When Joe Uliano was growing up in Dublin, Macon was the center of his universe when it came to the arts and music, when he would go see acts like the Allman Brothers Band perform.
So it’s fitting that Uliano, 50, a Grammy award-winning executive producer of music videos, commercials and TV programs, will be one of the featured guests at this year’s seventh annual Macon Film Festival.
The Festival, commonly known as MAGA, runs from Thursday to Sunday and will feature 125 films submitted by filmmakers across 15 different countries. This year, the festival will be showing films at the 567 Center for Renewal in addition to its traditional venues of the Cox Capitol Theatre and the Douglass Theatre.
Uliano’s appearance marks the first time MAGA has featured the work of someone in the field of music videos. Uliano said he got his break producing videos for M.C. Hammer before the hip-hop star got his first record deal. Since then, Uliano’s company has produced videos and live concerts for the likes of Bruce Springsteen, U2, Bob Dylan, Kid Rock, Nicki Minaj and other music stars.
Uliano’s work will be the opening night special showing at 8:15 p.m. at Cox Capitol Theatre.
Other special guests and features during this year’s festival include Jay Carson, a Central High School graduate and political strategist who served as the inspiration for the main character in the movie “The Ides of March,” which will screen Friday at 8:15 p.m.; veteran character actress Beth Grant, who currently has a role in the Oscar-nominated “The Artist,” and will be screening her movie “Donnie Darko” on Saturday night at 8:15 p.m.; and Macon native and “True Blood” star Carrie Preston, who will join the festival via Skype for the screening of her directorial effort “That’s What She Said,” which was recently an entry into the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. That movie will be shown at 7:45 p.m. Sunday.
Uliano, Grant, writer Sarah Treem of the HBO series “In Treatment” as well as Georgia Film Office location specialist Craig Dominey will all be giving workshops that are free and open to the public during the festival.
Uliano said he plans to talk to aspiring filmmakers about how to “keep their day jobs” by shooting music videos, commercials, public service announcements and other work to keep themselves working between movie assignments.
“There are a lot of young filmmakers who may find there’s a lot of time between shooting movies,” he said. “They all have day jobs. These are other avenues where they can do this work.”
Some of the work Uliano plans to screen includes footage he shot for the new ABC-TV series “The River.” Uliano said he had to construct a rainforest on a soundstage in Georgia so the producers could shoot a scene with an actor who was working in another production in the state. Uliano said he will show a before-and-after video about how he set that up.
Uliano currently works with filmmakers such as David O. Russell and Antoine Fuqua as well as rocker Trent Reznor and others to produce short films and documentaries for nonprofit agencies such as the Gates Foundation, the Mayo Clinic and the William J. Clinton Foundation.
For more information about the Macon Film Festival, go to www.maconfilmfestival.com or its headquarters at 567 Cherry St.
To contact writer Phillip Ramati, call 744-4334.
