Pick It Up: First Annual Bootstrap Film Festival

It’s too late to submit an entry to the first annual Bootstrap Film Festival, but sensitive entrepreneurs, aspiring Linklaters and anyone interested in the Octopus Club's colorful art auction or stories about mystical cab drivers may want to check out this interactive, hybrid event to be held this Thursday night.

“Bootstrapping” is a tension-charged term that could easily describe a filmmaker’s struggle to find resources, funding and respect from the community, but the Bootstrap Festival aims to embody a much broader conflict than art vs. commerce. “It is not about sizing your project by the size of your wallet,” says the Web site. “It is about using constraints to create something entirely new and unique to you.” We just like the fact that a business buzz word favored by MBA-types is being turned on its head and applied to the creative realm of moviemaking.

The fest features five short films as well as a 30-minute Q&A with three of the directors (Nils Juul-Hansen, Brandy Rainey Amstel and Jason Howell). Also, for those truly interested in the entire process of pushing an idea from artistic seedling to finished work of big-screen art, a workshop will be held after the shorts program. Led by Bootstrap Network Founder Bijoy Goswami, this $15 seminar will lead you to discover your own “hero’s journey.”

Snag a ticket online and get ready to learn something new; maybe picking yourself up by your bootstraps doesn’t have to be as lonesome and impossible as it sounds.