I want to share some distribution details for our indie documentary short, The World Series of Bocce: A Celebration of Sport, Family and Community.

The film will make its theatrical premiere on Saturday, May 18 at Cinema Capitol in Rome as part of a Local Film Shorts Showcase. I’m excited to see the other films on the schedule. The screenings start at 1 p.m.

It’s a fitting location for the documentary’s debut since the subject matter is about Rome. Side note: I saw my first movie at the Capitol when I was kid. I can’t remember which came first—but it was either Mary Poppins or The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams.

Another screening will be held at 12 p.m. on Saturday, June 22 at Valley Cinemas in Little Falls.

The film will make its broadcast premiere on WCNY at 10 p.m. on Thursday, July 11. Additional broadcast dates are July 21 and 27. I’m waiting on broadcast dates for WXXI in Rochester. The film has also been accepted for national distribution to PBS stations via NETA (National Educational Telecommunications Association).

And in a case of serendipitous timing, the screening at the Capitol falls on the same day my sister Lisa and I had planned the burial of our father’s cremated remains at St. Peter’s Cemetery in Rome. My dad passed away in 2007, and my sister had his ashes in her possession ever since. I even wrote a short poem about it:

St. Peter’s Cemetery

I extend a hand to touch an angel trapped in marble.
Its face is cool and damp, like the earth beneath the slab.
I pose a question to my deceased father,
Knowing the answer will elude me.
For his remains are not buried in this cemetery,
But instead rest on a shelf in my sister’s suburban Ohio house.

But I found out last year that my father had purchased a plot in St. Peter’s Cemetery and we could bury his remains there. After trying for several months, I was able to schedule the burial on May 18. I heard from the Capitol a week later that the Local Films Shorts Showcase would be held the same day. It was a nice coincidence or what my former boss, Stu Lisson, would call a “God wink.”