Fresno’s favorite low- (or no) budget film festival, Swede Fest, returns to the Tower Theatre 6 p.m. May 19. For those not familiar, this is the only film festival dedicated to sweded films. A “sweded” film is a summarized recreation of a Hollywood movie using friends as actors (and directors and camera people). Homemade props and costumes are also encouraged. This will be the festival’s 11th installment.
Before the festival, Fresno Filmworks will present a special screening of “Be Kind Rewind,” the 2008 film that inspired the whole “sweding” movement. Tickets are $5 and are available in advance at the Tower Theatre box office or the Filmworks website. Admission to Swede Fest is free.
If you are interest in submitting a film, entries are being accepted through May 13. You have until 11:59 p.m. Films should be under four minutes in length and suitable for all ages. Contact organizers for more information on the event, rules for submission or to see entries from past Swede Fests.
Would-be film makers: It’s time to pull that cardboard out of recycling, sharpen up the box cutters and get to work on costumes for the next Swede Fest.
You have until May 13 to come up with your take on a film classic for entry into Swede Fest 11. Once again, only the first 20 entries will be accepted, so even though the deadline is two-months out you’ll want to get to work ASAP.
Other stuff to remember: The time limit is 4 minutes, the film must be suitable for all ages and contain no content that violates any law.
If you need some inspiration, check out the festival’s previous entries, or Dumbdrum‘s shot-for-shot remake of the “Pacific Rim” trailer, which is currently getting much-deserved buzz. These guys have elevated the art of the Swede and should be applauded for continuing to push the boundaries of low-budget film making.
Looks like they did it again. The “Iron Man 3″ trailer that was sweded by Fresno nerds The Dumb Drum and debuted at Sunday’s Swede Fest X at Tower Theatre, is all over the Internet. You might recall their previous efforts, particularly their sweded “Avengers” trailer, have conquered the geekiest corners of the web and racked up hundreds of thousands of YouTube views.
On a Swede Fest note: Organizers Bryan Harley and Roque Rodriguez say Sunday’s event, its first at Tower Theatre, drew 500 people, which is a good crowd for the Tower, which seats about 761. Other swedes from the festival should be up today. Check swedefest.com.
1. SWEDE IT UP Swede Fest is bigger and better, back for its 10th installment Sunday. It’s happening at Tower Theatre, a dream realized for organizers of this quirky film festival. It showcases low-budget parodies made by everyone from average joes to seasoned pros. Creativity, ingenuity and a sense of humor are king at Swede Fest, so you never know what you’re going to see. It’s free and open to movie lovers of all ages. For more on Swede Fest’s growth and rise to popularity, read this Q & A with the organizers. [More]
Swede Fest is back on Nov. 11 for its tenth installment — yes, tenth. How cool is that this funky little event has stuck around as long as it has and continued to grow? Signs of that growth are definitely evident this time.
This newest Swede Fest has two cool new things going for it: It’s moving to the Tower Theatre this time (the most fitting home, methinks) and Fresno Arts Council is on board now to award $50 “micro” swede grants. Deadline to apply for the grants is Tuesday, Oct. 23. More info on the Swede Fest site.
If you’re unfamiliar with Swede Fest, it’s a homegrown film festival started by Roque and Bryan from Dumb Drum. Inspired by the film “Be Kind Rewind,” Swede Fest invites people to remake a movie as a “swede” — a low-budget parody, where humor and creative use of props often trumps film-making acumen. The point, simply, is to get people interested in making movies, while having some fun in the process.
Since Swede Fest’s humble beginnings (in a small downtown art gallery), it’s grown to the point where it draws standing-room-only crowds and gets national press exposure (NPR, yo!) Even with that, the point is still the same: Anybody is welcome to create a swede of their favorite film. Deadline to submit one is Nov. 5, so you better get working.
Tonight is Swede Fest, a local event we at the Beehive love. It’s the ninth go-round for the event, but this time, there’s a twist: Having been held traditionally in art galleries and bars, tonight’s Swede Fest will be held at an actual movie theater for the first time ever.
Specifically, those who made Swedes will get to see their work on the big screen at Clovis’s Sierra Vista Cinemas 16. The whole thing goes down at 7 p.m., and is, as usual, open to the public, all ages and free.
Also, if you show up early to Sierra Vista Mall, you can enjoy a pre-Swede Fest beer during the Rock the Mall summer series, happening from 6-9 p.m. tonight.
This is the first time in six Swede Fests I haven’t submitted a Swede, so I’ll be enjoying the event as a spectator only. I can’t wait to see what everyone has come up with. See you out there!
Oh snap, guys, have you heard the Swedes are taking us over for the next week? And by that, I mean the people and the movies.
Tonight is the start of Kingsburg Swedish Festival, the popular annual celebration of the culture of Sweden. There’s traditional dancing, smorgasbord, costumes, all that kinda stuff. It runs through Saturday night.
Next Thursday is the ninth Swede Fest, which has nothing to do with Sweden and is actually about movies. It’s an interesting turn of Swedish fate (or maybe a conspiracy?) that these two events lined up in the same week.
Much like YouTube, anybody can upload content to Gotta Love Fresno. Unlike YouTube, the folks behind Gotta Love Fresno invested in our local Internet community, commissioning new, original shows from some faces you’re probably familiar with. (Because it needs to be said: Kudos to Comcast to shelling out some money and getting behind some proven voices, instead of just recycling content.)
Gotta Love Fresno has three clip-style shows that’ll have new episodes weekly:
Very simply, it’s us creating a reason, source of inspiration and a set of parameters to create a film. We’re inviting people to go make a film from the same Germ and then share it with others at our first Germ event on January 26th. Anyone is invited to participate. Filmmakers, photographers…writers, artists…executives, administrative staff…baristas, accountants…if you’ve considered expressing yourself through the medium of film or video, we want to see what you’ve got.
Fresno’s creative community got a little boost this morning thanks to NPR (National Public Radio), who ran a segment on Swede Fest, our local festival for movie parodies.
We’ve covered Swede Fest pretty extensively on the Beehive, but for those who may not know, the festival was started by Dumb Drum’s Roque Rodriguez and Bryan Harley, who put the free event on twice a year. Wannabe moviemakers and film buffs (myself included) reshoot scenes from their favorite Hollywood movies and TV shows, and those four- to five-minute films are shown at the festival. Until recently, Fresno’s Swede Fest was the only festival for sweded films, but that changed in October when Swede Fest Tampa, started by former Beehive blogger Will Albritton, took place.
The name “swede” comes from the movie Be Kind Rewind directed by Michel Gondry. NPR asked Gondry what he thinks about the genre of sweding and the festival that was inspired by his film. You can listen to the interview, which also includes sound bites from co-founder Bryan Harley and my Scott Pilgrim vs the World swede (shameless promotion!), here.
In the last couple of months, Swede Fest has garnered more and more notice thanks to Dumb Drum’s Avengers swede getting covered extensively on TV and the Internet. NPR’s segment is the latest feature on the local festival, though it surely won’t be the last.
You know, being a new parent is hard enough without having to deal with the pressures of those *perfect* parents around you. Here I am trying to figure out how to keep my eight-month-old out of the dog’s water bowl, and I have people like Nate Smith and Emily Cleaver going around making me look like I’m not nearly as awesome as I could be.
Case in point, this is how Nate Smith teaches his son not to touch things:
What have I been doing with my life?!? At my house, we’ve been trying to teach Baby Oz the word “No,” but that’s not really working as well as it could. So from now, I’m going to yell, “Stop! Hammer Time!” Maybe that’ll help.
Once again, The Beehive is honored to host the semi-regular Swedies, the only semi-legitimate awards covering the Swede Fest.
Swede Fest — the homegrown festival dedicated to low-budget movie remaking — held its eighth event on Saturday, a standing-room-only affair at Full Circle Brewing Co. Swede Fest 8 represented a new height for the festival in terms of attendance, entrants and all around hype. Swedes came from around the Valley, and around the world — France, Australia and New York.
Picking winners for Swede Fest 8 was also the toughest of all the festivals I’ve attended. But below you’ll find what impressed me. You can watch all the films for yourself at swedefest.com, then come argue with me. Oh, one note, for obvious reasons, I’m not considering “The Avengers: Sweded” for any awards. It’s already conquered the Internet. It can live without a Swedie.
To all the rest of the winners: Take a screenshot of this post and make it your desktop image at work, then tell all your co-workers you won a Swedie, then spend the next 10 minutes attempting to explain what the heck that is. Congrats!
This Saturday night I’ll be playing some tunes at Tokyo Garden and helping Creative Fresno raise money for more downtown murals.
It’s part of Creative Fresno’s “Sexy” DJ series — and to make sure Sexy Oz lives up to the name, my wife is going to be there. *Wocka, Wocka*
Keeping with the theme of the night, you can expect sexy and smooth tunes, ranging from 90s R & B (but not the stuff that’s on The Beat all the time), indie rock, electro-pop, hip-hop, etc.
UPDATE, 10/20: Apparently “The Avengers: Sweded” will be on tonight’s “Attack of the Show” on G4 at 7 p.m. Yesterday the show’s Twitter account linked to the Swede.
UPDATE, 10/20: “The Avengers: Sweded” is officially a viral hit with over 88,588 views since yesterday. It’s since been picked up by Laughing Squid, MTV SplashPage and the Yahoo! Movies blog. On top of that, the Swede Fest Twitter feed just announced that the Swede is the fourth most popular video “around the web” on YouTube’s charts for Film and Animation, and it was even seen by one of the producers of the movie The Avengers.
Can’t wait to see how much farther this video goes.
Original, 10/19: This is a friendly reminder that Swede Fest 8 submissions are due November 1. You’ve been working on yours, right?
To encourage you to get going, the guys at Dumb Drum put together and released their Swede early. Check out their version of the newly released trailer for Marvel’s The Avengers, due in theaters May 2012:
If you’re looking for more inspiration, check out the Swede Fest page, which has submission rules and links to entries from the previous seven events.
The Fresno interwebs patted itself on the back last night at the second annual Frebby Awards, held at Fulton 55.
I’m proud to say that I was among the winners for my work here on The Beehive, so thanks to everybody who reads all my “information.” As a whole, the Fresno blogosphere was well represented among the winners. Here’s the list:
There’s a long list of honorable mentions you can see at The Daily Dues. Congrats to everyone.
Now that all that award stuff is out of the way, I need to say something about the videos. They were great — my favorite part of the Frebbys. The wonderful intro video (see above) was made by Windsong Productions and stars Frebby host Zara Arboleda of CBS 47. Each category had an intro video, created by folks like Dumb Drum and Dead in 60 Years — and those were quite entertaining. Some of them are below for your enjoyment.
This year’s Frebby Awards are Thursday night at Fulton 55, and seven local web-centric companies, services or people are going to walk away with 20-pound statues anointing them as online “standard-setters.”
Who will win? You have to wait until Thursday night’s ceremony — tickets cost $15 and are available here if you want to watch with your own eyes.
For now you can peruse which entries, out of the 60-some-odd submitted, that Frebby judges decided were the best. These 20 scored the highest across all seven categories and are essentially the “finalists.”
It’s that time again, film fans. Dumb Drum is now accepting submissions for everybody’s favorite free film festival, Swede Fest.
You remember what sweding is all about, right? You recreate your favorite movie scene using whatever video camera, low-budget props and costumes you have on hand. Submissions are then shown at Swede Fest.
This season’s festival will take place Saturday, November 5, at Full Circle Brewing Company in downtown Fresno. Like always, it’s free and open to all ages. However, there are a couple of new rules this time around: Videos can only be four minutes long, and only the first 20 submissions accepted will be shown at Swede Fest.
DVD and/or digital submissions are due Tuesday, November 1, so start thinking about which film (or T.V. show or whatever) you’d like to Swede. Details and rules can be found here, and past entries can be found here.
After the jump I’ve included a few videos from Swede Fest 7, including Scott Pilgrim vs The World, which was mine and my brother’s entry. If a lowly blogger like me can make a Swede, you can too. (Sidenote: Our Swede was posted on director Edgar Wright’s blog. See how cool Sweding is?)
Fresno’s Swede Fest prides itself on being the only festival for sweded films in the country, but that is about to change. A second Swede Fest is gearing up to take place in the fall, and it’s being started by a former Beehiver.
Long-time readers will remember when former Beehive blogger Will Albritton left Fresno for the greener (?) pastures of Tampa, Florida. Will has set up a nice life for himself in the Sunshine State, a life that now includes organizing Swede Fest Tampa Bay. Here’s the man himself explaining the dealio:
It’s great to see an original, Fresno-born idea like Swede Fest grow; first Tampa, then the world, eh? Much luck to Will on this new endeavor.
I’m talking inside, not outside. On a truly busy weekend, I managed to cram in three events in one day:
Gala piano concert. Olga Quercia and Matthew Horton put on a beautiful duo piano recital of Gershwin songs (plus a nod to Louis Armstrong) at Fresno City College. It was the first big-deal concert to take place in the gorgeously renovated Old Administration Building auditorium. The space is stunning.
Swede Fest 7. Full Circle Brewing Co. was jammed for the 25-Swede extravaganza. Nothing like hanging out with a bunch of Swedes on a warm spring night! (And we’re talking about the amateur depiction of famous movie moments, not the festival in Kingsburg, which is where one person I talked to at the next event I attended assumed I’d gone to when I told her I’d been Sweding.)
“Sing Out, Louise!” A star-studded homage to the music of Stephen Sondheim, this exhilarating concert featured great vocal talent from local theater folks. (More to come, including additional photos by Kyle Lowe, later this afternoon.)
I missed a lot of things, too, including the Fresno Philharmonic’s Eagles concert. I’m curious how that went.
I know it’s just Tuesday, far too early to start thinking about weekend plans, but there is so much going on this weekend, I’m posting this now in the hope you don’t miss out on anything.
This is just a taste of what’s happening this weekend. Check back later this week for even more options.
THURSDAY
Taste and Toast of the Tower, 5:30-8:30 p.m. in the Tower District. Enjoy food from 52 sampling locations, including wines from 15 wineries. Tickets include a map of all sampling locations and complimentary wine glass. $20.
The Dumb Drum, Cross Streets, Swede Fest guys, Bryan and Roque, have released a humorous video to let you know there is still a good amount of time for you to create your own Swede.
The video includes all the details on Swede Fest 7 so you can mark your calendars accordingly, plus a not-so-subliminal message about taking public transportation to the event. Check it out:
You remember what sweding is all about, right? You recreate your favorite movie scene using whatever video camera you have, and whatever low-budget props and costumes you have on hand. Submissions are then shown at a film festival called Swede Fest.
This season’s festival will take place Saturday, May 14, at Full Circle Brewing Company in downtown Fresno. Like always, it’s free and open to all ages.
DVD and/or digital submissions are due Monday, May 9, so start thinking about which film (or T.V. show or whatever) you’d like to Swede. Details and rules can be found here, and past entries can be found here. Just to give you an idea of how popular Swede Fest has become, last November’s event had 15 entries, and Starline was packed with attendees.
After the jump I’ve included a few videos from Swede Fest 6, including Raising Arizona, which was mine and my brother’s entry. See? If a lowly blogger like myself can make a Swede, you can too.
Here is a Swede Fest two-for-one.
WATCH THIS: Latest episode of ”Nothing to Do.” [
Swede Fest is back on Nov. 11 for its
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