I guess I could start with the flood….
Saturday August 3rd, an unexpected hurricane, flooded the entire town of New Toulouse and left it reeling and wet under a bizarre winlit sky and ominous dark and brackish swampy water . I found myself, the night before the UWA Awards ceremony, staying up too late, floating on a piece of driftwood, hoping against hope I would be rescued.

Wet!

I almost fell asleep, which would have been a disaster….

Help came in the form of our brave Mayor Henri Godenot, driving his buggy through almost impassable streets. He had just rescued Miss Rhiananna, a neighbor, and came for me just in time, before I was swept down a drainage ditch.

Just in time…

We drove in the sometimes almost impassable water, the wheels bumping at times on the heads of totally submerged zombies, who were still (miraculously) in 100% Health. Oh those Zombies!!

Surreal

When the water became too deep, our clever mayor switched to his intricate and beautiful hot-air balloon, which took us up out of danger, but at times, dropped us into it.

“Mayor! Up! Up!”

We picked up a blue-haired straggler along the way (Doug Donovan)

In the end, we flew safely above it all, looking down upon pigs huddling on porch- top
roofs, and at one moment, the Mayor went to check on his horses who were also gathered roof-top. Thank you Mayor for saving my life, and….it was fun too:)

Up and Away!!

Then we sailed off to dryer lands, until the flood receded.

So……
the next day was the UWA Awards Ceremony. I will give you the link here so you can see all the winners. Our movie, “Window on a Train” placed 7th out of 64 entries, which was a respectable showing, and I somehow won the audience participation prize (picking the top 10 closest to the judge’s list…although I was wrong about 1st Place *smiles)  The sim crashed and I was so immobilized with lag that I did not get a single picture of the event which was very well attended with 100 avatars present at one moment. I wish to thank all the judges and the organizers who worked so hard to make this event a big success. Here is the official blog on the winners:UWA blog

We were honored…

Then….. but going back a day..Natascha, as the Director, was invited to represent us at a Japanese Summer Film Fest. It was a great honor as our film was the only non-Japanese
 video to be awarded a prize there. They were very impressed with our collaboration and at one point asked her about it. This is what Nat said after they asked her if she would collaborate with others in the future,

“Natascha Randt: “I am not sure to collaborate with others. Because most filmmakers are loners:)
 The collab with Karima is very special, and from the first moment, we knew we could trust each other. She is the Vocalizer and I am the Visualizer. One day she wrote that, when I “painted” a scene, I give her the brush to see what she will paint on my picture. And that’s the secret of our collab. We both are open for the thoughts of the other and we discuss all the things and mostly we say “ok let’s see if it works” We don’t say “Here that is the best, and we do it so!”, we always say “look at this, what do you think?”
  I think our collab is a very special unique treasure, maybe it’s fate:) “

On Nat’s blog you can see a bit more about this event, and a short movie she took of it there. Her blog is in German, but that is why we love Google Translate:) Nat’s blog post

Now we are getting down to the last thing I want to add.
Well both Nat and I believe in our little film, and want to get it out to a wider audience, so we decided to make a version of it in Spanish. I did the voice over again in my own translation of my poem. It came out quite lyrical, and we are hoping that the Spanish-speaking audience will enjoy it too. Here it is below: Enjoy and thank you for all your encouragement and support on our machinimas. It means a lot to both of us, and is the reason we will continue to make them.