Experience

SF Indiefest at Twelve

It may be a strange time for independent film, with scaled back "indie" divisions of Hollywood studios and filmmakers self-distributing online, but SF Indiefest, now in its 12th year, is holding steady as a great aggregator and champion of the unsung, underdog, and un-buzzable. Like a wizened video store clerk, this year’s fest offers up an "if you like x, you should check out y" for just about every ‘x’ you could throw out there. Whether you’re jonesin’ for something experimental, a gritty domestic drama, or Shakespearean vampires (more on them later), Indiefest has your fix.

topics: bay area, digital distribution, distribution, diy, independent film

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

Experience

Animal-rescue film "Mine" finds no shelter from Katrina's emotional aftermath

It’s not fair, but the shelf life of a documentary often depends more on its subject than its quality. And for certain works in progress, the window may be quite small and the pressure on the filmmaker pretty intense. All the while Geralyn Pezanoski worked on Mine, her debut doc about the separation and occasional reunion of pets and owners in post-Katrina New Orleans, the 2005 hurricane was receding into the distance. “A lot of people told me, ‘If you don’t get this out in two years, you won’t have an audience,’” she recalls. Sound reasoning, except it was blown out of the water from the moment the doc premiered last spring at South by Southwest, where it went on to collar the Audience Award. As Film Movement takes the film across the country this month , with the Roxie serving as the local venue beginning Friday, January 8, ahead of its February broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens, Pezanoski has a theory about the timeliness of Mine. “It transcends Katrina or any disaster, because it’s about how we are in the world,” she explains.

topics: activism, awards, bay area, digital filmmaking, distribution, diy, documentary, women filmmakers

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

Platform

George Csicsery aces "Hard Problems"

With more than 25 documentaries to his credit, George Csiscery is arguably the most prolific filmmaker in the Bay Area. Born in Germany after the war to Hungarian parents, Csicsery came to the U.S. in 1951. He majored in comparative religions at U.C. Berkeley and film production in S.F. State’s graduate program. A frequently published journalist and essayist as well as a screenwriter and filmmaker, Csicsery scored his biggest hit with Where the Heart Roams (1987), a feature doc about romance novelists and their devoted readers that traveled the festival circuit and aired on P.O.V. Since the mid-‘90s, most of his films have focused on mathematicians and scientists. Hard Problems: The Road to the World’s Toughest Math Contest, one of three docs Csicsery completed in the last two years, tracks the selection and success of the high school students who represented the U.S. in the 2006 International Mathematical Olympiad in Slovenia. Currently airing across the country via American Public Television, Hard Problems airs locally at 6 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 10; 11 p.m. Monday, Jan. 11 and 5 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 12 on KTEH-Channel 54. An accomplished writer, Csicsery acceded to an interview via email.

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

Avoiding Disaster

A challenge to filmmakers

Usually I use this column to address specific legal problems that come up when producing a film. I’m not going to address a legal concern this time, but instead, speak to a larger issue that I feel is rarely discussed: the lack of quality independent filmmaking today.

In addition to being an entertainment lawyer, I’ve ended up acting as a sales rep on a number of films. In that role, I’ve spent the past couple of years going to a lot of film festivals, becoming intimately aware of the current downward trend in the independent film industry. It is true that the sky is falling, that the industry is downsizing, and the economics, which never made too much sense to begin with, make even less sense today. What a terrible time to be an independent filmmaker! Fewer buyers paying less! A shrinking audience! A digital world that no one knows how to utilize effectively, and is not meaningfully monetized! So what’s a filmmaker to do?

The answer may be the one no one wants to hear: Make better films.

topics: directors, distribution, film festivals, legal issues

Experience

Mill Valley Film Festival opens its 32nd

The Mill Valley Film Festival’s 2009 program features, as ever, a bounty of local work, U.S. independent features and docs, international festival favorites and children’s flicks, as well as live events and more. But what it also offers is a surprisingly potent mainstream industry presence: The headlining tribute programs offer opportunities to get a close look at A-list types more frequently seen at the multiplex than at the art house. And you know what? We approve.

That’s because the 32-year-old festival’s 2009 tributees are the kinds of starry talents that give Hollywood a good name: famous mid-career actors with depth and range, a writer-director who’s actually succeeded by appealing to the audience’s grownup intelligence, not its inner (or actual) 14-year-old Tweeting fanboy. These are the good guys. We can’t even hate them because they’re beautiful.

topics: activism, actors, african american cinema, authors, bay area, critics, directors, distribution, distributors, diy, documentary, features, film festivals, independent film, international film, mill valley film festival, music, world cinema