There was a full house at the Masonic Temple this evening for the screening of Rhonda Buckley’s third documentary, The Real Matriarch. For the matriarchs in attendance and the audience as a whole, it was truly a family affair.

The Real Matriarch, much like the St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival, is a celebration of just how far women have come in the arts. Four women: Lois Brown, Edythe Goodridge, Barbara Doran and Sara Sexton share their lives in this film. All four earning their place by being culturally inspired and strong willed (not to mention talented storytellers and part-time comedians).

Following the film, Barbara Doran, Sara Sexton, and filmmaker Rhonda Buckley answered audience questions in a panel discussion.

The informal talk ranged from what the women thought of their appearance on film to how the times have changed for emerging artists. Sexton, the mother of adored CODCO comedian Tommy Sexton, commented “I hope something I said will help someone along the way to overcome obstacles; as I have had many in my life.” The Real Matriarch had the audience in both guffaws and tears, and left them no confusion as to why Buckley was inspired to make this film.

With great food (too fancy for descriptions), engaging conversation and a superb film, the evening couldn’t be anything but a success.

If you missed this screening of The Real Matriarch, I’m told it’s set to air on CBC. You can still catch Barbara Doran’s Playing the Machines and Lois Brown’s Sweet Pickle on Friday at the Majestic Theatre. Also, closing this year’s festival, Rhonda Buckley is back as producer of Crackie, playing at the Arts and Culture Center on Saturday, 8PM.

Visit The St. John’s International Film Festival online for more information and a complete list of featured films. Become part of the community and take in some of these wonderful events. It continues until Saturday, October 24^th.

Mark Wilson has made his first update in over two weeks to his mayoral campaign blog, explaining that his campaign has moved back from national to local.

I’m not really sure what he means by that, other than to say he’s back home. How a municipal election campaign could ever be anything other than local eludes me (particularly when there hasn’t been any campaign to speak of).

Regardless, the point of this most recent post seems to be that Wilson is now ready to get down to work and truly start running his race for mayor.

Considering we’re at more-or-less the halfway point between when Wilson announced his intention to run and when the election will take place, I’d say it’s about time.

I am very pleased to announce that Signal will be the official blog for this year’s Nickel Independent Film Festival.

As Karla Hayward of The Telegram describes it, The Nickel is “the hottest ticket of the summer.”

Which makes Signal your red hot backstage pass.

We’ll be at all the workshops, all the screenings, behind the scenes of what you don’t see and at the forefront of what you do.

We’ll also be your source for news and announcements leading up to opening night, so watch this space for important information as the Nickel drops.

1.21 gigawatts, anyone?

With Signal being the St. John’s blog, its focus is somewhat predetermined. Which is great, since St. John’s deserves all the focus it can get.

But in case you’ve ever wondered about what’s happening outside this city: in the rest of the province, the country, the continent, the world, the internet and all of outer space, for example, we’ve got the blog for you!

Boost is a Signal blog about everything else. Written by many of the same people who write for Signal, it comes from a local perspective but with a broader range of view.

The Boost blog is currently about as beta as you can get. Totally raw, with changes forthcoming. Content will likely be a bit of a slow trickle at first, but stay tuned! We’ve got big plans for Boost.

When I first started telling people late last year that I was going to start a blog in St. John’s, the St. John’s blog no less, their first question would often be, “how are you going to make money from it?”

My answer would be that I wasn’t sure if there was money to be made so I wasn’t going to make that my focus. My goal was to get a great blog going. If I focused from the start on how to build a great money making engine, I’d be losing sight of my goal.

That’s usually how most great websites/services go about it. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, College Humor, I Can Has Cheezburger and plenty more all started out with something to offer that was of interest to those offering it and, which, over time, proved to be something lots of other people were interested in as well. Lots and lots and lots of people.

But still, most of these webfolk had no idea they were ever going to make money off of what they were doing, and many of them, even though they now might like to, still don’t really know how.

That’s part of the focus of Kerri Breen’s latest CBC.ca column, Wake up, social media users, we’re crushing our creation.

It seems that the lesson for the web 2.0 world is the bigger they are, they harder they fall into debt with costs that can’t be covered. Advertising revenue, which is where these sites inevitably turn towards as their means of monetization, so far can’t seem to tip the scales against the weight of their costs of operation.

For the biggest sites like Facebook and YouTube, who owe their size to the fact that they are basically galleries where you can both show and explore yours and everyone else’s stuff free of charge (read: bandwidth guzzlers), they are finding it costs more to provide the service than it does for advertisers to associate themselves with it.

Fortunately, the costs of operation for a blog pale in comparison to those of a gallery site like Facebook or YouTube, but there are costs nonetheless. So far we’ve been lucky since everyone involved in the production of Signal has been volunteering what they have to offer, be it their writing, photography, coding and admin skillz, even bandwidth. But you can only ride piggy back for so long.

When Signal launches its new site design, part of what’s new about it will be the ad space. It won’t be anything pervasive and should mainly be from local businesses. If you find ads in The Scope or Current annoying, then you’ll probably find these annoying, too (but in that case there probably isn’t much you wouldn’t find annoying).

If you were to ask me today, how am I going to make money from this blog? I still wouldn’t be able to tell you if I could or would. As anyone who writes for a living will tell you, there’s very little money to be made it stringing words together, and even less so when you do it in a blog. But I’m not doing this for a living, and it’s never been about the money for me.

I just really, really, really love that there’s a blog here in St. John’s that’s about St. John’s that I get to write for and that anyone actually reads.

When Twisted Sisters Boutik said they were having a basement sale today, they weren’t just speaking figuratively.

Opened only for rare occasions such as these, Twisted Sisters’ basement is where you’ll find previous season fashions along with a selection of vintage items (but not coffee cups, that was just me being forgetful).

At basement prices, of course.

I went down today with the missus, and she walked away with a dress, a pair of leggings and an update on the fanny pack, all for 30 bucks plus two shiny quarters.

And as if that wasn’t enough incentive to check out their sale today, check out the matching outfits on the lovely and helpful staff.

For more about Twisted Sisters Boutik, such as new arrivals, talk on independent Canadian designers, or sale announcements like the one that happened today, be sure to check out their frequently updated blog.

Hey!

Signal is looking for writers, video makers, photographers, sound recordists, illustrators, story tellers, opinion slingers, fact finders, treasure hunters, dreamers and schemers.

We’re a blog about all things St. John’s. We are the St. John’s blog. If you’d like to contribute, we’d like you to let us know!

Drop us a line at editor (at) signalblog (dot) ca and tell us a little about yourself, what you’re into, what you’d like to bring to the blog and why you’d like to bring it.

Don’t delay! Your blogging stardom awaits!

Thanks,

The Signal Team

Local photo-a-day blog Bitstop captured some great images of the ice that came into the harbour today, and more from yesterday around Middle Cove/Outer Cover, too.

Looks like someone got lost during last year’s Rennie’s River Duck Race.