Report

SFFS carries on Film Arts Foundation's legacy with new filmmaker services programs

By Susan Gerhard

The San Francisco Film Society, publisher of SF360.org, announced today at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas the launch of a new set of programs to support local independent filmmakers. Through an agreement signed with Film Arts Foundation (FAF), the programs carry on the traditions of FAF in the areas of professional education, career development, membership services, fiscal sponsorship, grantmaking, and the management of information resources.

Graham Leggat, Executive Director of SFFS, said he was pleased that "a new, vitaminized Film Society" is able to consolidate so much support for filmmaking under one roof, and spoke of the changes as a "transition of services" as opposed to a "merger" or "acquisition."

The Boards of Directors of both SFFS and FAF agreed unanimously on ratifying the changes to each organization. The San Francisco Film Society has hired four Film Arts employees to ensure the smooth transition into these areas of filmmaker support, and one member of the FAF Board will join SFFS’s Board to provide an institutional and historical link, as well as provide continuity and practical advice.

With an audience of filmmakers, including Rob Nilsson and Amanda Micheli, Film Arts Board members, including Dale Djerassi and Richard Lee, SFFS staff and Board, including George Gund and Melanie Blum, SF Film Commission Executive Director Stefanie Coyote, local journalists, including CineSource’s David Hakim, and other interested parties, Film Arts Foundation’s Board President, Steven Ramirez, called the transition of services an "extraordinary opportunity."

"I’d like to welcome you to our celebration," he said. According to Ramirez, Film Arts anticipates winding down its programs by the end of 2009. (Film Arts is currently managing various education programs, among them its filmmaker education classes, in partnership with the Film Society, as well as its TILT Youth Media services.)

"There has been a very steady decline in the funding available to media arts organizations," Ramirez told SF360.org over the phone last night. "It’s become increasingly clear over the past three to five years that to be able to offer these kind of services that are vitally needed, they need to be part of a larger organization with more of a critical mass. Our capacity diminished, but the need for the services has not. That’s why we think it’s critical to have these services now under the stewardship of the Film Society."

Nationwide, media arts organizations—such as New York Media Arts, Media Alliance, and the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers (AIVF)—have been suffering in the new media landscape, Leggat said. One other organization, Tribeca Film Institute, has taken on a media support group, Renew Media. But the San Francisco Film Society’s consolidation of Film Arts’ services is, it was agreed by the assembled presenters, a unique undertaking for a film society. It’s also consistent with direction SFFS has been headed in the past few years.

Explained Leggat in a statement from the SF Film Society, "A crucial part of the Film Society’s mission—one that we care very deeply about—is the celebration of Bay Area film culture in all its varied and vibrant forms. We are very happy to expand and strengthen our activities in this area and to shoulder the responsibility of carrying on and renewing Film Arts Foundation’s extraordinary legacy."

Vital to that legacy are the 12-15 classes to be offered on a tri-quarterly basis. They are being created and managed by Film Arts staffer Michael Behrens, and run the gamut from writing, directing and producing through financing, budgeting, marketing, and more, to be held at the San Francisco Film Centre in the Presidio, as well as other locations throughout the city. (Look for more on those classes and transition from Film Arts in SF360.org this week.)

Equally important will be the community building functions served by FAF, which SFFS is beginning to fill with networking events—small-group workshops and seminars with visiting American independent and international filmmakers, beginning in early October, and a new monthly SFFS Film Arts Forum, slated to begin in November, which will include screening, networking and professional development opportunities. A newly formed SFFS Filmmakers Advisory Board, a group of active and established Bay Area film professionals—names to be announced in September—will be aiding SFFS in the development of Filmmaker Services programs.

Fiscal sponsorship, the process by which filmmakers receive nonprofit, IRS tax-exempt status through an umbrella organization, will continue through a full-service FS department being launched with former FAF staffers Michele Turnure–Salleo and Linda Tracey.

Also announced by the Film Society and SF Film Commission Executive Director Stefanie Coyote was the creation, in partnership with the SFFC, of the SFFS FilmHouse Residencies, which will offer production facilities in a 2,800-square-foot space at Pier 27 on The Embarcadero free to Bay Area filmmakers in one-to-six-month terms. (Application criteria will be published in September.) Said Coyote to the crowd of the support the SFFS is offering with FilmHouse, "I view the San Francisco Film Commission as the third leg in a three-legged stool," with SFFS and FAF being the other two legs.

A new set of grant awards totaling $25,000 will be given to Bay Area filmmakers at various stages of their projects and were made possible through the Herbert Family. (Calls for entry will be published in November, 2008.)

In addition to a monthly Filmmakers e-Bulletin on news and opportunities for Bay Area filmmakers, the SFFS will be publishing a bimonthly 32-page print publication managed and edited by former FAF staff member Michael Read, mailed free to members, and featuring articles on all aspects of film culture, as well as a substantial middle section devoted to Bay Area news and notes, as well as a calendar of upcoming SFFS classes, screenings and events, to begin publication in early 2009.

"Over three decades, Film Arts Foundation built a publishing program that engaged filmmakers on their own terms and in their own language," said Read via email. "I am excited—and more than a little relieved—that the San Francisco Film Society has stepped forward to preserve Film Art’s publishing legacy while setting the foundation for the dynamic suite of publications that are yet to come. We look forward to unveiling a new magazine in early 2009 that will continue to speak to filmmakers and film lovers where they live and breathe."

Here on SF360.org, two new streams of information (under the "Indie Toolkit" and "Opportunities" tabs) offer filmmakers new sets of resources, including "how-to" articles and lists of festival and funding deadlines that continue traditions developed by the Film Arts Foundation’s Release Print and Film Arts magazines. Our "In Production" column, launched this past month, will continue to report on local filmmakers in various phases of their projects.

At the Film Society’s web site, SFFS.org, readers can find new sections devoted to filmmakers and film production, including information on fiscal sponsorship, classes and course descriptions, and grant applications.

All currently active Film Arts Foundation members will receive free-of-charge an SFFS Film Enthusiast or Filmmaker Pro membership, which combines many of the former Film Arts member benefits with additional SFFS benefits—valid through the end of the former FAF member’s term.

Though the "Film Arts" name will continue in the form of particular programs offered by SFFS such as the "Film Arts Forum," Ramirez said that Film Arts Foundation will be announcing next week plans to archive filmmakers’ work as well as FAF’s written legacy in a top-shelf, veteran institution. Film Arts Foundation has sold its share in the Ninth Street Media Arts Building it helped found. But Ramirez is excited about the future of the work begun by FAF.

"I think that this is a unique undertaking," Ramirez remarked, "and I think it’s tremendously beneficial for filmmakers."

[SF360.org editor’s note: Look for more articles on the SFFS and Film Arts transition this week. Thursday: An appreciation of Film Arts Foundation’s legacy and a look at filmmaker services moving forward. Monday: How SFFS and FAF staff plan on reformulating filmmaker education in the new media era.]

topics: bay area, directors, film history, filmmakers, independent film

08.19.2008