What an awesome summer. I got engaged, bought a house in the Catskills, vacationed in Alaska, saw a ton of new birds, finished one movie and made really good progress on many others. I’m looking forward to getting back to work at Williams in a few weeks and hoping for some fun film festival times this fall with the new movie. And if you want to plan my wedding for me, now’s the time to step up!

The Commoners premiered a few days ago at “Lessons in the Sky: A Filmic Tribute to Audubon,” curated by Andrea Grover and hosted by the Dia Art Foundation outdoors under the stars (such as they are, in Washington Heights) at the site of John James Audubon’s former farm. It was a beautiful program at a beautiful place. Some pictures of the event here. Some of my favorite work in the program was byJulia Oldham, Nina Katchadourian, Emily Kuehn and Guy Ben-Ner.

I told you I’d have a new movie in June. It’s done! If you’d like a DVD (with ultra-fancy 5.1 sound courtesy of Sir Jesse Stiles, cazique of De Ruyter) email me.

Sittin’ on a Million received the “Most Badass” Award at the Iowa City Documentary Film Festival this month. Very honored! Wish I could have been there. From the judges’ statement: “your dip into the minds of the elderly about the overtly sexual subject matter made us smile and recognize the importance of remembering (or maybe even imagining) more risqué moments of history.”

Working away at three new movies, wishing I was done with at least one of them so I could show you. Give me until June, okay? I’ll see what I can do.

Lots of April screenings: Images Festival(Men Seeking Women, April 2-11, Toronto), Wisconsin Film Festival (She used to see him most weekends, April 2-5, Madison) Anthology Film Archives (Sittin’ on a Million, April 14, NYC), Experiments in Cinema v4.2 (Men Seeking Women, April 17, Albuquerque), Iowa City Documentary Film Festival (Sittin’ on a Million, April 11, Iowa City). New favorite filmmakers: Jim Trainor, Brian Springer, Su Friedrich, Jennifer Montgomery. More new movies on new subjects: starlings, Lydia Pinkham, Central Park, Christian Science, the cosmos, Lynn Massachusetts. Enjoying life, looking forward to spring!

I moved to New York City. Come and find me there…

The good people over at FLEX have programmed She used to see him most weekends and Sittin’ on a Million. Excited to check out the program and tour Gainesville (home of Gatorade and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, oh my) for the first time. The festival is February 20-26. Sunshine!

I’ve been travelling around Kansas and (soon) Texas doing archival research, location shooting and general planning for the new movie, tentatively called The Life of a Man. This will be my first feature length documentary and it’s about the preposterous life of Dr. John R. Brinkley. I’ve started fundraising and writing and couldn’t be happier with how well it’s all going. I’m shooting on HDV, using lots of archival film images and making lots of animations… more firsts. Here’s to firsts of all kinds in 2009!

Other than the obvious ones (have you ever been to a gym in early January? total madhouse), my resolution is to do more things for the first time in 2009. I’m very happy and comfortable so maybe I have room for a little more risk taking. Happy new year!