I'm very excited to share the news: a retrospective on my home turf a few months after the wonderful one at BAAD! Outdoors in the garden of the Hopper House in Nyack. A new program of about 10 shorts, with almost no overlap - except for the newest baby, Bronx Magic. Before reading any further, save the date: Wednesday July 13th. There's a rain date, but let's not go there...
When I first started submitting my films, I would proudly post every single acceptance in here. Recently I've gotten a bit blasé, but Matthew Seig at Rivertown Film did the math to promote our screening: my work has shown in 38 countries in over 300 festivals.
It's worth noting that Dancing is an Old Friend won best documentary at D'Olhar Itinerante de dance e video in Brazil. A pleasure to share the kudos - and a money prize! - with Jenny & Leah, my collaborators on that no-budget project made in the early months of the pandemic, still going strong. And Wait a Minute which is just nearing its one-year anniversary, has racked up 16 festivals to date.
[Side note: for what it's worth, the two Renzi works that have the most hits in the internet-o-sphere are Cartoon Love, with 21,000+ and Aqua Booty with 13, 500. Apparently, goofy sells.]
By the way, remember that May retreat in Connecticut I posted about? We got the job done! We made the first draft of an 8-minute trio, tried out costumes, and Emily Holden even sent us some musical sketches to keep us company. A few weeks ago I had the distinct pleasure of fleshing out those sketches in the studio with Emily - I count myself very lucky to have found a willing musical collaborator for projects like Through Mabel's Eyes, Dancing/Friend, Skybridge, and ...
We'll be sharing the new dance as part of a Dragon's Egg matinee showcase at the Henry Street Settlement House on September 24th, a very rare live outing for a Renzi work. But don't mark your calendar for that one yet: our focus is on July 13 July 13 July 13.
Occasionally in these posts I refer to my other part-time job of almost two decades, working at the Family Resource Center in Nanuet, not far from Nyack. For most of that time I was a Home Visitor in the Parent Child Home Program, reading with toddlers and their mothers in their homes. But for the last year I've been acting as Community Liaison, advocating for immigrant families as they make their way in a new country: helping register their kids for school, getting access to food pantries and insurance, attending doctors' appointments. And exercising my clumsy español sin vergüenza.
In fact, when people ask what I'm up to lately, I report how much more immediately rewarding my community work is than this arts sector stuff. I mean, does the world really need another dance, or dance film? And my two worlds hardly intersect ... which is why I decided to post Las Madres here. (FYI, this one missed the cut for the Rivertown retrospective because the only file I have of it is pretty lo-res, as you'll see. When you watch, please be sure to enlarge it.)
To be clear, these weren't "my" families, but a group I was introduced to thanks to a Rivertown (no relation) Artists Workshop grant. We met once a week in a most-unlovely middle school classroom in Tarrytown; this short film of our time together is an uncommon melding of my arts and community- building personas.
Because finally, the balance between the two worlds is what it's all about.
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