#76 - Film Festivals, VHS, & Collaborating with Chance | Quinn Armstrong (Survival Skills Movie)

Today on Life is a Festival I am interviewing my brother, Quinn Armstrong! Quinn’s first feature film, Survival Skills, is playing on demand as part of Fantasia Film Festival starting on August 20th. This interview was recorded after the film’s debut at Cinequest back in February. However, with the advent of coronavirus, Quinn’s expected festival run was put on hold. Now with festivals going digital, Survival Skills is back on the circuit and available for your viewing pleasure. Survival Skills is a dark and quirky cop drama based around 1980s police training videos and shot in VHS. The film, which Quinn wrote and directed, explores ideas of masculinity and heroism in the Reagan era with a focus on the difficult matter of policing domestic violence cases. DV prevention is an issue that Quinn has dedicated significant time to as a volunteer with Peace Over Violence, a sexual and domestic violence prevention center. On the show, we talk about making a film in VHS and everything that goes into getting a feature into a film festival. We discuss how Quinn finds meaning in narrative filmmaking and his dream of creating a boutique production house in Seattle to help new filmmakers get their work out into the world. We share a few tender and silly moment and while Quinn and I are very different people we both put community at the core of our missions. LINKS Survival Skills on demand at Fantasia Film Festival https://fantasiafestival.com/en/film/survival-skills Survival Skills Website: https://www.survivalskillsmovie.com/ Survival Skills Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=w0StnG_gd5Y Quinn Armstrong’s Website: http://www.qarmstrong.com/ Quinn on IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2958731/ Peace Over Violence: https://www.peaceoverviolence.org/ TIMESTAMPS :08 - How Quinn used magnets and knives on 40 VHS players to create his fringe picture Survival Skills. :17 - Plot of Survival Skills :23 - Critiquing “the Hero” archetype in media :31 - Creation and the internal *film* critic. :34 - How Quinn made a feature film :42 - How to enter a film into a film festival… and why? :51 - Quinn’s next movie: “Dead Teenagers” 1:03 - Happiness, meaning, and the mulch of human evolution 1:14 - Once again it’s all about community 1:19 - Quinns advice to young filmmakers