Report

Bay Area's Pixar rises again at Oscars

Cementing its status as the preeminent animation company of the ‘00s, Pixar won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for the third time in seven years. Up director Pete Docter collected his first trophy in six trips, a stunning run that includes original screenplay nominations for Toy Story (1995), Wall-E (2008) and Up. The helium-fueled adventure was further buoyed by Michael Giacchino’s Oscar for original score, the category in which he was nominated two years ago for Ratatouille.

Pixar received five nominations altogether, including Best Picture (snagged by The Hurt Locker, directed by San Carlos native and San Francisco Art Institute alum Kathryn Bigelow), Original Screenplay (awarded to Mark Boal’s for The Hurt Locker over Docter and co-writer Bob Peterson) and Mixing.

topics: activism, animation, awards, bay area, hollywood, independent film, oscars

Experience

Reed Redeems Promise of ‘Prodigal Sons’

If Kimberly Reed took a not particularly unique path into filmmaking, she certainly took an interesting road out of it. A native of Helena, Montana, she came to U.C. Berkeley in the late ’80s, discovered film and went on to earn a master’s degree at S.F. State while working in the seminars department at Film Arts Foundation. After transitioning from male to female, the challenge of adjusting to a new identity impelled her to trade her location (San Francisco for New York) and career (digital editing for magazine publishing). Call it necessity, call it a detour, but it’s in the rear-view mirror now. She makes a triumphant return to both filmmaking and the Bay Area with her first-person documentary Prodigal Sons, a raw and altogether remarkable debut that opens this month around the country.

topics: activism, authors, bay area, diy, documentary, documentary film, film arts foundation, frameline, independent film, sf international lgbt film festival

Critic's Notebook

Cinequest at 20

Wasn’t it just yesterday that Cinequest was the scrappy upstart amongst Bay Area film festivals? Apparently not: This year finds San Jose’s annual cinematic blowout entering its third decade.

February may be the shortest month, but Cinequest is going longer nonetheless, at least for this 20th anniversary annum: The 2010 fest runs nearly two weeks, Feb. 23 through March 7, once again at venues all within three blocks’ walking distance in downtown SJ. (For those with a car-free carbon imprint, they’re about 20 minutes’ walk from CalTrain.)

As ever, the primary Cinequest mix is equal-parts heavy on both world premieres (mostly U.S. indies) and recent festival faves from around the world.

topics: activism, actors, audiences, bay area, genre films, how-to, independent film, technology, world cinema

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

Ask the Documentary Doctor

Turning talking heads into storytellers

Dear Doc Doctor: I have interviewees, talking heads that are making the story dull. I was told that in today’s market I’ll be better off with characters. Any way I can morph one into the other or is it too late?

Doc Doctor: Yes, you might fare better in today’s market if you have a character-driven story. In years of consulting and seeing how those films did in the market, I learned that if you don’t have characters, having people with any story function can be just as good.

topics: authors, directors, diy, documentary, how-to, independent film

First-person

Indie Toolkit writers rewind/fast-forward on the year/decade in film

The decade in screenwriting: Looking back over the past several years—to 2006, for example, when four of the American Film Institute’s top 10 films of the year were comedies, as opposed to just one each in 2008 and 2009—a number of prominent 2009 films took on serious topical subjects, from war to racism to financial insolvency. An ever-expanding number of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror vehicles offered near fatal adrenaline rushes and perhaps a needed relief from everyday troubles. But an especially notable trend in the stories told on film in the past year was toward the dark, lonely, inside story.

topics: activism, audiences, authors, bay area, critics, digital distribution, digital filmmaking, directors, drama, dramatic films, dvd, hollywood, how-to, independent film, internet, screenwriting

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