An interesting way to think about building a city's creativity quotient

Is there more to DC's cinema and television than movies focused on the federal government? (This film did shoot in the H Street neighborhood.) The film "Witness," featuring Cher and Dennis Quaid, featured a grim scene of homeless squatting, shot at 900 2nd Street NE (The Railway Express Agency Building) before it was renovated. A photo of that scene is in the office of the building owner, Potomac Development Corporation.

From today's Seattle Times, "Cultivating city's film potential":

The news from the snow- and schmoozecovered hills of Park City, Utah, is that Seattle is a place where good films are made. James Longley's "Iraq in Fragments," filmed in Iraq and edited at Seattle's 911 Media Arts Center, won three awards at last month's Sundance Film Festival, including best directing and best cinematography for a documentary. Across town at the Slamdance Film Festival, Seattle writer/director Lynn Shelton's feature, "We Go Way Back," won the grand jury award for best narrative feature. Local cinematographer Ben Kasulke won the Kodak Vision Award for best cinematography.

Those success stories — and the fact that low-budget films are getting big award nominations — may give local filmmakers the gumption to invest in a three-week immersion class in screenwriting at TheFilmSchool in Seattle. The spring program at the Northwest Film Forum includes instruction by "Rebel Without a Cause" screenwriter Stewart Stern and actor Tom Skerritt, both of whom live here. The school will hold an open house Feb. 13.

These are crucial times for Seattle's film community, Skerritt said, and for a city that sees the cultural and economic value of movie making. The actor has met with city officials about how to get film companies to come up from Los Angeles, but to stop here before crossing the Canadian border into Vancouver.

"It seems obvious that this is the place to make low-budget films," Skerritt said. "But the city needs to be re-educated in terms of how it embraces and accommodates film."
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I know that the Howard University film-television program frequently offers training programs open to the public. The Communications School at American University has a program in media studies and producing. There are the under-utilized resources of DCTV. (Also see DC Goes To The Movies: A Unique Guide To the Reel Washington, which is not fully complete.) And we have the incredible resources of all those television news production people in DC...

Food for thought.
Index Keywords: arts-culture; creative-class