Whew! I only spent 3 days in Monrovia, California for the Action On Film Festival, but I had memories to last a lifetime and met so many wonderful people! The festival is held at the Krikorian theater, and let me tell you, its a beautiful theater! The days were hot ( not nearly as hot as Texas was!) but it was just gorgeous outside:

 

AOF is in its 11th year, and there are a LOT of films shown, and its a testament to festival creator Del and Theresa Weston that so many filmmakers attend the show! Del is a personality, one so big how could he NOT create a thing like AOF? Such a good guy! He welcomed me with open arms literally the moment I arrived!

I literally got off the plane early Friday morning, and after a small jaunt to Venice Beach ( hey, it was my first time in Los Angeles) I went to the festival and the whirlwind began! I finally met Kely McClung (Blood Ties) a longtime facebook friend, and now a friend for real, plus his makeup artist Nadia, who will be working with Kely on a short film called Loop. Kely was at the festival as his feature film Altered was showing (it was really good!) I also met a lot of wonderful actors, actresses, directors and producers!

Saturday Night saw a lot of action, culminating in the screening of UnLucky Stars! My review can be found here, and it was just as much fun watching it a second time around! Unlucky Stars now has distribution, so hopefully you’ll all be able to see it soon! I was finally able to meet the cast and crew, and I was stoked! These are guys I’ve been pounding the drums for nearly since Kiai-Kick’s inception, and here they were! A great group of guys:

If you’re new to the website and don’t know their work, here are a few things to watch:

DAMN RIGHT. I also met Bryan Sloyer, who is becoming quite the filmmaker himself!

So the screening went well, and afterward who should we see in attendance? None other than RICHARD NORTON! (Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars, Mad Max: Fury Road, China O’Brien and so many more!) Such a gentleman and very humble, but the man is a legend of martial arts cinema!

There were some truly great short films, like Battle of Wills by David Noh (awesome story and ending!), Wrath of God, and The Real Miyagi, about Karate Master Fumio Demura, was tremendously good. I can’t recommend that documentary enough.

I had to leave Sunday night, but my experiences were once in a lifetime. Or was it? Now that Cornered has shown, I have already started work on my next/first feature film. What is it? Well…

 

So I’ll see you next year, right?