My partner and our chairman (and our Visionary Leader), Barnet Liberman, and I want to thank the IndiePix community for helping make this event — the inaugural Cinema Eye Honors — the success that it was. Thank you.

AJ (our co-host, from whom this idea sprang) and Danielle can tell you better how magical this event seemed, but not in some “never-never-land” way — magical in the sense of historic. I think we felt that this was a moment when a community of filmmakers and friends gathered to say — like Jason Kohn said in his acceptance speech — (except I’m going to quote from another movie) “we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more!”

OK — step back here — the fact is that the affection and camaraderie among the attendees from Germany, Denmark, Brazil, and all over the States — as well as the warmth and good wishes of the many Academy Award winners who were among the presenters, and in the audience — the sense of good will was awesome. And the sense of community was part of the historic quality of the event.

IndiePix was warmly congratulated for having helped pull this off, and we were overwhelmed by the wave of affection that we received.

I want to share that with the IndiePix community. We did what we should have done. We did more than we thought we could. We did what we had to do. We did what we thought you would have wanted us to do. But we could not have done any of it without you.

Those who visit our site, who support IndiePix filmmakers, who browse our catalog of great independent films — we could not have done this without you. You are the ones who gave us this opportunity through your support. And I hope you are proud of us for having given back to the community through this wonderful event.

There is more to do — and we’ll soon post Jason Kohn’s acceptance speech so you’ll see and hear his challenge. But I think we can — together — do much more. And we are emboldened to try with your support.

Thank you.

This is the quote, attributed to my filmmaking hero, Chris Marker, that long greeted visitors on the True/False Film Festival’s website. Chris Marker, the brilliant cinema-essayist/Marxist/philosopher, would have had a blast at our inaugural Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Film this past Tuesday night. As one of the only people in New York who hasn’t blogged about it yet, i feel a little bit of guilt, but the truth is I’m still recovering. And well, magic is hard to process and analyze. So once the stardust dissipates into the atmosphere, I will be able to take stock of what was truly one of the most incredible nights of my life. Until then, I leave you with a couple of photos from the event.

I have not been a fan of the web 2.0 concept and social networking as the tidal wave of the future.

I know. MySpace had 55 million users in February and Facebook had 20 million. (Nielsen ratings) So what’s your point? Go along with the crowd? I don’t think so.

If you are on Facebook you can use “Flickr” to list the movies you like and then the other 19,999,999 people on the service can see what you liked and give you a “hot or not”. Great. Another popularity contest. An internet push toward conformity, toward going along. Just what we need.

You can’t list independent films. Maybe we should fix that.

But … just the other day, the New York Times (when it wasn’t busy covering the latest yellow journalistic scandal) found time to report on a study that says that 7 out of 10 people who are deprived of their cell phones and internet connections become depressed. Those seem like highly repeatable scores. We could all probably agree that those are reasonable numbers. But so?

About the same time, the Financial Times (really probably consistently the best newspaper today) reported on a study about loneliness. The researcher had concluded that perhaps the feeling of loneliness is a darwinian mechanism to drive us into groups because humanity needs community and the opportunities for specialization that communities offer in order to survive and thrive. Someone said something like: “it takes a village … “

How interesting is the combination of these two reports? Maybe the blossoming of social networks — via cell phones, text messages, and internet sites — is really driven by some biological/genetic force that is bigger than all of us.

I may have to take all of this a little more seriously.

Tops my “haven’t seen it yet but most want to” list this week.

Not just because my favorite color is red is the 90’s incarnation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula my favorite version of the book on film, and not just because I was very much into Winona Ryder at that time, either. I totally dug Eiko Ishioka - the stunningly talented production artist/illustrator/costume design/concept artist who worked on the film and came up with these fantastic illustrations for the costumes, which turned out like elfwork.

The opening session this morning at the 9th Annual NALIP (National Association of Latino Independent Producers) conference in Dana Point, California this morning was a discussion of the possibility of Pan-Latino cinema. The panelists were great, with Yareli Arismendi (a writer, LA Times, FAST FOOD NATION), Frida Torresblanco (Producer of Pan’s Labyrinth), Mireya Navarro (LA Bureau of the NY Times), a representative from PBS, and others.

The panelists acknowledged that there was a moment when “Magical Reality” was a pan-latin aesthetic, but that was then and now is now. This morning, the conversation seemed to focus on questions of personal identity, family and sports.

There is a “high concept” Pan-Latino development that may be spawning a new aesthetic even now. Over the last few years, democratic elections in several major countries across Latin American, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, and Paraguay, have brought into view a new movement to build a new relationship between people and their economies and their governments. This movement is different from the so-called “dirigiste” state regimes of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s — and strikingly different from the increasingly materialist social organization of the United States.

Democracy in Latin America represents an effort to find a “third way”, a way to balance individual liberties, community concerns and productive economies in new ways. This political/social development is truly global, with connections to developments in China and India. Developments this significant can spawn a new aesthetic in cinema.

In the same way that the rapid introduction of unfettered capitalism into Chinese society has produced gorgeous, emotional and award winning films on environmental issues (Up The Yangtze) and social family questions (Still Life) — so too can the emerging new social order in Latin America lead to films of extraordinary merit (Manda Bala, in this past year for example).

… And that surely would be a Pan-Latino Cinema with Global impact!