Brainwash Movie Festival: Drive-in Bike-in Walk-in Film Festival in Oakland, California

Here it is, folks, the lineup for this year’s Festival!

The 20th Annual Brainwash Drive-In/Bike-In/Walk-In Movie festival

will be at Nimby, 8410 Amelia St., at 85th Ave., Oakland, CA, USA,

Friday, July 18^th, Saturday July 19^th, Fri., July 25^th, and Sat., the 26th, 2014.

All shows at 9:00pm, with a virtual plethora of weird, unusual and just plain great movies for audience enjoyment and edification.

The New York Times says it “pirat[es] a piece of that old Hollywood magic and challeng[es] conventions on the role of public space in the process”.

“We project movies onto a tarp in West Oakland,” counters festival director Shelby Toland.

Admission is $12ea. per show, with discounts to City Car Share members: 2 for the price of one if “you flash your fob” and ALL occupants for free in a City Car Share Car!

or… get the Festival Pass – $35.00 for ALL shows! Get Tickets >>

Fri., July 18th

Super Camilla - Vitor Torao Akeda

The Man In White – Kyra Gardner

Candice is Currently Online - Patrick Schechter

Friendship - Xstine Cook

Traveler - Ron Hurley

Dearly Departed - Ashley Sinn

Love Stuck - Sierra Fein

A Farewell To Arm - Philip Snyder/Robert M. Snyder

Sat., July 19th- Special “Double Feature” show with Academy Award nominated Saint Dracula – a Bollywood classic!

Independent Film Maker - Andreas Goldfuss

Lullaby - Dana Brawer

F#*k Off - Berin Tuzlic

Highway 15 - Rachael L. Meyers

Bleach Formula - Heejin Jang

Dresden - Tahnee Gehm

Game Companion - Brian Morelan

Pop Psychology - Paul Fletcher

Warsaw January 2011 - Juliet Palmer

Cough - Jason Kempnich

Frogs Phrogs Frawgs - Brett Rogstad

Saint Dracula - Rupesh Paul/All Lights

Fri., July 25th

Bulimia: The Musical - Joe DiSanto

The Cabining - Mike Kopera

Sat., July 26th

Can We Be Happy Now? – Tahnee Gehm

Boome & Slade - Eric Jaffe

Kyrie Eleison / Transforming Gods - Volker Schlecht

Expatz - Jimmie Wing

Frenzbook - Paul Fontaine

The Spinster - Kristin Tieche

November - Eric Esser

Do What You Love - Katarzyna Kochany

Awards Presentation

Posted on June 22, 2014 at 6:33 am by Shelby Toland, filed under Top of Brain

This year’s big upgrades

If you’ve been to the Brainwash Movie Festival before, you may have experienced some minimal technical difficulties.

As much as our occasionally rushing around at 8:59 pm has added to the ambience over the years, I’m glad to confidently say that that part of the Brainwash experience is increasingly getting left behind. Technology is improving, which means so is our festival. There are two big upgrades for 2010 that are exciting (to me, anyway):

We are borrowing a new projector thanks to an anonymous benefactor: a 3000-lumen 1024 x 768 pixel Epson that just looks incredibly bright and clear outdoors, even with streetlights on half a block away (which did affect our old projector). It’s very impressive (maybe I’ll post some footage I took from inside a car the night we tested our equipment).
Even better, we have a brand-new, incredibly powerful FM transmitter! It’s straight out of China and I, uh, assume it’s totally on the up and up with the FCC, yeah. According to the specs (and I am no techie at this level), it has 1 to 1.5 watts of output. What that meant in our little test was that you could drive all over the entire parking lot (it holds hundreds of cars) and have a crystal-clear signal. We acquired this small but powerful unit — and its compact little whip antenna — thanks to another anonymous benefactor named Michael Hawk.

The combination of these two new pieces of equipment means that every spot in the parking lot assures you of having an incredibly great experience and being able to focus on the REAL heart of the festival — the movies.

And for those of you who won’t be in a car, we will also be playing the soundtrack on a couple of nice, loud, full amps, so you’ll get stereo sound even if you don’t have an FM receiver.

Finally, check out our great new sponsors on our homepage, especially the always awesome, non-profit, City CarShare. I’ve been a member since 2004 or so and thus haven’t had to own a car in years. City CarShare members will get a 20% discount at the gate!

Posted on August 1, 2010 at 3:20 am by Jason Gohlke, filed under The Festival

Tags for this entry: equipment, new for 2010, upgrades

Brainwash 2010 Animation

Among this year’s movies, we have a great raft of animation, as in years past. Voltaire’s Demiurge Emesis was also shown at the IndieFest and written up in ASIFA, the Int’l Animation Society newsletter, by Karl Cohen. Demiurge is narrated by Danny Elfman, better known for his fantastic work as the founder of the band Oingo Boingo (in the old days) and on movie soundtracks (including, recently, Milk). Duncan Maddux, our lead in the Brainwash broadcast series, who will MC our shows this year in person, was in Milk and ended up briefly featured on the 2009 Academy Awards.

Other animation to be shown includes:

Sunset to Sunset by Kent Hayward, about a walk across LA (that’s right – a WALK in LA!)
and the aforementioned Demiurge, both Friday night, Aug. 13th.

On Saturday, Aug. 14th, even more great animation includes:

The fantastic The Magnitude of the Continental Divides by Christopher Coleman;
Phillip the Safety Egg by Mike Owens (looks straight out of Adult Swim);
The Empress by Lyle Pisio (an Absolute MUST SEE for all animation connoisseurs);
Billionaire by Antonio Figueroa, about a game cataloging the roots of our economic collapse;
Frank DanCoolo: Paranormal Drug Dealer by Andrew Jones, not an animated movie per se, but featuring notable CGI while Frank and the world’s best reporter, Holly Malone, hallucinate;
and finally Goodnight Harvey, with some animation bidding a less than fond farewell to a formerly beloved childhood Muppets — sorry, “Muppos” — icon.

So bring a friend, bring a chair to enjoy the movies and see you there!

Posted on July 29, 2010 at 1:42 am by Shelby Toland, filed under Brainwash Movies, Our moviemakers, The Festival

Tags for this entry: animation

Announcing the 16th Annual Brainwash Movie Festival!

Without further ado, here are some images you can use if you’d like to promote the festival. I’d be glad to add something to the press release or to an image for any of our moviemakers, if you’d like.

The show will be August 7th, 13th, and 14th at the Mandela Village Arts Center, 1357 5th St., in Oakland, 9 pm each night, $10 each. Find out more about the festival!

Posted on July 15, 2010 at 2:10 am by Jason Gohlke, filed under Our moviemakers, The Festival, Top of Brain

Coming soon to a [something] near you…

Is it 2010 already? Oh — it’s March? (Really?)

Only 3 1/2 months to the 16th Annual Brainwash Movie Festival, you say? My, how time has flown.

I’m sure you’ve all got your independent short movies and features all lined up to submit to Brainwash. (You can submit your movies at any time using Withoutabox, but if you want to be truly, madly, stubbornly indie, you’ll have to wait until we fix our credit card authorization form — either that or you can scrawl your entry in crayon on the inside of an empty cereal box. On second thought…)

UPDATE! You can now use the secure credit-card-friendly entry form on our site again, if you don’t want to sign up for Withoutabox.

Our enthusiasm is starting to build for this year’s festival, and we hope yours is too!

Stay tuned on Facebook (now with our own URL, thanks to 100 nice people), and join our very low-volume mailing list — you wouldn’t want to miss anything, would you?

Posted on March 18, 2010 at 12:21 am by Jason Gohlke, filed under Brainwash Movies, The Festival

Tags for this entry: teaser

The winners! – 2009

How could we have waited so long to finally announce this? My apologies to the moviemakers who have been waiting to point to this very website to prove that they weren’t just making it up.

1st Prize: “MXD MSG” by Jeffrey Durkin
2nd GRAND Prize: “Mister Coffey” by Mark Thimijan
3rd Prize: “EXIT:ALLEY” by Robin Smyth
4th Prize: “The Collection” by Keren Albala
5th Prize: “Gypsy Crepes” by Count Lear Bunda
Brainwash First Feature: “Dr. S Battles the Sex-Crazed Reefer Zombies: The Movie” by Bryan Ortiz
Audience Choice Award: “Stalk Much?” by Bill Baykan

The last was finally tabulated from the thousands and thousands of paper ballots (chads hanging all over the place) so that you, the loyal reader, would finally know the truth about the 2009 Brainwash Movie Festival.

The truth is, it’s all over, so watch this space for our call for entries! Become a fan on Facebook!

Posted on September 16, 2009 at 2:58 am by Jason Gohlke, filed under Award Winners, Brainwash Movies, Brainwash Online, Our moviemakers, The Festival

Thank you!!

Thank you to all of our audience members and the moviemakers (those who could make it and those who couldn’t) who made the 2009 festival a success! We really enjoyed ourselves and hope you did too. Special thanks to the folks at the American Steel building for hosting the festival and making everyone feel welcome.

We are proud to announce the 2009 winning movies, and the Audience Choice Survey! Take it if you came to the show…

Posted on August 2, 2009 at 12:27 pm by Jason Gohlke, filed under Brainwash Movies, The Festival, Top of Brain

7/31 & 8/1: 1960 Mandela @ 18th (American Steel building)

July 31st and August 1st will be the 15th Annual Brainwash Bike-in Walk-in Movie Festival [no cars allowed; bring a chair].

For the festival proper on July 31st and August 1st (check out the program), our new venue is the really cool American Steel building on 18th and Mandela in Oakland.
Read More »

Posted on July 19, 2009 at 4:05 am by Jason Gohlke, filed under Brainwash Movies, The Festival

Announcing the 2009 Brainwash Movie Festival Lineup!

We are proud to announce a terrific line-up of short independent movies at this year’s 15th Annual Brainwash Drive-in Bike-in Walk-in Movie Festival, to be held in Oakland on Friday, July 31st and Saturday, August 1st, 2009. [Buy advance tickets on TicketWeb.]

Congratulations to our moviemakers and a sincere thanks to all who submitted their movies! We plan to “hold over” certain other movies submitted this year, including a couple of Very Brainwash Features^TM, for further shows, so stay tuned!

In other words, if your movie did not make the main festival, it may still screen later in the year.

And now the program:
Read More »

Posted on July 14, 2009 at 7:16 pm by Jason Gohlke, filed under Brainwash Movies, Our moviemakers, The Festival

July 18: Brainwash Zombie Night!

This Saturday, July 18th, at 1357 5th Street in Oakland, the Brainwash Movie Festival kicks off the 2009 season with Brainwash Zombie Night!

Featuring:

Feature Presentation Doctor S. Battles the Sex-Crazed Reefer Zombies: The Movie
Shorts Dead Sucks and Dead in the Water

Buy tickets either online or at the gate… and RSVP on Facebook. $9, 9 pm! Fun will be had by all.

If you buy a Brainwash Movie Festival Three Day Pass in advance on TicketWeb, two people can attend the 7/18, 7/31, & 8/1 shows for a total of $30 (that’s almost half off).

Breaking news: Filmmaker Bryan Ortiz will be at the Premiere Party tonight to say a few words about his movie — it’ll be a great opportunity to meet an up and coming young moviemaker!

Posted on July 13, 2009 at 11:07 am by Jason Gohlke, filed under Brainwash Movies, The Festival

Tags for this entry: Dead in the Water, Dead Sucks, Doctor S. Battles the Sex-Crazed Reefer Zombies: The Movie

Brainwash meets Facebook

Brainwash Movies is now on Facebook.

So, if you’re on Facebook, become a fan! It’ll be worth your while. We’ll offer Facebook fans exclusive first access to discounts and announcements about the festival. (It might barely be first, but it’ll still be first.)

Posted on June 16, 2009 at 1:43 am by Jason Gohlke, filed under Brainwash Movies, Brainwash Online

Tags for this entry: facebook, social networking, web 2.0

Announcing the 20th Annual Brainwash Drive-In/Bike-In/Walk-In Movie Festival Program, 2014!