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

Insider

"Full Battle Rattle" investigates the endless war

It has been seven years since Dubya launched Operation Iraqi Freedom, and in that time enough documentaries about the war have been made to warrant a Wikipedia page on what has become an established subgenre. Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss’s engrossing film Full Battle Rattle has to be the first such documentary to so candidly explore “the ground truth” of Iraq without ever setting foot in the country. Although its explosive opening sequence, in which an Iraqi village endures a surprise attack from insurgents, sets it up as another verite-style portrait of daily life within the war zone, it’s only when the smoke clears and an ice cream truck pulls up that we realize something’s amiss. This isn’t Iraq, but Fort Irwin in the Mojave Desert, and what we’ve just seen is part of an intensive simulation meant to prepare U.S soldiers for the conditions they’ll experience overseas.

topics: directors, documentary film, filmmakers

Experience

SF DocFest's carnival of nonfiction filmmaking

The extreme, the strange, the silly and surreal all have big seats at the SF DocFest table. You can tell just by looking at its audience, which more typically resembles the folks you hung out with at the bar last Friday than the ones who were canvassing for public power outside. They are there to have a good time, and they do. They read the program notes and said, “That looks cool!” about a majority of the film descriptions. They were not on drugs at the time.

This is the festival where you can find features about professional balloon artists (Twisted: A Balloonamentary), lupine-themed mini-golf theme parks (Bunnyland), Sasquatch obsessives (Bigfoot: A Beast on the Run), evangelical Christian Elvis impersonators (Elvis in East Peoria), and a guy who decides the only way to turn his 400-lb. life around is by taking 13 months to get from San Diego to NYC on foot (Fatman Walking). There are in-depth looks at the worlds of competitive college debating (Debate Team), teen jump rope (Jump!), Olympic synchronized swimming (Synch or Swim), and game show contestancy (Come on Down! The Road to ‘The Price is Right’), on which latter we learn (among other things) about recently retired longtime host Bob Barker’s terror of being aggressively hugged by overexcited winners.

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

Platform

The Arab Film Festival's Michel Shehadeh touts a cinema renaissance

If there was ever a time when Americans needed to hear a cross-section of voices from the Arab world, it’s now. Sure, the 12th annual Arab Film Festival, as always, is a celebration of community and identity and the art of cinema. But it also provides an all-too-rare window onto the Arab street without CNN obscuring the view. We sat down with executive director Michel Shehadeh, who joined the festival earlier this year, for a wide-ranging interview. First, though, some program highlights: The festival begins Thursday, October 16, with Waiting for Pasolini, a comedy about a Moroccan village’s interaction with an Italian film crew. A pair of Sundance award-winners, the crowd-pleasing Captain Abu Read (October 17 at the Clay and October 18 at the Camera 12 in San Jose), Jordan’s first-ever feature and (needless to say) its submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and the inspiring Palestinian rap doc, Slingshot Hip Hop (October 24 at the Shattuck in Berkeley), make their local premieres. The list of guest filmmakers includes Slingshot’s Jackie Salloum and Khadija Al-Salami, the Yemeni director of the wrenching documentary Amina (October 26), about a death-row inmate convicted of murdering her husband. The Arab Film Festival runs through October 28 at various locations in San Francisco, October 18-19 in San Jose, October 23 in Oakland and October 24-26 in Berkeley. For ticket information, call the festival office at (415) 564-1100 or go to the festival’s web site.

topics: arab cinema, documentary film, features, film festivals, film history, filmmakers, international film, political film, q&a

Experience

Mill Valley Film Festival's Maher moment

When you’re, say, 14, movies that “everyone” is dying to see come pretty often—they’re most likely the latest megabuck action-fantasy or comedy toy opening Friday at every multiplex in the land. As one gets older, such occasions grow fewer. Taste changes, people have more important things to do (is there a parent alive who hasn’t sighed “Oh, I can’t remember the last time we got out for a movie”?), and so much of the Hollywood fare available to most seems such—kidstuff.

But this week there is, in fact, a movie everyone I know is dying to see. It goes “wide” on Friday, but opens the Mill Valley Film Festival Thursday night. There’s no doubt every cranny of the Smith Rafael Film Center could be filled by locals who can’t wait even those extra few hours before its first regular commercial matinees. That movie would be Religulous, the desperately awaited (by some) and already vehemently decried (by others) film by director Larry Charles (Borat, Curb Your Enthusiasm) and star/provocateur Bill Maher .

topics: actors, directors, documentary film, features, mill valley film festival

Experience

Baloney Sandwiches with no cheese: Ted V. Mikels' wild world at the Clay

In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s great backstage drama, The Red Shoes (1948), Boris Lermontov, the controlling impresario behind a famous ballet company, asks the up-and-coming dancer Victoria Page why she wants to dance. She snaps back with the question, “Why do you want to live?” I imagine that director Ted V. Mikels would give the same response were he asked why he makes movies. “It takes your guts and your entrails and your soul to make a film,” Mikels proclaimed in an interview in RE/Search’s Incredibly Strange Films. “It takes everything you possess within you!”

topics: directors, documentary film, genre films, horror, how-to

Insider

Locally made "Hats Off" finds fascination in 93-years-young actress

The things we know—or think we know—about the lives and loves of Hollywood’s celebrity class are disturbing to ponder. Jennifer Aniston’s bad luck with men. Brad and Angelina’s fertility rites. Will Smith’s religious affiliations, or lack thereof—none of it’s really any of our business, but all it takes is a grocery store checkout line or a treadmill stint at the gym to get the highlights and low points in the lives of the red carpet royalty. True, it’s mostly rumor, surmise, conjecture, and fabrication, but leaving those quibbles aside, what, exactly, is it that makes Will Smith’s cushioned $20-mil-a-pic existence more curious and scrutiny-worthy than that of any of the hundreds of walk-ons, extras, and bit part players who have populated his films?
While you’re standing in line at the supermarket pondering that question—and helplessly reaching for the Us Weekly with Lauren Conrad of The Hills on the cover—somewhere in New York City one of those walk-ons, a 93-year-old woman named Mimi Weddell, is navigating the cramped apartment she shares with her daughter and son, perusing a jaw-dropping collection of hats for the perfect complement to her Elizabeth Arden-styled coiffure, and preparing for one more in a decades-long series of theatrical and commercial auditions.

topics: bay area, directors, documentary film, sffs screen