named the Managing Director of the DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts at Notre Dame University. Congrats Jon from all of us at MAF!

You can read all about his promotion HERE.

The location for the MAF meeting on March 4th, 2008 will be in the Molloy Room at the St. Joseph Public Library at 7:00 PM. The Molloy Room is located downstairs in the library, and can be found here. The library is located at 304 South Main, South Bend, IN 46601. This is a change from the normal meeting location of Fiddler’s Hearth, however, despite the generosity of Fiddler’s Hearth in letting us hold our meetings there, we’ve found that we are outgrowing the location. So many thanks to Fiddler’s Hearth, and it’s still a great place to hang out and grab some chow (or a pint, perhaps?)

The Films

On Friday, February 8th, MAF held its Winter 2008 screening of local independent films and had a staged reading of several scripts. The films were great, however, the highlight for the crowd had to be the world premiere of “The Benevolent Banana”. The film was created as a part of MAF’s $100 movie club, where a script is chosen to be produced and funded by MAF for $100. Last year, at the MAF winter screening, Benevolent Banana was chosen to be the first MAF $100 movie.

As the first MAF $100 movie, Benevolent Banana leaves some pretty big shoes to fill, as it in no way came across as a $100 movie. This is, of course, thanks in large part to the enormous amounts of time and talent people gave to help in the filming and post production. Many thanks to ALL involved in helping create this great short, and it now begs the question…When will we see “Benevolent Banana 2: Fruitpocalypse Now!”? Okay, I just made up that name, but hey, we have to do another one, right? How can you not? It’s a guy in a banana suit! Who’s a superhero! It doesn’t get much better than that.

And what about the staged readings? And who won the next $100 MAF movie contest? Click through to find out! (more…)