PAH in the Press
Hi-Desert Star, 05/07/2008
Dial Into the Artist Within
by Sue Robinson
MORONGO BASIN — From Yucca Valley to Twentynine Palms, people of all ages and backgrounds took part in Christopher Coppola’s miniPAH program, a three-day new media festival, creating short digital films to share with the world.Coppola and members of his Project Accessible Hollywood, or PAH, brought the mini-festival to California’s Hi-Desert lasting three days, Friday through Sunday, May 2-4, 2008.
Video-enabled cell phones were utilized to create digital art. PAH provided the cell phones and equipment for shooting, editing, and viewing.
The four categories of competition were: Cell Phone Art, DigiPortraits, Cellular Tone Poems and the Circus Vision Challenge, which is for kids 14 and under.
According to the PAH Web site, pahnation.org, “Visual storytelling is the new universal language, particularly amongst young people. PAH-Fest offers participants the opportunity to discover the ‘artist within us all,’ and to provide entertaining, quality content to the general public.”
Coppola’s mission is to help people create art among the “common man category,” using new technology as a tool to tell their own special stories. He provides the means and industry savvy “coaches” to support and encourage participants.
An amateur observer without any technological or filmmaking experience could tell their story with the Hi-Desert as a back-drop and the digital equipment as their paintbrush.
“Timelessness,” was the Cell Phone Art category, which seemed appropriate with the setting being springtime in the Hi-Desert.
The Hi-Desert’s miniPAH festival had three satellite locations: Water Canyon Coffee Co. in Yucca Valley, The Red Arrow Gallery in Joshua Tree and the 29 Palms Inn in Twentynine Palms.
People from different walks of life: parents and children, hikers taking a break, visitors from as far away as LA, and even a grandmother and grandson got into the action, four-by-fouring into the desert to join the PAH Nation.
(summarized)