Not long ago, I got an email from a friend telling me that “I’d been quiet for too long.” There are many reasons for this. But things have changed. Quiet I will be no longer. Here are some updates, some may be more exciting than others:

1.    THE DR: The background hum of my work has been the Dominican Republic documentary, something which I am still working on. Obviously, my trip in August upset quite a few assumptions I had made about certain characters I had thought I had previously understood. I’m rebalancing, translating, editing. I set deadlines, but then opportunities come up, such as…

2.    TATTOOS: I have written a book proposal, and designed a mock-up for a photography book I’d like to publish, called A Canvas of Flesh: The Untold Tales Behind Tattoos. It is a first-hand documentary account of the reasons and personal stories people have behind their tattoos – instead of focusing on the art alone. Pretty fascinating stuff. The stories I’ve collected are wild. Stuff like: one 28-year-old Detroit native with metal caps on his teeth bares his forearm to me and reveals some black patches. It looks like a botched tattoo. The he tells me they are footprints of his dead baby twins. I’m submitting to agents right now to see who’s interested. Next up, straight to the publishers.

3.    INDIA/QATAR: The last, but definitely not the least, is that I’m on my way to India and Qatar. I’m doing a promotional documentary for the Universal Digital Library, a project and organization based out of Carnegie Mellon University. They are flying me out to India for their annual conference on the issues and breakthroughs of digitizing books, and then I’m going to Qatar to film the documentary at the Heritage Library. I’ve got pages more to explain, so I’ll keep it short and vague today and expound on the upcoming blog posts.

Please send me your address if you’d like a personal postcard!

I’ll have pictures posted as I go along, and I’ll always provide links to my blog. If you have any comments/questions, you can either post them on the blog or email me. I love to hear from you, so don’t hesitate.

Finally: IF ANYONE HAS ANY SORT OF CONNECTION OR KNOWS A BOOK AGENT OR PUBLISHER PLEASE PASS ME THE INFORMATION!!!

All my love
Isabelle

I have several projects going on right now, in different stages of planning/starting/finishing -

1. *** Finishing the DR “100 Fires: Living from a Landfill” documentary ***

2. Starting Drew De Four’s “music on the road” documentary

3. Finishing the screenplay for the movie “Confession”, featuring argentine tango.

4. Researching for the “Plastics” documentary. I’m collecting material for this, and hope to write up a treatment by the end of the summer/fall so I can get funding secured by next summer.

Other than those 4 main projects, I have a few smaller ones that need polishing… Polynesian Dancers short, Will Copeland short, Vietnam> the 4th poem, Iraq Veterans short.

Time - the most precious commodity. I often have wished I could create time, as if it was some kind of substance that could be made, pulled, stretched… elastic as it is even in its regularity (some hours pass in minutes, some minutes stretch on as hours), I wish I could mold it. As it is, I live intensely and productively. I could wish for nothing more.

Abrazos

Isabelle

The Obama ad actually scored the 91st percentile, out of 1100 ads that were submitted. Top tier. Not bad. I’m still hoping to submit the ad directly to the campaign so all my work can still get used.

Hey New Yorkers,

A redux version of my film “Mexico: Chasing the American Dream” is being shown at the New Filmmakers Latino Anthology Screening tomorrow night (wednesday May 7) at 6pm, at 32 Second Avenue @ 2nd Street (at a theater called Anthology Film Archives). See below.

I’d love to see all your faces and reconnect… and I’m still hunting for a one night stay on a couch

Much love,
Isabelle

Update: have scored a place to stay. Thanks for the offers!

NEWFILMMAKERS is America’s National Screening Series.
NEWFILMMAKERS NY screens Weekly at Anthology Film Archives, one of the leading theaters in New York City, located at 32 Second Avenue @ 2nd Street.

Admission for the entire evening in New York and in Los Angeles is still only $5.

MAY 7TH
NewFilmmakers & NewLatino Filmmakers
Edwin Pagan, Series Director / Curator

6:00PM DOCUMENTARIES

THE GUARANI MBYA NOMADS OF THE ATLANTIC RAINFOREST
Marcia/Norbert Gomes deOliveira Suchanek, Writer, Directors

MEXICO: CHASING THE AMERICAN DREAM
Isabelle Carbonell, Director, Producer

SHIKASHIKA
Stephen Hyde, Director

7:00PM SHORT FILMS

RED PRINCESS BLUES: THE ANIMATED PREQUEL
Alex Ferrari, Creator, Writer, Director / Dean Cregan, Director, Producer

COOKIE
Francisco Ordonez, Writer, Director

OUTLOOK
Derek Velez Partridge, Writer - Director

8:00PM FIRST FEATURE

BUSCANDO A MIGUEL
Juan Fisher, Writer, Director
Miguel is a young Colombian politician blinded by his own privilege. Victim of a violent attack, he loses his memory and finds himself living in a very different world, a world inhabited precisely by the kind of people he had once.

9:45PM SECOND FEATURE

SALSA LESSONS
Antonio de la Cruz, Director
Two people meet by chance in New York City. Pedro is a salsa instructor and Rosa wants to learn how to dance.

Way to go Convergence magazine for publishing an awesome zine last month full of great poetry and my perhaps most obscure non-mainstream, non-photojournalism, non-eye-candy work. All photos shown in the zine are taken by yours truly. Sometimes magazines will email me and ask if they can use my photography. I always tell them to pick through my site as it’s usually a pretty good bet they’ll find what they’re looking to publish. It can be quite a surprise what they decide to pick sometimes. I’m pleased that this kind of work is getting out there - makes you feel like you don’t always have to sensationalize everything. Check out the zine here.

Check out my film “Palindrome” in Athens, Ohio, at the AthensFest. It’ll be showing Wednesday, May 30, at 7.30pm. I won’t be there, unfortunately, but give me a heads up if you get to attend and catch my film. I’m so thrilled that Palindrome has been getting into so many festivals. We have a 70% success rate! Of course, in the future when I submit my work (future=better work) I will not be hoping to be accepted to film festivals but hoping to win awards and such. One step at a time though. Though short, Palindrome obviously has some kind of universal appeal as an experimental work of art. It’s given me great ideas for other works I’m doing - video can be anything you make it. Don’t be afraid to break the rules. I think that’s the main thing. But you gotta know the rules before you break them, and therein lies the learning.

Hey everyone -

I was a bit preemptive to ask all of you to go to youtube, though it helped me a lot. The Obama team has made its own site for the contest. There are two ways they are counting votes. One way is “Most Viewed.” So could you visit this link & enter your email so they can count your “view” vote? Of course, pass it along to friends and family if you get a chance, too -

http://obamain30seconds.org/vote/?v=view-1675-2meM6f

They won’t send you any emails, it’s just to prevent voting fraud (to have someone click refresh over and over). If you’d like to view and vote some of the other videos (this is the second way they count votes), and see what my competition is all about:

http://www.obamain30seconds.org/vote/?id=12484-9104616-.95ni5

Thanks for supporting my activism, my art, and me, and ultimately, Obama.

I will return the favor any way I can.

All my love,

Isabelle (& Drew)

So among 4 other film festivals so far, my film “Palindrome” has gotten into the Kansas Jubilee Film Festival. It’s showing tonight (Friday, April 18) at 4.15pm, at Tivoli Cinema, in Kansas City. It’s also showing tomorrow (Saturday, April 19) at 7.30pm, at Westport House Theater. Which is also in Kansas City.

I can’t make it out to Kansas this time, though if you’re living in and around the area, please tell me how it goes, and any news and reports from the festival!!! My b-side page can be found here.

Go film festivals. Especially those that accept my weirdest stuff. The next one is Athens, but I’ll blog later about that one.

Abrazo

Iza

I’ve been sending out all these emails to my list and neglecting my blog. It’s time for a change! So I’ll go ahead and update you with my latest funny bad/good news to start with -

My beautiful, expensive HVR-Z1U camera needs major repair. Do you know how it feels to send in your camera to a blank, faceless, maybe-it’ll-be-under-warranty repair service? It feels like you’re sending off your child to summer camp in Mongolia and you don’t know if they’ll come back. Nothing against Mongolia. But without my camera, I can’t produce new stuff. Which is probably a good thing, seeing HOW much backlog I have to work through still, including, but not limited to:

1. The Dominican Republic documentary - in full.

2. Vietnam in Poems - the rest of the vignettes (yes, there are more than three)

3. Polynesian Dancers short

4. Will Copeland Poem short

5. Iraq Veteran Interviews (w/ Aidan Delgado) short

It makes me jittery thinking about how much work I have on my plate. I’ll update you guys as soon as new work comes out!!!