Category: In Production

In Production

Hiler and Brown's ‘Music’ Salutes Symphonic Visionary

The so-called culture war is over, and the reactionaries have won. I recall with nostalgia Jesse Helms’ condemnation of the NEA for funding Marlon Riggs’ queer-centric Tongues Untied, and the late East Bay filmmaker’s blisteringly eloquent response. Such public right-wing remonstrations are no longer necessary, for the simple reason that 30 years of overt and covert pressure have cast a permanent chill on Federal and state arts organizations. I daresay the anti-intellectual denigration of culture and higher education, a cornerstone of the Reagan-Bush-Bush Era, is an unacknowledged factor in the current decimation of the public university system (which is conveniently blamed on the Great Recession). In this climate, Jerome Hiler and Owsley Brown III’s Music Makes a City is nothing short of a revelation. Now in its finishing stages, the documentary revisits the remarkable mid-century revival of Louisville, Kentucky, in the wake of the Great Flood of 1937.

topics: activism, composers, directors, documentary, music

In Production

Tourists Show, Tell For Murray’s Laotian ‘Camera’

When Laos revised its visa structure to allow visitors to stay for more than one week, Westerners with digital cameras surged over the border. Sensing that the pervasive pocket technology affected their travel experience, Malcolm Murray embarked on an unusual documentary that sees the country through tourists’ eyes. “I wanted to talk to people about what kind of picture they were taking, and look through the lens of amateur travel photography,” he says. “Using a macro lens, we shot the screen of people’s cameras. We have a mic on them, and they feel anonymous because we don’t see their face. But we see their photographs, in a sense. People opened up really quickly and revealed things they didn’t even mean to reveal.”

topics: digital filmmaking, directors, diy, documentary, documentary film

In Production

Cohen, Lipman Follow Recovering Friend Through ‘Forest’

On May 21, 2008, Dr. Grace Dammann was injured in a head-on car crash on the Golden Gate Bridge. She spent 45 days in a coma and 13 months in the hospital, gradually working her way back from the edge. When the doctors finally released her last June, Helen S. Cohen and Mark Lipman were ready with a camera. “We jumped in literally the day she went home,” Cohen recalls, “and filmed the arduous process of wheelchair to car to wheelchair to ramp to home” at Green Gulch Farm in Muir Beach. The husband-and-wife team has been rolling ever since, but the shape and structure of their film remains very much up in the air.

topics: activism, authors, bay area, diy, documentary film

In Production

Kelly, Yamamoto Wrap Art Trilogy

Transformation, of any kind, is one of the most ephemeral, elusive things to capture on film. Indeed, one advisor to veteran Marin filmmaker Nancy Kelly told her that it was too subtle for the camera to record, and she’d never be able to do it. Difficult, OK, but impossible? “Well, that certainly got Nancy going.” chuckles Kenji Yamamoto, Kelly’s partner and a respected editor. At long last in the homestretch of the final piece of their trilogy on the power of art, the duo’s enjoying the last laugh.

topics: activism, actors, digital distribution, diy, documentary

In Production

Wendy Slick’s ‘Virtuoso’ Turn

Olga Samaroff, the path-breaking 20th-century concert pianist, critic and teacher with the exotic Russian name, was born Lucy Hickenlooper in San Antonio, Texas. You guessed it—she reinvented herself, out of necessity as much as ambition. “Olga was raised in a musical family, but at that time it was very difficult for a woman to be a musician,” says Wendy Slick, co-director with Donna S. Kline of Virtuoso: The Olga Samaroff Story. “And there was anti-Americanism. To be a classical musician you had to be European, and usually a male. [Women] could be teachers, but it wasn’t happening as much then that a woman would be a major concert artist. It was frowned upon.” The imposition of constraints on women was also a central theme in Slick’s last film (made with Emiko Omori), Passion & Power: The Technology of Orgasm, about the history of the vibrator. Now do we have your attention?

topics: audiences, authors, bay area, diy, documentary, music, women filmmakers

In Production

Joe Graham aims for exploitation, gets "Strapped" instead

“I wish gay cinema would die.” Joe Graham declares. “It would be nice to move past this strange subgenre to a place where gay makers who want to tell stories with gay characters will just be independent filmmakers telling personal stories.” See, it’s not queer movies the San Francisco filmmaker hates, though he’ll vent at scathing (and hilarious) length about titles that stoke his ire. Graham’s fed up with categories and pigeonholing, and negative associations generated by countless artless, formulaic, direct-to-DVD flicks targeted to lesbian and gay viewers. “People perceive gay cinema as meaning cheap and crappy,” he says, an approach he rejects in his feature debut, Strapped, now in postproduction.

topics: actors, bay area, diy, drama, gay lesbian cinema

In Production

Connie Field readies magnum opus on anti-apartheid movement

By any measure, the long-awaited release of Have You Heard from Johannesburg? shapes up to be one of the major documentary events of 2010. Connie Field’s massive eight-and-a-half-hour series about the global human rights campaign that impelled South Africa to abolish apartheid in the early ’90s is beyond ambitious, encompassing 135 interviews spanning five continents and acres of archival footage from a vast array of sources. Now, maybe every doc maker has a crisis of confidence somewhere in the course of his or her project, but Field set herself up for a double scoop of nail-biting moments. “I would wake up in the middle of the night asking myself, ‘Why the hell am I doing this?’” the East Bay filmmaker confides. I believe that is what is called a rhetorical question.

topics: activism, african cinema, bay area, cinematography, digital filmmaking, directors, distribution, diy, documentary

In Production

Nani Walker finds "Other Nature" at 15,000 feet

Nani Sahra Walker went to Nepal for seven months, and came back with a one-hour documentary. OK, a rough cut. No big deal? Try this, you hard-to-impress types: In 2007, Nepal’s Supreme Court struck down laws discriminating against homosexuals, then a year later approved same-sex marriages—and directed the government to provide full rights to gays and lesbians. Enlightenment guaranteed, indeed. The central thread of Other Nature, as it happens, is a pilgrimage by the main characters—a female-to-male transgender and a male-to-female trans—to the sacred place of Muktinath in the Mustang region. “There’s no real arc,” Walker says, disavowing the shape of Western documentaries. “There’s journey, and we keep coming back to the journey.”

topics: activism, bay area, distribution, diy, documentary, gay lesbian cinema, immigration, world cinema

In Production

Bay Area narrative filmmakers are thriving in doc capital in '09

When I received the proposal last January to write a weekly “In Production” column for SF360.org, I had no concerns about finding sufficient material—that is, local works in various stages of progress. As you well know, the Bay Area is the only place in the country outside of the industry town of Los Angeles and the megalopolis of New York that could sustain a weekly column on independent filmmaking. The challenge I expected was (un)covering a halfway respectable number of narrative features to balance the famously overwhelming output of documentary makers. But as the year unfolded, the trickle of fiction films built to, well, not a flood but a very healthy stream—in the middle of a depressing recession. While I’m not quite ready to anoint the Bay Area as Indiewood North (or West), I have found that something’s certainly going on.

topics: activism, actors, bay area, digital distribution, digital filmmaking, directors, distributors, diy, documentary, features, filmmakers, frameline, independent film, mill valley film festival, narrative feature filmmaking, san fra, san francisco international film festival

In Production

Filmmakers stuff "Bag!" with self-distribution dreams

Oren Jacob was out with friends one night when the conversation turned to high school summer jobs. “I used to be a grocery bagger,” one person recalled, “but never made it out to the regionals.” Oren phoned his wife on the way home. “I know what our next film is about,” he said. Justine Jacob had just completed her debut with Alex D. da Silva, Runners High, about inner-city teens training for a marathon, and figured Oren had stumbled on a lighter, quirkier variation of the sports doc. Instead, “we found a competition that has been going on for over 20 years, an organization (the National Grocers Association) with a purpose to advocate for independent grocers that cater to their communities, and an industry filled with integrity where individuals love their jobs and serving their customers,” Justine says. “We knew we had more than a competition film.” Three years later, the filmmakers are rolling out Ready, Set, Bag! themselves. Rule No. 1: Crushables go on top.

topics: bay area, directors, distributors, diy, documentary film

In Production

Legal eagle eye Kristine Enea zooms "Off the Grid"

The very short list of lawyers-turned-documentary makers includes Frederick Wiseman, Abby Ginzberg and a handful of others. The tally of filmmakers elected to public office is even shorter. Now contemplate for a moment making two documentaries while running for San Francisco Supervisor and holding down your day job. It’s no exaggeration to say that Kristine Enea is charting a unique course, one that combines activism, journalism, new media and politics. “People are craving information,” she declares, “and the boom in documentary filmmaking is evidence of that.” To hear someone with such deep connections outside the film community make that observation is particularly gratifying, and bodes well for independents (albeit less so for television news).

topics: activism, authors, bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, diy, documentary film, san francisco film society

In Production

Antonelli’s "Crossing Over" salutes Cooke’s soulful genius

The first interviews John Antonelli recorded for his documentary about the late singer-songwriter Sam Cooke, back in 1998, were with music-industry heavyweights Herb Alpert and Lou Adler. Needless to say, a whole lot more people found themselves in front of Antonelli’s camera in the ensuing years. The patient, persistent Marin County filmmaker is finally ready to share the fruits of his labor, and the timing is pretty sweet. The new year gets off to a smooth, soulful start when PBS’ “American Masters” airs Sam Cooke: Crossing Over on January 11, 2010. Not coincidentally, it’s also four days before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday.

topics: authors, bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, documentary film, itvs, music

In Production

Rainin winners prime new wave of social-issue dramas

For the great majority of the public, documentaries are still educational films while narrative features are “the movies.” It’s the rare fiction feature film that handles social justice themes without condescension and oversimplification. The San Francisco Film Society/Kenneth Rainin Foundation Filmmaking Grants were created to support the local development of lively and intelligent social-issue narrative films, with the hope of strengthening the San Francisco filmmaking community—and bringing more forward-thinking films by talented makers into general release. The grants, which run 2009-13, will be awarded in the spring and fall of each year and the total amount disbursed over these five years will be more than $3 million. The inaugural class for the $35,000 grants consists of Amanda Micheli and Jeff Zimbalist, Fall 2009, Richard Levien, Spring 2009. Here’s the scoop on their projects.

topics: activism, bay area, directors, how-to, immigration, independent film, political film, screenwriting

In Production

Daven Gee discovers and uncovers the new American family

Oakland gets a ton of bad press but it’s a dynamic melting pot that’s on the leading edge in some surprising ways. Daven Gee and Deann Borshay Liem have found a motherlode of fresh subjects, and are shooting two documentaries in the big city spotlighting the latest refugees in search of the American dream (Dhana & Indra) and a globe-spanning extended family connected by a single sperm donor (Family 2469). Both films illuminate the changing face of the country as the 21st Century unfolds. “I’m interested in the changing shape of American culture, especially by generations of immigrants,” Gee says.

topics: activism, bay area, diy, documentary film, immigration, world cinema

In Production

On the road before "The Recess Ends"

Some documentaries are made to stand forever; others matter at a particular moment in time or not at all. Austin Chu is quite clear which category The Recess Ends belongs to. Shot earlier this year in a host of depressed burgs and ‘burbs across the country, the verité documentary is a pulsing snapshot of the United States at its lowest economic ebb in generations. “I feel it’s one of those pieces that needs to be seen now,” Chu declares. “I can’t wait for anyone. If someone buys it and distributes it next year, we’ve missed the mark.” Made on a shoestring and rushed out into the world, The Recess Ends reflects both the new economy and the future of independent filmmaking.

topics: activism, bay area, diy, documentary film, genre films, political film

In Production

Marissa Aroy unearths forgotten California history

The trailer for The Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of the UFW opens with the smooth, lush strains of a Nat King Cole song, hardly the vibe one anticipates from a historical doc about rural California, immigration, organized labor and racism. Next-generation filmmaker Marissa Aroy may have a non-conformist streak, but the tune isn’t a non sequitur. Her film excavates the history and contributions of Filipino farmworkers in the Golden State since the 1920s, and the song happens to be a Filipino standard. “There’s a connection between the U.S. and the Philippines that not a lot of people know about—the colonial relationship—and having Nat King Cole brings together the ties of the two countries in an unusual way,” Aroy says.

topics: activism, bay area, directors, diy, filmmakers, funding, independent film

In Production

Don’t criticize it: "Holding on to Jah" steps out

It’s hard to imagine a venue where the new documentary Holding on to Jah will sound better than it did at Mezzanine last Wednesday night. The pulsing, reggae-rich soundtrack burst from the nightclub’s speakers, wowing an audience of music fans, Rastafarians and friends of filmmakers Harrison Stafford and Roger Landon Hall. And yet, contrary to the expectations of some in the crowd, it’s not a music film, even if nearly all of the interviewees are musicians. Equally surprising, particularly for herb fans, the feature-length film is in no danger of receiving an R rating for smoking or drug use. In other words, the coy reference above to the lyrics of “Legalize It,” the title track of Peter Tosh’s 1976 solo debut, is just a toot.

topics: bay area, music, political film

In Production

Anne, Anne, Anne: McGuire comes alive

Anne McGuire finds the beauty in the strange, and the strangeness in the beautiful. That’s not perversity, people; that’s poetry. Working across an incredibly wide range of media, from structuralist art videos to witty works on paper, from re-edited disaster flicks to live musical performance, McGuire has built a distinctive body of work over the last two decades that’s simultaneously raw, delicate and direct. She’s a progenitor of a genre we might call vulnerable bemusement (which is assuredly not the same thing as bemused vulnerability). Eh, forget the labels and the mumbo-jumbo and take it straight from McGuire: “I always want to paint a beautiful and strange picture, possibly.”

The San Francisco artist claims the spotlight, literally, at this weekend’s debut Cinema by the Bay festival with a curtain-dropping rendition of The Anne McGuire Show Sunday night.

[Editor’s note: Cinema by the Bay opens Thursday, October 22. More in Thursday’s edition of SF360.org and SFFS.]

topics: actors, avant-garde, bay area, music, performance, san francisco film society

In Production

Christopher Upham goes back in time to "Dakto," Vietnam

As a writer of screenplays, fiction and criticism, Christopher Upham has had ample opportunity in the last 40 years to come to terms with his stint as an ambulance driver and medic in Vietnam. So his forthcoming documentary, Return to Dakto, won’t be therapeutic in the vein of many first-person films in the wake of that ill-conceived conflict. Another contributing factor is that, although it’s his project and he’s the narrator, he’s one of five veterans whose journey is traced in the one-hour piece. “The challenge is getting the voice right,” he confides. “It’s my story but it’s also a more universal film.”

topics: activism, authors, bay area, diy, documentary

In Production

Montalbano contemplates "The Recondite Heart"

Summer has passed, but the revolution continues. That’s a cute way of saying that East Bay filmmaker Miles Montalbano is in preproduction on the follow-up to his lauded 2007 debut, Revolution Summer. That free-form low-budget drama, which premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 2007, explored the political and romantic confusion of three frustrated twenty-somethings at the height of the Iraq War. The Recondite Heart is a dark coming-of-age story that unfolds in a small town in the 1980s, where a lone teenage punk rocker keeps the flame of idealism burning. Ray’s happy as hell when some older punks show up from the big city, and their reaction is to introduce him to the usual vices. He embarks on an intense relationship with a woman in the circle, but he’s unprepared for the dangerous depths of her nihilism. A happy ending is not in the cards.

topics: activism, bay area, diy, features

In Production

Simon and Gosling play Strachwitz’s tunes

Camera and sound gear in hand, Chris Simon and Maureen Gosling have tagged along with their old friend Chris Strachwitz from Texas to Cajun country, from Appalachia to pre-Katrina New Orleans. Their documentary in progress, tentatively titled No Mouse Music! The Story of Chris Strachwitz and Arhoolie Records, pays tribute to the underappreciated career of the El Cerrito Pied Piper who’s pursued, recorded and released American roots music since 1960.

topics: activism, audiences, bay area, cinematography, cinephiles, diy, documentary film, latin cinema, music, world cinema

In Production

Telles charts "Storm" of Mexican Revolution

Not long after he began developing a film about the Mexican Revolution, Ray Telles was introduced to four men who’d fought with Emiliano Zapata. “We have to get these guys,” he implored prospective funders. “By the time we’re in production, they’ll be dead.” Incredibly, the veterans were more than 100 years old when the East Bay filmmaker interviewed them in 2002. “A couple of them were pretty vivid,” he recalls. “It was such a moment in their lives. One was with the Zapata army when he was assassinated [in 1919], and it burned it in his memory. It brings him to tears. He talks about how they all stood by when Zapata went into Hacienda de Chinameca and came out bloodied, and they all knew what happened.”

topics: activism, awards, bay area, immigration, latin american cinema, latin cinema

In Production

Foraging for "‘Swamp Cabbage"

Julie Kahn, who was born in Miami, routinely uses the word “Cracker” in polite company. It’s slightly shocking to your Yankee correspondent, who thought “Cracker” was a rude cousin of “redneck.” “In Florida, it’s a term of pride,” Kahn explains. “It’s different than the pejorative meaning white bigot. It refers to Irish settlers who came to Florida in the late 1800s to hunt wild Spanish cattle through the swamps and put them onto boats bound for the Cuban cattle market and trade them for gold.” This revelation is just one of several in Swamp Cabbage, the long-gestating, cliché-crunching documentary Kahn is making with fellow Floridian Hayley Downs.

topics: bay area, diy, documentary

In Production

War vets are the stars in "Common Sky"

The cover of the fundraising brochure for the work-in-progress documentary Common Sky couldn’t be punchier: Civilians Don’t Ask. Veterans Don’t Tell. The Dead Can’t Speak. The taboo topic is war, of course. "The silence has to be broken, as far as I’m concerned, but these folks have been in isolation for so long,” says first-time producer and longtime PTSD therapist Kathy Carlson. “Many of them have said, ‘I won’t talk to you because you’re not a vet. I only talk to people who know what this is like.’ Yet that isolation is what keeps the rest of us from ever having that conversation as a culture.”

topics: activism, bay area, diy, documentary

In Production

Hess and Janos salute the volunteers of America

Look what’s happening out in the streets: 65 million Americans volunteer every year. That may not be what Paul, Grace and Marty had in mind, but there is a revolutionary aspect to community participation these days. Via Volunteer Nation: Stories of Service, veteran producer-directors Ben Hess and Dan Janos are using the latest technology to mobilize the millennials (18-35). “That demographic consumes content online and on mobile devices, but not on traditional television sets,” Hess notes. “We’re looking at the convergence of activism, social awareness and digital media.”

topics: activism, bay area, directors, diy, documentary, exhibition, festivals, independent film, internet, political film, producers, public

In Production

Pete Nicks prescribes media treatment in "Waiting Room"

There’s a whole lot of pontificating about health care going on right now, but the wrong people have access to the camera and the microphone. We’re not hearing enough from patients, especially those without insurance. East Bay documentary producer Pete Nicks has a plan that falls somewhere between journalism and activism, and involves placing interactive storytelling booths in hospital waiting rooms. "The initial phase will involve curated content: Us filming the patients ourselves," Nicks explains. “We go into the waiting room, we engage with people and have them tell their story to us. Eventually we will have storytelling booths in waiting rooms that will enable people to tell their own stories, which will then feed into a river of user-generated content coming from waiting rooms around the country."

topics: bay area, directors, diy, documentary film, political film

In Production

"Opal" lures Dina Ciraulo back in time

Dina Ciraulo’s debut feature reconsiders the curious case of nature writer Opal Whiteley, who burst to prominence—and controversy—in the 1920s. Setting a narrative in an earlier time, of course, complicates matters from a budget and logistics standpoint. “It’s one of those things that everyone tells you not to do,” Ciraulo admits, with a wry chuckle. “I was just so motivated by the story that I didn’t feel inhibited by the notion of doing a period piece. I was thinking of doing something on Super 8, I wanted to do something really low-budget—kind of like a punk rock period piece—and I was inspired by the work of Guy Maddin. I didn’t think about all the ways that a period film could be difficult, because I wasn’t trying to do a Merchant-Ivory, every-last-detail-in-its-place type of film. I wanted to suggest period without having to exhaustively recreate it.”

topics: african american cinema, bay area, directors, diy, environmental films, experimental film, funding

In Production

Poetry in post: “Howl” gets animated

Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman needed a mere 14 shooting days this spring to shoot Howl in Manhattan. That singular fact is both remarkable and deceptive, as preproduction and postproduction require substantially more days, weeks and months. Indeed, the Academy Award-winning documentary makers, making their narrative feature debut with this dramatic saga of Allen Ginsberg’s scintillating, scathing poem and the obscenity charges that landed City Lights publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti in a San Francisco courtroom in 1957, are happy to be back in their comfort zone. “I love the editing process,” Epstein declares. “It’s usually my favorite part. This is when you really feel it coming alive—or not, and have to find ways to make it come alive.”

topics: actors, authors, awards, bay area, directors, diy, documentary, gay lesbian cinema

In Production

Kathleen McNamara rolls with "Chris von Sneidern"

Wannabe stars and novelty acts attain instant immortality (or at least one-hit wonderland) on American Idol, while countless talented musicians devote years to anonymously honing their craft and playing for tiny crowds in small clubs. Kathleen McNamara isn’t bothered by the unfairness of it all so much as the underlying existential concerns: How do we choose who gets to be famous and who doesn’t? And what are the benefits, and the price, of making it? (Fame, you’ll recall Bowie cautioning us back in the day, “puts you there where things are hollow.”) Why Isn’t Chris von Sneidern Famous?, McNamara’s revealing portrait of the veteran local singer-songwriter-guitarist with a cult following, yet still awaiting his big break, investigates those questions with respect, empathy and self-reflection. Success, you see, is a tricky topic for the filmmaker, too.

topics: bay area, diy, documentary, exhibition

In Production

J.P. Allen and the landscape of love

J.P. Allen and Janis DeLucia Allen trumpeted their love of words and ideas when they named their indie-film company Coffee and Language Productions nearly a decade ago. Five features later, their respect for the text hasn’t wavered, even as they’ve expanded their repertoire of cinematic techniques. Blending 16mm and digital video, color and black-and-white, the duo probes the volatile landscape of personal relationships. Their latest, Sex and Imagining, is a two-character piece thick with dialogue and psychological undercurrents, shot in a handful of locations. In a jump-cut, switch-the-channel world, this material might seem best suited for the stage, but J.P. Allen demurs. “I would never compare my work to Ingmar Bergman’s,” he says with a hearty chuckle, “but look at the text of his screenplays. They’re incredibly dense.”

topics: actors, bay area, directors, diy, sex

In Production

Weissman collects oral histories of S.F.’s "Heartbreak and Heroism"

As the years passed after the exhilarating, exhausting release of The Cockettes in 2002, David Weissman arrived at the conclusion that he was through making films. It wasn’t the agony of fundraising that cooled his coals, but a more basic concern: He was insufficiently jazzed about any of the ideas he was coming up with. But when the notion struck of revisiting the early years of the AIDS outbreak in San Francisco, Weissman sprang into action. He obtained a small grant and started conducting marathon interviews with people who lived here before and during the crisis. It’s still early days for Heartbreak and Heroism: Stories from the Plague Years in San Francisco but Weissman has a clear fix on the film he making.

topics: art, art film, bay area, diy, festivals, film festivals, gay lesbian cinema, political film

In Production

The horror, the horror: ‘Tweaker With an Axe’

Flynn Witmeyer’s debut feature sports a title you’d expect to see on a one-sheet mockup at the market in Cannes or a grindhouse marquee on Market St. back in the day. Tweaker With an Axe is the epitome of high concept, but its cast of gay and lesbian characters sets it apart from the pack of comedic suspense thrillers. Or does it? “The characters’ sexuality isn’t part of the story,” Witmeyer says. “They just happen to be gay and lesbian. That’s one of our interests in doing this film. Our interest is to make genre films—horror or sci-fi or fantasy—that incorporate gay and lesbian characters. We want to see more representation of gay and lesbian characters in cinema.”

topics: actors, bay area, diy, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, horror

In Production

Tejada-Flores takes first-person in ‘Road’ for a change

For every Nick Broomfield or Ross McElwee, there are 50 documentary makers who break out in hives at the thought of being in front of the camera. Rick Tejada-Flores was one of those guys. But when he decided to explore his family’s checkered Bolivian past, he accepted that he had to be a character. “I don’t think American audiences are really too interested in what happens in the rest of the world unless there’s a connection to our society,” Tejada-Flores observes. “By my telling the story, and also by relating it to my experience of defining myself as a Latino in this country, it gives people a point of reference. I’m struggling to find my way through what happened in Bolivia, and so are they.”

topics: bay area, directors, diy, documentary, south american film

In Production

‘All About Evil’ doer Joshua Grannell plots in post

Just two-and-a-half months after wrapping production on his blood-soaked, darkly comic debut, All About Evil, writer-director Joshua Grannell and editor Rick LeCompte have already locked picture. Even with time allotted to focus-group screenings, the movie is on an express-train schedule rare for an independent feature. Its backers identified Toronto as the optimal festival for the premiere, submitted a cut and are proceeding apace to have the film finished if and when they get the call. “You shoot for the stars, and you stay on course,” says Grannell, the longtime manager of the Bridge Theatre whose alter ego, Peaches Christ, has a juicy role in the movie. “I like the pressure. I like the sense of urgency that everyone has.”

topics: bay area, diy, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, horror, rep houses, toronto international film festival, world cinema

In Production

Nutritious eating on the cheap earns Potashes' "Stamped" approval

Periodically, a journalist or Congressional rep accepts the Food Stamp Challenge, which entails living for a week on the aid the government provides to low-income families. A more valuable test, nutrition education cooking coordinator Shira Potash decrees, is whether it’s possible to achieve a healthy diet on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

"This started as a side project that a married couple thought would be a 10-minute video," recalls filmmaker Yoav Potash. "In trying to edit a 10-minute video, I told my wife, ‘We have at least a 26-minute PBS half-hour.’ So then we went for that."

topics: bay area, diy, documentary, political film

In Production

Still pitching, Miller brothers touch home at AT&T Park

When Noah and Logan Miller showed up at the 2008 San Francisco International Film Festival with the world premiere of Touching Home, the unheralded Marin County twins garnered Rookie of the Year kudos for their family baseball drama. But their unbelievable, against-all-odds road to a finished movie also raised the question of whether they would turn out to be one-hit wonders. With HarperCollins’ late-April release of their lauded memoir and a clutch of completed original screenplays, the Millers are determined to avoid the dreaded sophomore jinx.

Touching Home isn’t slated to reach theaters until next year, but it plays a monster venue this Saturday night: The mammoth HD scoreboard at AT&T Park, home of the Giants. The film is the centerpiece of Bookstock 2009, a family outing on the outfield grass with live bands, an art show, the film and a launch party/book-signing for Either You’re in or You’re in the Way: Two Brothers, Twelve Months, and One Filmmaking Hell-Ride to Keep a Promise to Their Father.

topics: actors, bay area, directors, distribution, diy, drama, san francisco international film festival, sports movies

In Production

From Iran to Chile and back, Cyrus Omoomian pushes 'Democracy'

Cyrus Omoomian is an inveterate traveler who distills his extensive experience into a cut-through-the-haze phrase: "Anywhere you go, the truth is on the wall." I take his meaning to be literal, a reference to the political graffiti spray-painted by the powerless everywhere, as well as metaphorical. I’m only half-right. The Iranian-born filmmaker, currently in postproduction on his long-form debut about Chile’s protracted post-Pinochet rebirth, Pushing Towards Democracy: Voices of Chile, isn’t particularly interested in symbolic representations. As his title indicates, it’s unfiltered talk from the source he’s after, served straight up.

topics: diy, documentary, political film, south american film, world cinema

In Production

Brant Smith's real, not virtual, directorial debut

In the year 2075 or thereabouts, a beta tester finds himself unable to escape the confines of a virtual reality mock-up of the so-called war on terror. Financially strapped and increasingly anxious, he desperately tries to log out—only to wake up in a different city, and a different body, every time. With every body-switch, a different actor takes over the role.

That’s the delicious premise of Brant Smith’s In-World War, a dark sci-fi comedy that reps the writer-director’s debut behind the camera. A co-writer and one of the producers of the 2004 low-budget sensation Quality of Life (directed by Benjamin Morgan, who’s handling executive producer duties here), Smith begins production July 6, less than seven weeks from today. "It’s going to be hectic to say the least," the Oakland-based filmmaker admits, "but that’s the way we do things in this indie world we live in. It’s even more austere than indie: We’re DIY filmmakers."

topics: bay area, comedy, directors, diy, science fiction

In Production

Kaufman and Snitow zoom in on debate over new Jewish identity

The American Jewish experience used to be defined by immigration, assimilation, the Holocaust, Israel, Mel Brooks and Woody Allen. But Brooklyn has supplanted the Lower East Side, Sacha Baron Cohen (a Brit, but based in the U.S.) has replaced Brooks and Seth Rogen has overtaken the Woodman. As a new generation of young Jews negotiates the relationship between custom and modernity, Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow have jumped into the fray, camera in hand.

topics: bay area, documentary, independent film, jewish cinema

In Production

Local makers line up next shot after SFIFF

A film festival can be a launching pad for a brand new release, a gratifying encounter with a live audience on the way to a national TV broadcast, a hometown celebration or just another stop on the circuit. The 2009 SFIFF has been all that and more for the numerous Bay Area filmmakers with feature-length works in the program, and who are already plotting their next moves.

The crowd-pleasing opening night film, La Mission, is slated to screen May 30 and 31 in the Seattle International Film Festival. Beyond that, director Peter Bratt and company wait to hear from other fests while they maintain ongoing negotiations for distribution that commenced with the film’s Sundance premiere.

topics: actors, american indian film, arab cinema, bay area, center for asian american media, digital filmmaking, distribution, diy, documentary, drama, film festivals, latin american cinema, san francisco international film festival, sundance film festival, sundance kabuki

In Production

SFIFF52: "The Professionals" series unlocks door to filmmakers' mind-meld

The concentration on local filmmaking at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival goes beyond the exhibition of films in the "Cinema by the Bay", shorts and documentary programs. "The Professionals," an ambitious array of panels, case studies and discussions, makes its debut as a forum for encouraging Bay Area moviemakers to engage with guests and colleagues. Though for many years at SFIFF, visiting directors routinely conducted post-screening Q&As, and also spoke to students lucky enough to attend matinees through the Schools at the Festival program, "The Professionals" marks the first time that local filmmakers have been actively invited to join their peers from abroad in conversation about contemporary filmmaking practices and issues.

topics: bay area, cinematography, digital filmmaking, directors, diy, documentary, drama, san francisco film society, san francisco international film festival, world cinema

In Production

SFIFF52: A new narrative trend for Bay Area cinema?

The Bay Area has been a breeding ground for documentary filmmakers for decades, but it’s rarely been regarded as fertile territory for directors of independent narratives. On the evidence of the quartet of locally produced dramas in the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival—opening night attraction La Mission and My Suicide, Everything Strange and New and (Untitled) in the "Cinema by the Bay" section—a revision of our perceptions may be in order.

topics: bay area, distribution, diy, drama, filmmakers, independent film, san francisco international film festival, youth

In Production

Dengue Fever gets "Lost" and found creating score for silent film

Talk about your formative movie memories: West Marin native Zac Holtzman recalls seeing his first flick—a little monster yarn called King Kong—at the impressionable age of 3 in the Inverness community center. But the guitarist and songwriter of Dengue Fever had never heard of its silent-era precursor, The Lost World, until SFIFF programmer Sean Uyehara mentioned it.

Uyehara had invited Holtzman and his L.A. bandmates to carry on the SFIFF tradition of writing and performing an original score to a silent film. Holtzman readily agreed, proposing Faust or The Adventures of Prince Achmed, but both titles had recently received the public-performance treatment elsewhere. Presented with The Lost World, and its marvelous visual effects by Willis H. O’Brien, the brilliant pioneer who brought King Kong to vivid, heartbreaking life eight years later, Holtzman was hooked. The Lost World with Dengue Fever unspools Tues., May 5, at the Castro as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival.

topics: bay area, diy, music, san francisco international film festival, silent film

In Production

Walsh sets off on Rainer's parade

With the benefit of experience, Jack Walsh brings exceedingly reasonable expectations to his new project. "From the time you start something, it’s anywhere from five to seven years," he says. Walsh actually increases that estimate before we get off the phone, which is partly an indication that the economy is worsening by the minute.

The San Francisco filmmaker has embarked on Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer, a feature-length documentary about the groundbreaking choreographer and experimental filmmaker.

topics: actors, art, bay area, cinephiles, directors, diy, documentary, performance

In Production

Kates is in a Sontag state of mind

Here’s a game you can play next time you have a bunch of documentary filmmakers in your parlor. Ask which is the bigger challenge, making a film about a dead subject who’s not around to resolve discrepancies or fill in gaps, or a living person who retains certain rights and prerogatives and can turn the project into a living nightmare.

Nancy Kates admits to a small sense of relief that the subject of her work in progress, Regarding Susan Sontag, isn’t here to obstruct her efforts. Although the renowned author, essayist and critic was one of the leading public intellectuals in America for decades until her death in 2004, and avoided neither the limelight nor controversy, she was also extremely protective of her private life.

topics: authors, avant-garde, bay area, diy, documentary, independent film

In Production

Kitchell hits on another hot topic with environmental movement docu

Mark Kitchell’s Oscar-nominated Berkeley in the Sixties (1990) masterfully reclaimed a crucial period in history from revisionist neo-cons. His current project, an ambitious summation of the environmental movement, should encounter substantially less resistance from the Right. Perhaps that’s asking too much, given the die-hard "global warming is a hoax" crowd’s ability to use mainstream pundits (George Will, among others) to blow their smoke. The greater impediment to Kitchell’s doc, frankly, is the surge in films about climate change. "When I started out the field was pretty wide open," he ruefully notes.

topics: bay area, documentary, documentary film, environmental films, funding, independent film, political film, san francisco film society

In Production

Sam Green conducts a utopian experiment

An early cut of Sam Green and Bill Siegel’s 2002 tour de force The Weather Underground included, among its feints and ploys, a splash of irreverent animation. That sequence was omitted from the completed, Academy Award-nominated documentary, which ultimately eschewed experimental techniques and editorializing for a more traditional approach. But everything is fair game for Green’s current nonfiction project, The Universal Language.

topics: avant-garde, awards, bay area, diy, documentary, environmental films, independent film, political film

In Production

On the road, in search of a film

Every film necessitates a leap—of faith, of self-confidence, of finances. Caroline Kraus’ nascent undertaking might be viewed as a full-feathered flight of fancy. For it is the exceptionally brave (or foolhardy) first-time filmmaker who’s willing to embark on a road trip in the face of a deepening recession with a rough outline, a firm destination, little money and no ending. "The unifying theme of the project is underdogs," says Kraus, "and our notions of success, failure and disappointment." With a bit of luck, Kraus will be able to explore the latter without having to experience too much of it.

topics: authors, bay area, diy, documentary, independent film, itvs

In Production

Peled's globalization trilogy peaks in India's cotton fields

Every 30 minutes for the last decade, an Indian farmer has committed suicide. For the family, it’s a devastating tragedy. En masse, it’s an epidemic—and one that’s barely been reported in the U.S. In his forthcoming documentary, Micha Peled exposes not only the harrowing reality but (pardon the pun) the root causes.

"The whole thing is about shame," Peled explains. "A farmer that loses his land loses his status in the village. In an agrarian society, that’s all you have. The people at the bottom are the landless farmers. You can imagine working your whole life for your neighbors puts you at a different status than the neighbor who hires you. Not being able to arrange for your daughter’s marriage is another thing. You can only marry other families who are landless, so you are condemning your children to a terrible fate."

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, documentary, environmental films, world cinema

In Production

Champagne's chilling for Leban and Szajko's gay-marriage doc

When the California Supreme Court rules whether to let Prop. 8 stand, Lexi Leban and Lidia Szajko will have a front-row seat to history. It’s more likely the S.F. filmmakers will be on their feet, cameras in hand, recording the moment for their forthcoming documentary. Tentatively titled Winter of Love, it uses the legal battle as a framework for both an individual and big-picture look at the increasing acceptance of gay marriage.

A few months before the court agreed to hear oral arguments in the spring of 2008 for In re Marriage Cases, the proceeding that led to the 4-3 ruling that revoked the ban on same-sex betrothals, Maya Scott Chung from Marriage Equality USA asked the filmmakers if they’d be willing to tape interviews with some of the plaintiff couples. "They just had a feeling this would be a historical moment and their stories deserved to be recorded in some way other than declarations in a Supreme Court document," Szajko recalls.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, documentary, documentary film, filmmakers, gay lesbian cinema, independent film, queer cinema, women filmmakers

In Production

In a handheld world, Ellen Lake's miniatures fit right in

The distribution of films over the Internet, a.k.a. digital delivery, is the hot topic du jour. When the day arrives that we’re all watching movies on the most expedient of platforms—our mobile phone—Ellen Lake will be at the head of the parade.

The Oakland filmmaker has completed some 30 pieces since 2000 ranging in length from 30 seconds to eight minutes. As you’d imagine, she has a number of works in progress at any one time, including the latest additions to "Collectible," a collection of films about collectors and their collections. "I tend to work in series," Lake says. "It’s always hard to know when it’s done because I keep on going. I hate to stop."

topics: art, art film, bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, documentary film, independent film

In Production

"Strand" follows thread to rep cinema's glory days

Christian Bruno, like a lot of filmmakers, is alert to the fluidity of urban life. In Strand: A Natural History of Cinema, he pays homage to the pivotal and shifting role of movie theaters—and rep houses in particular—in San Francisco’s cultural life in the second half of the 20th century.

For his first interview back in 2003, Bruno sought out longtime theater manager Jack Tillmany, who ran the Gateway in the ’90s and published Theatres of San Francisco in 2005. The book drew on Tillmany’s sizable collection of photographs, an archive he kindly opened to Bruno.

topics: authors, bay area, cinephiles, critics, hollywood, iranian cinema, rep houses

In Production

Corr swings for fences with baseball doc

The baseball season semi-officially begins in a little over two weeks, when pitchers and catchers report to spring training. While well-paid professional ballplayers were relaxing in the off-season, Eugene Corr plowed ahead with his bi-national baseball documentary From Ghost Town to Havana.

The veteran Berkeley filmmaker was turned on a few years ago to the Havana baseball scene by a friend who organizes tours to Cuba. Corr visited the bubbling Sports City complex, where he met a coach who’d once played in the St. Louis Cardinals system and had a shot at the major leagues, but chose instead to return to his homeland because he believed in the revolution.

topics: bay area, documentary, san francisco film society, sports film, sundance

In Production

A reluctant composer is almost ready for his close-up

The maverick Seattle composer-performer-inventor Trimpin is that rare, pure artist with zero interest in self-promotion. So when filmmaker Peter Esmonde came calling, the artist put up some resistance.

"Most of his work with film had been TV crews that came in to do a two-minute piece about the kooky artist, hence his reluctance," Esmonde recalls. "One crew actually brought in a smoke machine. Another crew took an exterior shot of his studio and then shot the full moon with a wolf howling, like Frankenstein’s laboratory."

topics: art, avant-garde, bay area, independent film, music, san francisco international film festival

In Production

“Tongues” cracks the language barrier

If there is such a thing as good timing in the documentary world, and we daresay there is, Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider are poised to be major beneficiaries.

The San Francisco couple’s forthcoming film, Speaking in Tongues, follows four diverse local public-school students enrolled in language-immersion programs. The goal of the curricula is not merely to turn out bilingual children who will thrive in the global economy, but to dissolve the suspicion and stigma that attaches to “the other.”

“Bilingualism is a metaphor for what could be breaking down those barriers between our neighbors and us, whether it be around the corner or around the world,” Schneider explains. “This is very much about how we understand and are understood by the rest of the world—how we engage with the rest of the world. We’re talking about transformation, personal, cultural and national.”

topics: avant-garde, bay area, cinephiles, critics, digital filmmaking, directors, documentary film, exhibitions, features

In Production

Elizabeth Pepin hopes to clean up with sewage doc

[SF360.org editor’s note: With this column, "In Production" shifts from bi-weekly to weekly. Check out the end of the column for a new feature—a brief roundup of news on local filmmakers.]

Spend enough time in and around the ocean, as surfer/photographer/filmmaker Elizabeth Pepin does, and you’re bound to see—or smell—something disgusting. For example, the beach at Rincon Point, the internationally known SoCal surf break on the border of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, has some of the highest bacteria count in the state year in and year out. A word to the wise: Don’t forget your wetsuit.

The aging septic system at Rincon Point "supports" 72 homes, and this juncture of scenic beauty, recreation, hygiene and approaching disaster is one of four stories Pepin tracks in her current project, Wasted! If you’ve been waiting for a punk-rock doc about sewage and wastewater treatment—go on, admit it—it’s in the pipeline and (the economy willing) heading your way by year’s end.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, distribution, documentary, environmental films, independent film, political film

In Production

Tom E. Brown on "Pushing Dead" and stayin' alive

After three consecutive trips to the Sundance Film Festival with inventive, hilarious shorts, San Francisco filmmaker Tom E. Brown was ready to make the leap to features. Going on nine years later, finally on the verge of shifting from pre-preproduction to preproduction, Brown is philosophical about his hiatus. "AIDS comedies make people nervous," he admits. Pushing Dead, which Brown is aiming to shoot in late April in San Francisco if the financing clicks into place, centers on a scuffling HIV-positive writer-slash-bouncer. When Dan’s medical coverage is suspended, he’s forced to give up his daily drug regimen. Not to worry—things get weirder and weirder, but nobody dies.

topics: bay area, comedy, funding, independent film, sundance

In Production

Sundance harvests an eclectic crop of local films

For a long stretch of the ’90s and ’00s, you could bank on at least one Bay Area filmmaker scoring a slot in the documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival. With shutouts in the just-announced 2009 lineup as well as 2008, that’s no longer the case. This trend doesn’t necessarily signify some precipitous decline in the quality of local docs, although it is somewhat unsettling. But we can take a measure of comfort in the numerous Bay Area filmmakers represented in Sundance’s other sections, notably a pair of daring feature narratives screening out of competition.

Oakland cinematographer and award-winning short filmmaker Frazer Bradshaw makes his feature debut with the domestic drama Everything Strange and New, starring Jerry McDaniel, Beth Lisick, Rigo Chacon Jr. and Luis Saguar. This portrait of a man juggling his family, sexuality and drug addiction "is on the bleak side," Bradshaw says. Across the bay, S.F. writer-director Peter Bratt landed his brother Benjamin for the lead role in La Mission (aka Mission Street Rhapsody), the saga of a Latino man wrestling with his son’s homosexuality.

topics: actors, authors, bay area, documentary, dramatic films, features, sundance film festival

In Production

Kroot orbits Planet Kuchar

"There are no second acts in American life," some nobody by the name of F. Scott Fitzgerald said. Hogwash. George and Mike Kuchar have had productive, ongoing careers long after their initial burst of notoriety as forerunners of the New York underground film scene in the late ’50s and ’60s. If there is any justice in this world, next year’s release of Jennifer Kroot’s documentary It Came from Kuchar will launch the twin brothers on an equally improbable third act.

topics: actors, avant-garde, bay area, cinephiles, comedy, cult cinema, directors, documentary, experimental film, san francisco, san francisco art institute

In Production

When women challenge the bulls(---)

The great Western director Budd Boetticher returned to Mexico in 1951 to make a semi-autobiographical movie, "Bullfighter and the Lady." If the crusty, charming coot were still with us, I suspect he’d try and badger Gemma Cubero and Celeste Carrasco into naming their upcoming documentary "Bullfighter Is the Lady." Not that he’d get anywhere with the spirited Spaniards, who wisely chose a less awkward and more assertive title: She Wants to be a Matador.

The doc, which blends history with up-to-the-minute profiles of acclaimed Spanish bullfighter Mari Paz Vega and Italian neophyte Eva Florencia, is not the gritty feminist empowerment story some might expect, but, according to Carrasco, it’s "more about pursuing a dream and being passionate about something [when] you have all the obstacles to get there."

topics: bay area, documentary, features, festivals, independent film, world cinema

In Production

Geller and Goldfine stumble on death--and survival--in paradise

About 10 years ago, Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller were hired to shoot a piece aimed at middle-school kids on evolution and natural selection in the Galapagos Islands. Goldfine, a true-crime aficionado, chanced to pluck a book off a shelf while they were on location—and read about a pair of mysterious disappearances decades earlier. Five trips to the Galapagos later, with more to come, the husband-and-wife documentary filmmakers are up to their waists in Satan Came to Eden.

Let’s be frank: Unsolved murders are premium-grade catnip for doc filmmakers and audiences alike. But as Geller and Goldfine delved into the history, and befriended descendants of the key figures and residents of the Galapagos, the alleged crimes moved to the periphery and a deeper question gripped them: What makes people want to give it all up and go to the end of the earth, and live on what they hope will be a deserted island?

topics: bay area, documentary film, filmmakers, independent film

In Production

Epstein and Friedman bring "Howl" to the screen, while a South Bay director goes Russian

Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman would tell you the most nerve-wracking part of the filmmaking process takes place far from the set or the preview room, well out of range of agents and cameras and audiences and critics. That would be the daunting task of lining up the financing.

"Every stage is hair-raising," Friedman says with a wry chuckle. "But this is the particular roller-coaster we’re on at the moment."

The Oscar-winning duo is moving down the road with Howl, an unflinching drama that revisits Allen Ginsberg’s seminal mid-‘50s poem and subsequent obscenity trial. "Howl," of course, is the epic take-no-prisoners verse that begins, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked." Ginsberg first performed it in San Francisco, it’s worth remembering.

topics: actors, art film, awards, bay area, documentary, film festivals, funding, independent film