It’s been a great first month for b-side with Four Eyed Monsters topping the sales chart. While the technical team has been hard at work on the next set of features for the site, our crack aquisition team has been spreading the word to filmmakers. Response so far has been overwhelming, and in the next month we should have 50 or more new titles.

Today I am excited to announce 6 new b-side films. We have 3 new features, and our first 3 shorts.

This collection should give you a bit of insight into the broad range of films you can expect to find on b-side. Our commitment is to bring you the best films from the festival circuit that you won’t likely find anywhere else. No one person is going to love them all, but each one has an audience out there.

Shorts

We have three great new shorts on b-side to introduce from two new directors, both of whom have made (very different) films inspired by their mothers.

The first are a pair from filmmaker Leah Meyerhoff.

Twitch tells the poignant story of a young girl torn between two worlds: her domestic life where she must care for her wheelchair-bound mother and her escape into the emerging world of sexuality with her eager, hormone-addled boyfriend. A Student Academy Awards finalist, and Slamdance Grand Jury Prize winner, Twitch has screened in over 100 film festivals and won a dozen international awards. Twitch is currently airing on IFC and Skandinavia TV.

Twitch features Toni Meyerhoff, the director’s mother and inspiration for this project. She was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis shortly before her daughter was born, and has been in a wheelchair ever since. This is her first acting role.

Team Queen is an award-winning music video from Meyerhoff that has played at over 80 film festivals. In this “gender-bending, fire-breathing, tassel-twirling, post-punk rock ‘n roll prom,” the new girl in school is thrown into a topsy-turvy madhouse of high school hellcats. The cheerleaders are drag queens, the nerds are nymphomaniacs, the punks breathe fire, and the prom band is none other than the all-girl, post-punk phenomenon Triple Creme. Featuring the best of New York burlesque: including Murray Hill, Julie Atlas Muz, Tigger, and Scotty the Blue Bunny.

On a very different note, we have the first film from director Jack Truman. Phone Sex Grandma is, in every sense of the word, exactly what it says: a 60-something Grandma working a phone sex line in a small Southern ghost town. This shocking short has blown minds at over a dozen film festivals including Slamdance and Cinequest. Roger Ebert’s response was “you’ve got a hit,” and John Malkovich followed with “you’ve got a BIG hit.”

Opal Dockery, the star (and only cast member), is the mother of director Jack Truman. Definitely not for everyone — Phone Sex Grandma has been (fairly) compared to The Aristocrats.

Doc Feature

Our latest doc feature is the beautiful and affecting Garlic and Watermelons. A year before the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics, forty Gypsy families were forced to abandon their settlement next to the main Olympic stadium so that the land could be used for a parking lot. A hit at over a dozen international film festivals, Garlic and Watermelons chronicles their humble battle against racism and poverty.

Narrative Features

Our new narrative features are a pair of comedies that share a connection with James Joyce.

Double Spaced follows the plight of Berkeley grad student Raymond Carey, who has spent the last nine years revising his doctoral dissertation on James Joyce. With the new budget crunch, he’ll be forced out Berkeley’s back door jobless and degree-less unless he can pull through and submit his dissertation by semester’s end. Ray’s professor, Dr. Hansel, agrees to sign off on the dissertation if Ray employs his powers of seduction to test the devotion of Grace, the professor’s mail-order bride.

A Joyce Story is the tale of the owner of the James Joyce Irish Bar, who is about to lose the two most important things to him in life – his wife and his bar. He has only a few hours to figure out how to keep both while dealing the wide assortment of characters always present at his bar.

That’s it for today. Check ‘em out, tell your friends, and let us know what you think.

- Chris