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The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Messiah has been selected for the Kensington Real Independent Film Festival

Waco, Texas based director Chris Hansen's amusing and well made mockumentary The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Messiah will screen at the Kensington Real Independent Film Festival (KRIFF) in Kensington, Maryland. KRIFF, both a new film festival and a new kind of a film festival - one that celebrates real independent filmmaking in America and one that will share ticket sales revenue with filmmakers, happens September 6 - 9, 2007. Screening date and time for Messiah are to be determined. Messiah will be one of only 10 fiction feature films that will screen at the festival. KRIFF 2007 is the inaugural version of the film festival.

Messiah is a low budget, actually independent comedy-drama about the misadventures of a character who believes he has been chosen for a special mission by the God of the Christians. The feature was made with the assistance of Baylor University students. The film is a real independent movie since it was created, as far as I can tell, without any assistance from, and outside the control of, Hollywood (the major studios that dominate US film production and distribution) and Indiewood (divisions of Hollywood studios formed for the purpose of creating and distributing low budget movies that are similar in several ways to real independent movies). The only visible connection the film has to the Hollywood film industry is the appearance of actor Tony Hale (best known from Fox's TV show Arrested Development) in a minor role. At the time the film was selected for KRIFF, in late March, 2007, Messiah was being self-distributed. One of the goals of KRIFF is to support and celebrate the self-distribution of high quality real independent films. As such, Messiah's self-distribution status made the movie very attractive as a programming choice for KRIFF. Reviewers, film festival attendees, and other audience members have been enjoying Messiah at screenings since early 2006, and more recently on DVD from CustomFlix. Visit here for more information on the film.

The September '07 visit to Kensington by the film and possibly Hansen will be their second time at the DC suburb. Both the film and the director were in Kensington last year for a much smaller event - a Capital City Microcinema screening at the Kensington Row Bookshop. I look forward to introducing the film, possibly the director, and the at times delightful and at other times annoying regional messiah character played by New York based actor Dustin Olson to many more Kensingtonians at this year's festival.

Sujewa Ekanayake
Programmer
The Kensington Real Independent Film Festival (KRIFF)

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