EOD Wins People's Choice, 3 Other Awards at Melbourne Fest

MovieBank Studios and Quantum Entertainment’s Eye of the Dolphin walked away with all the major awards at the Melbourne Independent Filmmakers Festival in Melbourne, Florida, picking up the Audience Choice Award for Best Picture, as well as Best Cinematography for Guy Livneh and Best Actress for Carly Schroeder.   Michael D. Sellers, the film’s writer and director, also won Maverick Film-Maker Award.  This marked  the latest in a series of accolades for the indie family film.  Previous awards include Best Picture, International Family Film Festival, Best Picture, Kids First Festival, NAPPA Honors Award, and others.  In all, Eye of the Dolphin has been an official selection in 25 festivals.  The film, which opened theatrically August 24th, features up and comer Carly Schroeder as a displaced teen girl whose special relationship with a wild dolphin transforms the lives of inhabitants on an island in the Bahamas.(additional comments by Michael D. Sellers)Well, Carly and I are back from the Melbourne Independent Filmmakers Festival in Melbourne Florida (got in Sunday night around midnight) and pleased to be able to report the Eye of the Dolphin won the People’s Choice Award (favorite film of the festival viewers), Best Cinematography (Guy Livneh), “Maverick Film-maker Award” (me), and a Special Recognition Award to Carly Schroeder (they had no Best Actress category). Needless to say we’re very happy with this.The film screened Saturday night at the Red Carpet Premiere event to a packed house with people sitting in the aisles and others turned away. The audience was wonderful and afterwards, aside from getting many compliments about the film, I had at least 30 people come up and tell me how impressed they were not just with Carly’s acting — but her graciousness in person. It’s been really wonderful to watch her grow up over the last couple of years (she turned 17 in October) and although I knew her well from the film work we’d done, traveling to festivals and premiere’s together has really also been a pleasure and I think it really is worth noting that she’s just a genuinely wonderful teenager (oxymoron? in her case, no) … fun to be around, no attitude, respectful when she needs to be and rambunctious when she can get away with it. A lot of the credit goes to her mom, Kelli, who in spite of Carly being in show business since she was about 6, has managed to keep her fully grounded.It was also wonderful to see some of our investors again — especially the Bachman clan which came out in force — Wayne and Patti, Len and Linda Tabor, and about 12 other family members. I also had a chance to meet Sonny and Angela Stuart for the first time and that was great too. Special thanks to exec producer Bobby Keskemety for driving up from Miami and helping keep everything on track — also to other exec producers John Remark, Doug Jewell, Stu Miller, and Rick Goulding, all of whom attended. And a SPECIAL thanks to Joey Jam (Decker in the movie) who drove over from Tampa to be with us.Here are some press links:http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071105/NEWS01/711050319&template=news0308<a href=”http://www.floridatoday.com/blogs/flablabla/2007_11_04_archive.html“>http://www.floridatoday.com/blogs/flablabla/2007_11_04_archive.htmlAnyway — here are some photos:Oh — and by the way, check out “Foobie Jesus” on YouTube. It’s a great little short film that won at the festival …. has won awards at some other festivals as well and I think the writer/director Katharine Leis, is going places.