Your Cinema Needs You at the Paramount Theatre

My thanks to the Kamloops Film Society for selecting my documentary, Your Cinema Needs You for a series of screenings to help celebrate the 70th birthday of the historic Paramount Theatre in downtown Kamloops, British Columbia last weekend. 

Seeing this project travel the world and play in so many unique and historic venues has been the cherry on top of what we saw happen back home with the Monarch Theatre. 

Thank you so much for the continued support!

Online Release of Your Cinema Needs You

The wait is finally over! After 15 months since the premiere that reopened the Monarch Theatre and the extended international film festival tour that followed, Your Cinema Needs You is online and available to screen Canada-wide right now. Click here.

Hawaii, a Bentley, and a Magazine Cover

Back in the early days of my professional travel shoots (once it became a full-time gig) I felt like I was making up for lost time. This resulted in some questionable business decisions.

Jump cut. Oahu, Hawaii.

So much potential. I have a laundry list of locations I plan on documenting across the entire island. This is going to be amazing. But you know what would make it even better? Keeping it low key in an incredibly ostentatious Bentley Continental GTC.

I was watching a lot of Top Gear at the time. I could already picture the edits. I got in touch with a luxury dealership in Honolulu and worked out the details for my shoot. 

Now, at the time, I knew I'd have to sell a lot of the content just to cover my overhead and that, frankly, I was doing this first and foremost to have a story to tell.

I sold a few images after that trip, but not nearly enough to turn a profit on the shoot. Not exactly surprising.

Two years pass.

I have multiple galleries from the Oahu shoot online collecting casual hits. Out of the blue, I get a message about licensing from a marketing firm in Australia.

We chat. We hit it off. The idea expands. Another month passes.

I get an email notifying me that my Oahu shoot has turned into a multi page spread and that they'd like to offer me the cover story for the winter edition of the Qantas / Jetstar in-flight magazine. Highlights of that little road trip I took is now going to be in every seatback in Oceania.

Needless to say, the shoot finally turned a profit.

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Hat

The new year is off to great start! Fresh snow, lots of new shoots in this winter scenery, and a viral Star Wars inspired edit that did particularly well on the Editing Luke Instagram.

The heavy snowfall in Medicine Hat, Alberta over the weekend lead to this new image looking down 6th Avenue reaching over 100K people in just 48 hours. To push it just a little bit further I created "The Empire Strikes Hat", a quick Star Wars edit featuring AT-AT walkers that leveraged the popularity of the original post into another bit of shareable content.

 

Newsmaker of the Year: Luke Fandrich

I'm grateful, humbled, and very surprised. 

Yesterday, the Medicine Hat News announced in a full front page spread that I, Luke Fandrich was their 2024 Newsmaker of the Year - recognizing the success of my documentary, Your Cinema Needs You about the Monarch Theatre in Medicine Hat, Alberta. 

I only got the heads up a couple weeks ago that my name was being thrown around about this, but when we ran those first premiere shows of the documentary at the Monarch one year ago I really had no idea what 2024 had in store or just how far this film would end up going. 

I want to thank this community for their involvement throughout so much of this journey. 

Telling this story - in this way - would've been impossible without so many of you reaching out, sharing your experiences, and supporting the project from the very beginning. I can't downplay what a significant detour my year took, and the doors that opened, because of how well those premiere shows did. 

I want to thank the team at the Medicine Hat News for their coverage throughout the course of production of the documentary and for this recognition. Seeing this announcement was an amazing way to both cap off and kick off a year. Thank you!

Monarch Documentary Wins 14 Festival Awards

Without being able to properly respond to each individual message this week, let me just say thank you one last time to everyone who made this experience unforgettable. Thank you to the cast and crew, to all the audiences and supporters, to the producing team, festival organizers, promoters, and on and on and on. I'm incredibly proud of what we all achieved.

With the international film festival tour for my documentary Your Cinema Needs You concluding this month it's finally hitting just how much happened this year. More here.

A special shout out to the Monarch Theatre and to everyone in Medicine Hat, Alberta too. If we weren't already feeling the hometown love throughout all of this, the documentary was once again a front page story this week. It's been an ending right out of a Christmas special.

New irons are in the fire for 2025. Stay tuned.

International Film Festival Tour Concludes

It's finally over! After 10 months, the international film festival tour for my feature documentary, "Your Cinema Needs You" has finally come to an end! So, how'd we do? 

Over the course of this year the story of Canada's oldest, surviving, purpose-built cinema (the Monarch Theatre located in Medicine Hat, Alberta) was officially selected and screened at film festivals in more than 30 cities in 12 countries. 

The icing on the cake is that during this time we also picked up 25 festival nominations and 14 wins (including 8 in categories for best documentary)! 

I can't say thank you enough to all of the cast and crew who made this possible. Also, thank you to everyone in Medicine Hat who came out to one of the 16 premiere shows at the Monarch Theatre earlier this year. Without that initial reception I never would've pursued such an ambitious (and long) festival run. 

Details about what's next and where you can finally see the documentary are soon to come. I just wanted to say thank you again! A project like this wouldn't have been possible without the support you've shown. Original post here.

Next Steps, Milestones, and the Documentary

In the process of working on an update for tomorrow, it hit me that it was exactly one year ago that we finalized plans for the premiere screenings of "Your Cinema Needs You" and set the gears in motion to finally reopen the Monarch Theatre. 

This was meant to mark the end of the documentary. It wasn't. 

Who knew it would kick off a new series of side quests that (incredibly) would last another year. The 3 night premiere, which felt ambitious at the time, turned into a 16 show run with thousands turning out to see the debut (the encore of the encore of the encore). 

Not bad start for an indie doc.

And then the film festival run began. 

More news tomorrow about what's next.

Your Cinema Needs You in Australia

Your Cinema Needs You has picked up its final film festival selection and is off to Australia! This selection marks the 12th country the documentary has traveled to this year and will conclude the limited release / international film festival tour that kicked off in February 2024.

International Film Festival Tour Expands to 25+ Cities

"Hey, what's been happening with the Monarch Theatre documentary and when can we see it?" I've probably been asked this question more than any other this year. With the last festival schedules now being finalized, here's a brief (and overdue) update about the international film festival tour for "Your Cinema Needs You" directed by Luke Fandrich.

Needless to say, there have been no shortage of surprises throughout this entire experience. Since the premiere run ended back in February 2024, "Your Cinema Needs You" has been on an ambitious international film festival tour which quickly surpassed expectations for what this release would look like.

In the last 8 months, the indie doc about Canada's oldest cinema has gone on to screen in over 25 cities across 11 countries. From Los Angeles to Montreal to Berlin to Istanbul to Tokyo, the movie continued to pick up official selections in new venues that further pushed the release down the road as we built momentum.

These were all really good problems to have.

Where are we now? The notifications about final festival selections for 2024 are expected in the next few weeks. Regardless of the outcomes, this will see the festival run conclude this December and should fast-track public viewing options soon after. This means the long-teased wide release is finally on the horizon.

I'll get into more of the behind the scenes about this entire chapter in a future post.

Once again, thank you for the continued interest, patience, and support through all of this. I wouldn't have even pursued this detour had all the premiere shows in the Monarch Theatre not been such a huge success. It's been a life-changing ride.

More details to come.

I Funko'd Myself in Hollywood (Again)

My strict rules for purchasing any Funko Pops aside, I took the bait at the Hollywood Boulevard store in in Los Angeles, California and created myself in miniature vinyl form once more.

As was the issue last year, a blonde dude in a hoodie doesn't look personalized. Then I saw the popcorn and trophy accessories and it clicked. In keeping with this year's over-extended theme I made the Monarch Theatre premiere / film festival version of myself to compliment last year's mini-me Funko travel photographer. 

In short, this became another brilliantly kitschy souvenir from the latest Hollywood travel shoots ... and, let's be honest, one more opportunity to name-drop "Your Cinema Needs You" as the international festival tour rolls on through 2024. 

Another Best Documentary Win For the Monarch Movie

This crazy ride continues to exceed expectations.

I'm once again humbled to share that my documentary, Your Cinema Needs You has picked up a few more selections and awards on its ongoing international film festival tour this summer.

Last month the feature-length film was awarded Best Documentary in the feature-length category at the 2024 Edinburgh Film Awards, it made its way to Istanbul, Turkey for a selected screening, and just this week received its 12th Best Documentary nomination after being selected at the Detroit Independent Film Festival.

Amid this good news, I was reminded that it was exactly one year ago that we formally announced the completion of the film. I never imagined that I'd still be talking about this documentary a year later with the wide release not having happened yet, but here we are.

The long-delayed and surprise success of the premiere shows at the Monarch, followed by the (now) 7-month film festival tour, essentially turned this run into an entirely new project for 2024. It really has been an incredible journey to see this story spread, and I can't express how thrilled I am that so many others have latched onto this doc in recognition of the grassroots power of indie cinema, and quite literally in this case, the importance of indie cinemas like the Monarch Theatre.

Thank you all so much for all the support over this last year.

Your Cinema Needs You: RIFFA Nomination

This feels like a full-circle moment. 

Last week the official selections for the 2024 Regina International Film Festival & Awards in Regina, Saskatchewan were announced and there was something particularly special in seeing the notifications about Your Cinema Needs You popping up in my inbox this time.

 

Since February 2024, the feature-length documentary about Canada's oldest, surviving, purpose-built movie theatre has been selected and screened at over 20 international film festivals in 11 countries. In what will likely be one of the last festivals of this tour at the end of August, the reason this selection hits differently is because not so long ago I was an ambitious, but clueless film student at the University of Regina. In fact, I launched "Editing Luke" while living in the dorms on campus at College West. 

If that bit of poetry and nostalgia isn't enough though, it also doesn't hurt that Your Cinema Needs You has picked up a nomination in the Best Documentary (Canadian long form) category at this year's festival - not that I needed much of an excuse for a reunion, but it's a great reason to celebrate all the same! I'd also like to shout out all of my film profs - "See? I wasn't sleeping in class, I was brainstorming for future moments like this!"