Around the Block: Doug Block's Doc Blog

Tonight: 51 Birch Street To Be Broadcast In Canada

ATTENTION CANADIAN READERS: Apologies for the last-minute notice (what else is new?), but tune in tonight at 10pm ET (or set your Tivo's) for the CBC Newsworld: Passionate Eye Showcase broadcast of 51 Birch Street. 

For those in the U.K., I can give you more of a heads up, so mark your calendars.  The More4 "True Stories" broadcast premiere is scheduled for Wed, February 21st at 9pm.

Whatever broadcast dates I know of have been posted on the Screenings page of the 51 Birch website.   Still no date has been set for the Cinemax premiere here in the States, but the latest rumor is some time in May (Mother's Day, perhaps?).   The dvd release will follow a month or so behind that.

Right up until the Cinemax air date we'll continue to be showing in theaters around the country, maybe even somewhere near you.

A Special Screening at Sundance Tomorrow

51 Birch Street will be showing in Park City tomorrow afternoon, but not as an official part of the festival.  It's a special screening set up by our exec producers, the Priddy Brothers, that's open to the public but geared primarily for students taking part in a faith-based initiative called the WindRider Forum.  They've come to Sundance as a group this week to take in the films and "gather at the nexus of faith, art and culture, diving into all three with a sense of expectation and wonder." 

After all the Jewish film festivals 51 Birch has been playing lately, it's kind of nice to get it before a very different audience.  Not to mention one filled with expectation and wonder.  Just sorry I can't be there in person like I'd hoped.

For those of you out at Sundance that may want to see the film, here's the poop:

Saturday, January 27th at 5:00 PM

Mountain Vineyard Christian Fellowship

1401 Kearns Blvd, Park City.

To be followed by a Q&A with John and Ed Priddy, and a panel discussion to be recorded for the Kindlings Muse radio program with Dick Staub.

Tickets are free - first come, first served.

As 51 Birch Street Celebrates Year-End Accolades and 4th Month in New York City, Director Suffers Severe Neck Sprain

A quicky note that I'll be doing a couple of Q&A's this week after 51 Birch screenings.  The first is this Sunday after the 3pm showing at Symphony Space.  The second is on Tuesday after the 7:30pm screening at the Port Washington Public Library, the town I grew up in and where the film takes place.

We had a wild first screening in Port last week when 300 people showed up at the 200-seat auditorium.  The library staff quickly set up a monitor in the gallery just outside the auditorium for the spillover.  Just about everyone stayed for the Q&A, which got a little rowdy when an old tennis buddy of my fathers' got up and loudly claimed that the man on the screen wasn't the Mike Block he knew.  Well, that's the point, I replied.  We all thought we knew who he was.  Besides, you weren't his son, as far as I know.  After that, a few people felt the urge to get up and loudly defend my treatment of my father.  I just stood there grinning like a maniac.

Lori and I had a great time the other night at the National Board of Review gala swigging down belinis, then sitting at the HBO table with doc pals James Longley and Andrew Berends and gawking at the celebs.  My neck practically fell off from oh-so-cooly staring at hot tamale Penelope Cruz, who was sitting at the table behind us with Pedro Almodovar.  What an amazing pantheon of directors were there: Spielberg, Eastwood, Stone and Demme made appearances, and Scorcese made a long, rambling hilarious speech that was a highlight of the evening for me.

The only down sides were the ceremony went on so long I missed the premiere party for the New York Jewish Film Festival, which  my buddy Aviva Weintraub runs.   And afterwards I tried mightily to get a picture with Spielberg, who I'm often told I resemble.   But he somehow managed to vanish into the night before I could get there.