San Francisco – Way Too Indie http://waytooindie.com Independent film and music reviews Fri, 02 Dec 2016 17:34:42 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Way Too Indiecast is the official podcast of WayTooIndie.com. Our film critics grip and gush about the latest indie movies and sometimes even mainstream ones. Find all of our reviews, podcasts, news, at www.waytooindie.com San Francisco – Way Too Indie yes San Francisco – Way Too Indie dustin@waytooindie.com dustin@waytooindie.com (San Francisco – Way Too Indie) The Official Podcast of Way Too Indie San Francisco – Way Too Indie http://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/waytooindie/podcast-album-art.jpg http://waytooindie.com Way Too Indiecast 53: ‘The Witch,’ Pre-Code Hollywood With Elliot Lavine http://waytooindie.com/podcasts/way-too-indiecast-53-the-witch-pre-code-hollywood-with-elliot-lavine/ http://waytooindie.com/podcasts/way-too-indiecast-53-the-witch-pre-code-hollywood-with-elliot-lavine/#respond Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:11:35 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=43998 It's podcast week here at Way Too Indie as we have not one, not two, but THREE episodes of the Way Too Indiecast for your listening pleasure between now and Friday! With too many special guests to handle this week, we were forced to split them up into a trilogy of movie-talk goodness. From indie up-and-comers to festival programmers to Australian A-list actors (get me, bub?), we've got so many amazing interviews from across the entire movie spectrum for you in the coming days that you'd do yourself a disservice to not tune in to your favorite movie podcast EVER!]]>

It’s podcast week here at Way Too Indie as we have not one, not two, but THREE episodes of the Way Too Indiecast for your listening pleasure between now and Friday! With too many special guests to handle this week, we were forced to split them up into a trilogy of movie-talk goodness. From indie up-and-comers to festival programmers to Australian A-list actors (get me, bub?), we’ve got so many amazing interviews from across the entire movie spectrum for you in the coming days that you’d do yourself a disservice to not tune in to your favorite movie podcast EVER!

For today’s show, Bernard is joined by WTI’s own Ananda Dillon to review period-horror breakout The Witch, and we’ll also hear from director Robert Eggers to cap off the conversation. Closing out the show is longtime San Francisco movie-series programmer and organizer Elliot Lavine, whose new series “Hollywood Before the Code: SEX! CRIME!! HORROR!!!” is playing for six consecutive Wednesdays at the Castro Theater starting tomorrow night. It’s an insightful, unapologetic, entertaining conversation with one of the most knowledgeable, charismatic programmers in the country and it’s one true cinephiles won’t want to miss.

Be sure to come back tomorrow night for our interview with the folks behind the new film Eddie the Eagle, out in theaters this Friday. We’ll be chatting it up with director Dexter Fletcher, star Taron Egerton (Kingsman: The Secret Service) and his dashing co-star, the one and only Hugh Jackman! See you then!

Topics

  • The Witch (7:34)
  • Elliot Lavine (36:30)

Articles Referenced

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http://waytooindie.com/podcasts/way-too-indiecast-53-the-witch-pre-code-hollywood-with-elliot-lavine/feed/ 0 It's podcast week here at Way Too Indie as we have not one, not two, but THREE episodes of the Way Too Indiecast for your listening pleasure between now and Friday! With too many special guests to handle this week, It's podcast week here at Way Too Indie as we have not one, not two, but THREE episodes of the Way Too Indiecast for your listening pleasure between now and Friday! With too many special guests to handle this week, we were forced to split them up into a trilogy of movie-talk goodness. From indie up-and-comers to festival programmers to Australian A-list actors (get me, bub?), we've got so many amazing interviews from across the entire movie spectrum for you in the coming days that you'd do yourself a disservice to not tune in to your favorite movie podcast EVER! San Francisco – Way Too Indie yes 1:15:40
Alamo Drafthouse SF Opens With ‘Star Wars,’ Five Screens and Loads of Queso http://waytooindie.com/interview/alamo-drafthouse-sf-opens-with-star-wars/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/alamo-drafthouse-sf-opens-with-star-wars/#respond Wed, 16 Dec 2015 04:34:55 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=42455 Standing in defiance of the techie takeover that’s been wiping clean San Francisco’s weird, colorful corners and pockets, the 100-year-old New Mission Theater—following a $10 million renovation by Alamo Drafthouse—opens its doors tomorrow, inviting us to dine on high-end finger food as we watch movies of all shapes and sizes within its historic walls. For its grand […]]]>

Standing in defiance of the techie takeover that’s been wiping clean San Francisco’s weird, colorful corners and pockets, the 100-year-old New Mission Theater—following a $10 million renovation by Alamo Drafthouse—opens its doors tomorrow, inviting us to dine on high-end finger food as we watch movies of all shapes and sizes within its historic walls.

For its grand opening, the theater will be playing Star Wars: The Force Awakens on all five of its screens. Moviegoers are offered assigned seating and can order food and drink throughout the movie via a silent ordering system involving pencils, paper, ninja-like servers and a whole lot of nervous hand gesturing. Not a perfect system by any means, but all the scrambling adds to the Alamo ambiance.

The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema chain was founded by Tim League in 1997 and has since expanded to 20 locations across the U.S., the New Mission being the latest addition. League’s hired former Roxie Director of Programming Mike Keegan to run the theater and, considering the man’s prior accomplishments (he’s helped program many of SF Indiefests wild and weird events and once organized a cat video film festival), San Franciscans are in for a treat. Helping Mike ensure the theater is an active contributor to the Mission District community is Private and Community Events Director Elizabeth Duran.

The theater’s adjoining bar, Bear Vs. Bull, will act as a separate entity; you can grab drinks before or after a movie or simply stop by and hang without purchasing a ticket at all. Beverage Director Isaac Shumway and Chef Ronnie New will be sure to keep your belly happy as you enjoy a night out with your buddies and/or significant other.

Sitting in front of one of the theater’s beautiful screens, I spoke with League and Keegan about the future of the New Mission and the journey that got them to this point. For more info, visit drafthouse.com/sf

Alamo Drafthouse

As far as magnitude goes, there’s no bigger way to open this theater than on this weekend, with this movie.
Mike: We like to live by the seat of our pants, and there’s nothing more terrifying than opening a giant project, years in the making, with unrealistically high expectations!

I think the both of you have done countless cool things for the film community, kind of keeping the game off-balance with your ideas. Talk about coming together to work on this particular project.
Tim: We’ve known each other for a little while. I think we met through a mutual friend—it’s a really small world of people who do this type of programming. Our friend said, “You guys should meet—Mike’s nice!” And this guy will tell you if a guy’s not nice. [laughs] We chatted and Mike had left the Roxie and was out doing cat fancier tours or whatever it was. [laughs] It wasn’t really a formal process. It’s cool in this world because you’re kind of judged by your past work. We liked what he had been doing and thought it would be a good cultural fit for Drafthouse.

I’ve enjoyed your work at the Roxie very much over the years, Mike. This is a great, big new platform for you. What can we expect from you in the future?
Mike: The cool thing is, it’s five screens. You have flexibility because you have everything from a 320-seat room to a 34-seat room. You can basically show the best version of whatever should play in each room. You could play a masterpiece gem in a 34-seat room and do great, and you can have a four-quadrant Marvel movie in the big room. Everyone’s psyched and everyone’s happy. You hope that the audience will get to a point where they’d want to see all five things and that they feel like this is their place.

Tim: That sense is what’s pretty unique about our company, in a way. We’re doing some pretty interesting, almost subversive advertising for people who are watching some pretty down-the-middle movies. It’s like, “You like movies? How about these movies you may not have heard of?” It’s a way of converting a lot of people who may not know a lot about film history to come check out some other stuff after they’ve watched something like Star Wars, for example.

Mike: I feel like, over the past fifteen years or so, there’s been much less of a divide between high and low art. “Content” is a big word going around—people are just open to things that interest them. Whether it’s a stuffy art movie, a crass action movie or anywhere in between. It’s the right time to open a place like this.

With The Hateful Eight, particlarly the road show version, Quentin Tarantino is trying to give people a movie experience they can’t replicate at home. Your company does that kind of work as well. Talk about the importance of watching movies in wild, weird ways.
Tim: We look at ourselves as not necessarily competing against home video. We look at ourselves as an option for people deciding on what to do when they’re outside the house. This experience, from beginning to end, has to be compelling enough for people to choose it over going to a comedy club or going out for drinks. It’s an out-of-the-house entertainment option. Sometimes it’s more over-the-top for us. But I just like watching a movie. The technical aspects, the food and beverage—that’s all a part of just watching a movie.

A lot of the new companies that have popped up in San Francisco have sort of taken over and farmed new money without giving back to the community. It seems like this theater will play a big part in preserving the integrity and authenticity of our city.
Mike: We have a Community Director, Liz Duran, who’s from KQED, Sketchfest and the San Francisco Film Society. She’s on the ground, letting neighborhood organizations know that we’re here and we want to work with them. Kids can come watch movies on the weekend for a dollar. We’re here for everything.

The queso’s still on the menu!
Tim: That’s the only holdout. It’s a brand new menu except for the queso. If you’ve lived in Austin, that’s the number one question me and Mike have been fielding. “You’re bringing the queso, right?” People who aren’t from Austin have no idea what you’re talking about. [laughs]

So this is the first theater in the Alamo chain to have a unique menu?
Tim: Yeah. What we normally do is, we have a core menu, and we hire a local chef in the market and they change about 25% of it or so. Then they work on rotating specials once a quarter. If Hateful Eight is coming out, they’ll make a special menu for it. That kind of stuff. For this one…so many things are unique about this facility. I wanted the San Francisco theater to be very special, so we spent a long time trying to find a chef that we liked and was also a big movie fan. I wanted this to be a dream job for that person.

Would you say you created a dream job for yourself?
Tim: That’s exactly what I did. I was an engineer and I didn’t like it at all. I got there right on time, left right at five and took an abnormally long lunch break. I would leave my door open, you know? [laughs] When I was 21-years-old I immediately leapt into the middle class, but it wasn’t how I wanted to retire. My satisfaction came after 5 o’clock. Now, I love what I do.

I think what’s cool about you guys is that you’re a chain but you don’t feel like a chain. You’ve grown and done it the right way. How big can the company get? How big do you want it to get?
Tim: I set a goal to be at 50 locations by 2018, and then we were going to assess it and see how we did. If it still felt right, we could go bigger. I don’t know. I’m focused on that 2018 number. It’s already gotten really interesting. We were talking to the VP of Disney because they like what we’re doing. We can find smaller movies and open a movie across our circuit. That’s how we started our distribution company. Anomalisa is Paramount, but it’s also a challenging film. It’s going to be hard for that film to find an audience if it doesn’t get an Academy Award. That’s a movie where everyone on the team loves it and we’re going to collectively dive in and do everything we can. We worked directly with the studio. We said, “We’re going to post some numbers because this movie is extremely special.” We want to share it with as many people as possible. You can’t do that as a single-screen theater. Now that we’re bigger, we can make some noise for a movie like that.

Sometimes I go to the theater and I look around, and no one looks like they’re actually present. Their mind is somewhere else, their hands are itching to grab at their phones.
Tim: I think that speaks to why our no talking/no texting policy is so important. Not to sound pretentious or old-fashioned, but it’s so crazy to me what’s happened to people throughout their day. You could be having a conversation with somebody and it feels like they’ve gotten bored with what you’re saying and they pick up their phone and multi-task. Going to see a movie and making this mandatory situation happen where you have to put your phone away and focus on something that’s longer than a minute is actually kind of important, to shut down for 90 minutes and dissolve into a movie.

Somebody asked me, “What do you think about the future of movies? What will movies be like in 25 years?” I want it to be exactly what it is today, which is exactly what it was in the ’40s. I want the lights to go down and you just lose yourself in a story. No bells, no whistles. I don’t want anything more.

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The American Indian Film Festival Celebrates 40 Years http://waytooindie.com/news/the-american-indian-film-festival-celebrates-40-years/ http://waytooindie.com/news/the-american-indian-film-festival-celebrates-40-years/#respond Wed, 04 Nov 2015 14:10:24 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=41618 The American Indian Film Festival celebrates its 40th year in the heart of downtown San Francisco, giving voice to the underrepresented Native American filmmaking community.]]>

Running from this Friday, November 6 to Friday, November 13, the American Indian Film Festival celebrates its 40th year in the heart of downtown San Francisco at the AMC Metreon. The festival gives voice to the underrepresented Native American filmmaking community, showcasing the best of Native cinema. Covering a wide range of genres, this year’s films explore various aspects of Native American culture, issues and traditions while providing gripping entertainment at the same time.

Opening the festival is We’re Still Here: Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears Revisited, a reflective music doc about Johnny Cash’s 1964 concept album Bitter Tears, a collaborative project with folk singer Peter Lafarge. Largely set in a recording studio as various musicians re-record tracks from the album as tribute, director Antonio D’ Ambrosio recounts the album’s history via archival photos and footage and conversations with the in-studio performers. Releasing Bitter Tears as a way of speaking up for those whose voices went unheard amid a landscape of social unrest, Cash became a Native American ally through song, and his empathy and fight for Native awareness still echoes today.

A convenience store stick-up turns into an intense session of family therapy in Le Dep, my personal favorite of the festival. Eve Ringuette plays Lydia, a young woman who works at her dad’s store in Québec. She’s held at gunpoint after closing hours, but when she catches on to who’s behind the black ski mask, the game changes completely. Suspenseful, tragic and emotionally raw, director Sonia Boileau’s film is one not to miss.

Other films on the lineup include Maori martial arts thriller The Dead Lands, rehabilitation drama Mekko, sibling love story Songs My Brother Taught Me, and a wide variety of shorts.

For more information, visit aifisf.com

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‘Room’ Director Lenny Abrahamson On Brie Larson, Making Challenging Films http://waytooindie.com/interview/room-director-lenny-abrahamson-on-brie-larson-making-challenging-films/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/room-director-lenny-abrahamson-on-brie-larson-making-challenging-films/#respond Thu, 22 Oct 2015 20:23:57 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=41422 Lenny Abrahamson‘s Room, adapted by Emma Donoghue from her own novel, is an imaginative examination of parent-child dynamics that’s been garnering the Irish director wide praise. Also receiving her share of adulation is Brie Larson, who plays Ma, a single mother who lives confined in a little room with her son, Jack (Jacob Tremblay). “Room,” as […]]]>

Lenny Abrahamson‘s Room, adapted by Emma Donoghue from her own novel, is an imaginative examination of parent-child dynamics that’s been garnering the Irish director wide praise. Also receiving her share of adulation is Brie Larson, who plays Ma, a single mother who lives confined in a little room with her son, Jack (Jacob Tremblay). “Room,” as they lovingly call their humble abode, is the only world Jack’s ever known, but Ma wants more for her son’s life and hatches a plan to deceive their captor and break out of Room and into the larger outside world.

Room‘s brilliance is all but undeniable. Emotional, urgent, unpredictable, sweet, frightening—the movie is super complex and deceptively simple, not to mention it harbors arguably Larson’s best performance yet. Tremblay matches his older co-star’s talent and, amazingly, acts as the film’s anchor at eight years old.

I spoke to Abrahamson about the film in a roundtable interview during his visit to San Francisco at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. Room is out now in select cities, opens in San Francisco tomorrow, October 23rd, and expands wide November 6th.

Room

You’ve talked about a letter you wrote to Emma Donoghue and the pitfalls a director could face in adapting this story.
Lenny: I thought there were two opposite ways you could go wrong making this film. On one hand, you could make something terribly sentimental where you’re just button-pushing and manipulating the audience to fake emotion. In the other direction, if you go for tough, gritty, bleak and hardcore, you end up with something that’s a bit exploitative and doesn’t capture what the novel’s really about. It isn’t about incarceration. To tell the story as if it were about the incarceration is to tell the story on the terms the abuser sets; we’re telling the story on the terms the survivors set.

I also felt there would be a temptation—given that the novel is told from the point of view of the little boy—to try to find some device or trick or technique to directly copy that to film. Computer graphic techniques, ways to make more magical the things that Jack talks about—somehow externalizing the way the child is thinking. I thought, all that would do is distance the audience from what is the strongest aspect of this film, which is a sense of a real encounter with those characters. You trust an audience brings this empathetic tenderness to characters if they’re well shown, and that type of emotion is way more real and lasting than the shock or sentiment.

I had a wonderful experience with the film because I had not heard about the book or seen the trailer. I went in totally cold. When that pivotal moment comes halfway through the movie I thought, “Well, I guess the ending is coming soon.” I loved not knowing what was going to happen next. Is that the ideal way you’d like audiences to watch the film, knowing essentially nothing going in?
Lenny: Yeah! I think in an ideal world, everybody would walk into a theater without knowing anything about the movie they’re going to see. Obviously there are many reasons why we have to tell people a little bit about the film. Particularly in the case of Room, if all you knew was the very bare outline, you might think, “That sounds a little bit too tough for me.” In fact, what it is is a very uplifting and life-affirming film. To tell that to people is pretty important, I think. But you are still my ideal viewer. If I was Stalin and I could make people go and see my film, I wouldn’t tell them anything about the story! [laughs] Then the film gets to play with your expectations.

Some people mistake the movie’s setting as post-apocalyptic in the first half.
Lenny: One of the great things about cinema is, once a person buys a ticket to the theater, you now you’ve got them for a while. It’s not like TV where they have the remote in their hand. One of the great advantages of seeing a movie in a theater is that it allows the filmmaker a larger canvas to place you in the world at their own pace. There’s something about that opening that puts you in the head of the child. You wake up and you don’t learn anything he’s not bringing you. If at the beginning you really established what the world was and then went in, you’d have already created this external perspective.

What I wanted to do was tie you to the boy. You’re getting these hints that, in the world of his mother, there’s more tension and danger than he’s aware of. That’s really the condition of all parents and children. This is an extreme version of it so that you can really examine what parenthood is all about. Loving parents constantly present one face to their child, which is almost always confident and reassuring, trying to make things that are worrying to them not worrying to the children. In other words, there is an outside world and an inside world, and the inside world is the face you show to your child. Those are the kinds of little permeable barriers that we were really fascinated with. This is a film about being a child and having children and growing up. The rest of it is a way of unlocking some universal aspects of those things by picking this remarkable and unusual situation.

Brie’s career is really starting to catch fire. I think there’s a lot of warmth and intellect to her that makes her special. What makes her special to you?
Lenny: I think you said it. She started acting when she was seven. That process, that transition from who you are and into character, it’s like riding a bicycle to her because she’s done it so many times. She doesn’t have to think about it. What’s great about that is that she has a lightness of touch as an actor. She’s not walking around super intense on set, unable to make eye contact, desperate to keep in character for fear that if she steps out she’ll lose it. She has it so firmly in her grasp. That means, as a director, after you call cut, the person that comes back to you is ready to talk about what she’s just done, she’s ready to talk about alternatives. She’s not saying she can’t play it any other way because “this is how I feel it.” She can feel it lots of ways. She’s a shape-shifter in that way.

Sometimes we have a tendency to believe that the super-intense actors are the only ones who are deep. That’s absolutely not true. I don’t think I’ve seen a stronger lead performance for a long time than Brie in this film, and yet she manages to still participate in the overall conversation about the film. She’s very warm and very present. That’s very important because we’ve got a little boy on set who’s paired with her for so many scenes in the film. You can imagine if she was just flouncing off to her trailer when we called cut or if she didn’t want to play with him. You’d lose what makes that relationship special onscreen. She’s remarkable.

Cinematographer Danny Cohen is very talented. There are some clear cinematic challenges the first half of the film presents. What were some of the challenges the second half presented?
Lenny: That’s interesting. As soon as we got out of Room we missed it a bit, sort of like the characters in the film. In the second half I think the challenge was to over-express the largeness of the world. It’s really tempting to say, “Now we’re out of Room. Let’s have really wide shots.” We shot very naturally when we got out of Room. We don’t use super wide lenses or anything like that. As an audience, you’ve already been inside for 45 minutes. I wanted to say, the world as it is, without me exaggerating it, is pretty amazing. If I exaggerated, I’d be cheating. I wouldn’t be showing you something real. For me it’s always about making those little hints invisible to the audience. As soon as people think they’re being told something, it’s just less powerful.

The Room world is Jake’s normal world. Once you get into the outside world, how do you deal with how overwhelming that is for him? We did use some techniques. We were more likely to do some point-of-view stuff. If he’s sitting on Ma’s knee, we take shots from his point of view through her hair. The cutting style is a little more disjointed. His attention is on these details. Why can kids be irritating? Clearly, in this room, the focus is us talking. Come on, it’s obvious! A kid is just as interested in [some other little thing in the room]! You think, “Can’t you tell what’s important?” The answer is no—everything’s important if you’re a kid.

You’ve found success with this film. Does success worry you?
Lenny: Choice can be paralyzing as well as empowering. The answer for me is that I continue to pursue the things I’m interested in. The hope is that it’ll be easier to pursue now. I feel that some of the projects I’ve been developing for a while are big and challenging. That’s the hardest thing to make—big and challenging. Small and challenging is okay, big and mainstream is okay. Room was a very challenging film to make, and the fact that it worked shows that I can take difficult material and do something with it. That’s what I intend to do for the next few years.

There’s that interesting dynamic that develops later in the film where Ma almost becomes an older sister rather than a mother.
Lenny: It’s something that happens to everybody when they go back to their parents’ house. They go back to whatever teenage version of themselves they were and get grumpy. This is an extreme version of that because she’s literally been plucked out from there and when she comes back, she hasn’t moved on from that 17-year-old self. I felt that the best way of us feeling really worried for Jack was to feel that his mother isn’t this person that is there or him in this really nurturing way. She’s this older sister who’s irritating and clingy. We actually improvised a line that wasn’t in the film: As she’s dragging him out of her bedroom as he’s watching Dora the Explorer on his phone, she says, “Always in my room,” which is what an older sister would say.

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‘Batkid Begins’ Filmmaker and Batkid Organizers On Making Dreams Come True http://waytooindie.com/interview/batkid-begins-filmmaker-and-batkid-organizers-on-making-dreams-come-true/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/batkid-begins-filmmaker-and-batkid-organizers-on-making-dreams-come-true/#respond Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:25:14 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=37775 The spirit of kindness and playfulness spread the day Batkid cleaned up Gotham.]]>

Taking a behind-the-scenes look at one of the most extraordinary human interest stories in recent memory, Dana Nachman’s Batkid Begins is about the importance of volunteerism and the awe-inspiring results of millions of strangers coming together to make a kid’s dream come true. On November 15th, 2013, thousands of people gathered in the streets of San Francisco and the world watched as 5-year-old Miles Scott, still recovering from leukemia, lived out his dream of fighting crime as Batkid alongside his hero, Batman.

It was interactive theater on a grand scale, and Nachman’s documentary follows the countless craftsmen, actors, city workers and volunteers who worked tireless hours to make Miles’ day. Organizing the event was Patricia Wilson, executive director of Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area, and playing the role of the villainous Penguin was visual effects artist Mike Jutan. I spoke to Nachman, Wilson and Jutan in the heart of San Francisco about the film and the spirit of kindness and playfulness they created on that memorable afternoon.

Batkid Begins is in theaters now.

Batkid Begins

What would you say is the biggest misconception about Batkid day?
Patricia: I’ve heard people try to be naysayers and say, “Couldn’t these resources be used for other kids? Why is this kid so special?” My favorite statistic is, 100% of children who qualify for Make-A-Wish receive a wish. We didn’t ask for 25,000 people to come out; we were doing our usual thing. Naysayers: go see the film, because you’ll see what happened. You can’t be a cynic. If you find something wrong with it, how ’bout you advocate for what you love? How about you go out and do something and volunteer, because that was the spirit of the day.

Mike: As Taylor Swift says: “Haters gonna hate.”

Dana: Any interview where you can quote Taylor Swift is a good interview. One of the things I’d say is a misconception about the film is that I worry people think it’s really sad. It’s super not-sad! Miles is in remission and living a great life. I felt like it was important that we get that out of the way in the first nine minutes of the film so that after that it’s pure happiness.

Was the comic-book aesthetic idea there from the start?
Dana: Yes. It was there in my mind, and I found an animator in Rob Simmons, who’s an amazing animator. He did it for “way too indie” rates! [laughs] It’s always hard to get people to work on your film, but he got what this was for.

I think another thing people should know is that the movie isn’t all about Miles.
Dana: Right. It’s about the people who came together for Miles. The volunteers and the people on the streets who skipped out on work to be there for this kid. Everybody heard the 140-character version of this story. The film really goes behind the scenes and shows what made the event so touching.

Mike: For me, one of the most interesting parts of the movie is, on the day, the people were the filmmakers. Everyone brought their phones, and Twitter, Instagram and Facebook was how you saw it play out. There was traditional media there as well, of course. But people weren’t really processing what the event really meant that day. They were just there crying and cheering in their costumes and being a part of the community of it. With the movie, I think we can spread a deeper message of what we think San Francisco said to the whole world. This is what’s possible when people work together. Everyone there was a volunteer. It’s amazing that those people felt a sense of community this little boy inspired. Our goal was to make Miles smile. No matter how big things got, it was his wish day and he needed to have a good time. If the Penguin made him cry, I failed.

Dana: Another thing that was cool was that there wasn’t a bit of politics to it. It had nothing to do with anything controversial. It was just society coming together.

Patricia: The Scott family is back on their farm and they aren’t doing any media requests. Miles was invited to the State of the Union by a democrat and a republican because they thought, if he could make the Internet nice, he could make Washington D.C. nice! I was charmed by the fact that they wanted Batkid to save Washington D.C.. [laughs]

I like how much time the film takes to show the hard work of all the volunteer craftsmen and artists.
Mike: Like the opera people, who made the costumes during their busiest season. They pulled all-nighters to get the costumes going. It was amazing. Everyone put in as much of themselves as they can.

Patricia: That’s true of every wish we do. Our chapter will do 370-390 wishes this year alone. The heroes of this film are all the volunteers who were happy to help. We had school teachers take their classes out of school that day. They got a chance to witness everything happen first-hand.

Dana: That was a goal of the film, to not rehash the day but show how it came to be. We wanted to show all the hard work and dedication it took, and they were going to work that hard whether 25,000 people showed up or not.

I’ve lived in the Bay Area my whole life, and I’m also a lifelong Batman fan. Gotham has never been associated with cities that look like ours. It’s always Chicago or New York or something. For this to come together and happen here…
Dana: …is your lifelong dream. [laughs]

It totally is! San Francisco doesn’t look like Gotham at all, but it was Gotham for one day. Thanks for making that happen, at least for me!
Dana: Make-A-Wish, man!

Patricia: My friend called me the week of, before the wish happened. She said, “Right now, go to Google and type in Batman.” You know what came up? Batkid. I think we broke something.

Mike: I feel like Batkid has added to Batman folklore. I really do! He has a Wikipedia page and everything. It’s crazy.

Batkid Begins

There’s a lot of great stuff happening for our city lately, and we’ve always been prideful, but this is something else.
Patricia: We had the same setup as the World Series parade. As many people showed up for Batkid. The difference is, on Batkid day, everybody picked up their trash, so the city didn’t have to clean up like they usually do. Workers said it was unlike any celebration they’d had before. It was just a love-fest! It was magical.

This was Miles’ wish. He was the catalyst for this thing; it was his dream. You guys took it to another level. The crazy thing is, once it happened, it was so clear that this was something everybody needed at the time. People were yearning for something like this to happen.

Mike: I saw an article in the New York Times saying our culture is “awe-deprived.” It’s an interesting and terrifying concept to me. I feel like the people who came together and worked on this have that childlike sensibility. I’m still a kid inside, excited about everything. That’s the kind of spirit we brought out, I think.

Patricia: I’ve been contacted by a number of people who have questioned their own careers. As a result of meeting the people who worked on the day, they’ve decided they want to do something they love.

Mike: We broke capitalism, too.

Patricia: That’s pretty remarkable, right? People are saying they want to be volunteers.

Dana: The people in the film are fulfilled people because they’re all living out their dreams in general. They spread their dreams to other people.

Being an adult can suck sometimes. It was nice to play for a day.
Mike: I just saw Inside Out, and the last line in the credits says, “This movie is dedicated to our children. Please don’t grow up.” That’s the spirit.

Patricia, I can’t imagine anyone having a more rewarding job than you.
Patricia: I have to fund-raise and finance and all that stuff. But what makes it fulfilling is to work with kids and their parents and make something incredible happen. After this day, me and Mike both independently Googled PTSD. [laughs] The pressure was on. It was beautiful, but we were worried about things going wrong. We were doing it for Miles, and I’m humbled that this could balloon into something so big.

Mike: It was such an incredible thing to be a part of, and now having the movie to remember it is so cool. This movie is a way to keep that spirit going because it shows not just what we did, but why we did it and why it matters. The spectacle of the day got people to look; the movie will get people to listen.

My favorite moment in the film was when the kid who owned the Batkid costume says he’s happy Miles has the costume now. I lost it.
Dana: That was one of those late adds. We were in the throes of editing, and I didn’t even want to tell my editor I was going to shoot it.

Mike: “I’m just happy he has it.” I was just like, “WAAAAAAH!” What a great kid!

What was the scariest moment of the day?
Mike: For me, there was one very clear moment when I was frightened to death. I was in the Bentley, and I had Lou Seal “tied up.” Uber had dropped me off about an hour before. I walked past the whole crowd and waved at people. There were about 1,000 people there. We come out of the garage an hour later, and there are 10,000 people there. I’m stunned! Amazingly, in the crowd, my girlfriend is right on the corner, blowing me kisses. I freaked out, but I calmed down when I saw her. The night before, she said, “It doesn’t matter how many people are coming. You would have done the exact same thing if 50 people came. The goal is to show Miles a good time.

Patricia: I can think of five things. One was leading up to it, being on social media and seeing people organizing caravans and flying to San Francisco from far away. Second was getting a text from a friend at 5 am saying the media were already setting up; the wish wasn’t starting until 10. The third was coming out of the garage at Union Square. Thousands of people and news helicopters were there. Fourth was the long bus ride we had between the ballpark and Civic Center. We got emotional on the bus and saw the President, mention us in his first Vine ever. I started to lose it. Lastly, the thing that resonates was waking up the next morning and shaking, vacillating between shaking and crying. I was so emotional trying to understand what just happened. The phone rang, and it was CNN. They said, “Are you there?” I said, “No. No, I’m not.”

Dana, what’s next for you as a filmmaker?
Dana: Actually, we’re shooting today, though I’m not there! The feature I’m doing is called Pick of the Litter, about puppies who were born two-and-a-half weeks ago. It’s about their quest to becoming seeing guide dogs for the blind. It’s a two-and-a-half-year process to become the best guide dogs of all time, and most don’t make it because it’s so rigorous. They have to learn to obey 100% of the time until the moment when they intelligently disobey. They’re the most amazing dogs.

Any words of encouragement for other indie filmmakers out there?
Dana: I would just say, do whatever it takes to make your first film. Put it on your credit cards like I did. You need something to show in order to get funders down the road. It’s such a beautiful profession because you get to meet so many wonderful people. It’s really a gift of a career. Don’t take no for an answer. It’s hard, but whenever I get sad about making movies, my husband says, “If it were easy, everybody would do it.” There are so many upsides that you have to learn how to get rejected a lot. That’s part of it. Persevere.

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Batkid Begins http://waytooindie.com/review/movie/batkid-begins/ http://waytooindie.com/review/movie/batkid-begins/#comments Fri, 26 Jun 2015 13:29:50 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=36844 A behind-the-scenes look at one of the most unlikely human-interest stories in recent memory.]]>

On November 15th, 2013, a then 5-year-old Miles Scott became the center of one of the biggest, most unlikely media events in recent memory. You probably already knew that, though; when Miles donned a mini Batsuit and fought crime on the streets of San Francisco alongside the caped crusader himself, the world was watching—and tweeting, and cheering, and, most importantly, smiling—as Batkid cleaned up “Gotham.” Recovering from leukemia, Miles and his parents, Nick and Natalie, humble folks from rural Tule Lake, California, asked the Greater Bay Area Make-A-Wish Foundation to help him fight super villains for a day, and Dana Nachman’s Batkid Begins recounts the tireless preparation and worldwide hysteria that ensued during the lead-up to Batkid’s big moment.

The movie’s title is a bit misleading; Miles isn’t actually the main character of Nachman’s story. A better case could be made for the film’s hero being Patricia Wilson, the Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area executive director. The film isn’t so much about Miles or his sickness or his day as Batkid, but about Wilson’s mission to organize and rally her resources to make sure the event went off without a hitch. It was an epic undertaking that saw the entire city work together to make Miles’ dreams come true.

It started with Wilson contacting inventor/stuntman EJ Johnston to put together a little show for Miles at a park in his hometown in front of family and friends. As news of the wish started to spread throughout Wilson’s large web of contacts, however, the plans ballooned in scale: the site moved to San Francisco, performers were cast as the Bat-villains, the SF Opera House made costumes, the police shut down streets, AT&T Park got booked, and 25,000 eager onlookers piled onto sidewalks to catch a glimpse and participate in one of the biggest flash mobs ever. Nachman takes time to pay homage to the countless hours of work everyone clocked in, and it swells the heart to see people acting with such selflessness, slaving away for a boy they’ve never met. Even Barack Obama tweeted about Batkid, a heartening demonstration of the event’s mainstream appeal.

It’s unbelievably cute and entertaining to watch Miles live out his dreams. The best moments are when he’s in pursuit of a bad guy (The Riddler and Penguin both make appearances) and a look of heroic determination crawls across his face. It’s a thrill to see how excited and caught up he gets, and the film is actually incredibly suspenseful when, at one point, he tells his dad he’s tired and just wants to go home, which would derail the very expensive city-wide arrangements. The best thing about Miles is that he has absolutely no grasp on the effect he’s having on everyone. Looking down from the Macy’s building in Union Square at a sea of dancing fans chanting his name, he honestly has no clue why they’re so excited. He asks EJ  (dressed up as the Big Bat) why they’re dancing, and he answers, “Believe it or not, they’re dancing for you!”

Something particularly fascinating is the lengths Miles’ parents had and have to go to shield him from all the media attention and mini-celeb status following the event. He’s a kid from a small town going to school after all and were he to guest on talk shows and do radio interviews, there’s a danger it might all go to his head. Late in the film, they share that Miles got in trouble for getting in the middle of a fight between two other kids at school. The potential warping of his self-image is an interesting topic, but Nachman steers clear of delving into it too much, for better or for worse.

Nachman’s behind-the-scenes approach works well for the most part, though some segments are so insanely syrupy you can’t help but cringe a bit (someone actually refers to Miles as a savior for the human race). The sole section that addresses Miles’ sickness plays out in motion-comic form, which is a cute touch and looks great though it doesn’t feel critical to the overall story. The rest of the footage, including the talking head interviews (surprisingly enough), is pretty great, especially when Nachman focuses on the volunteers obsessing over the smallest details (EJ has a mini-breakdown when his wrist-mounted video projector breaks down days before the event). The first of many tears shed by yours truly came during an interview with the boy who owned the homemade Batkid suit before he lent it to Make-A-Wish. “I’m just glad Miles has it now.” Waterworks!

Critics questioned the integrity of the event in the following weeks, most of them arguing that the love and pageantry should have been spread to multiple sick kids, not just Miles. They miss the point. What made that day so special were the millions of people cheering Miles on. All we seem to talk about these days are the shitty aspects of life, but for the sake of Miles, people skipped work, dressed up, got excited and—just for a day—played pretend and turned SF into a giant playground. Being an adult sucks. We all know it. But a lot of that suckiness comes from the fact that we’ve lost the desire to let our imaginations run away with us. We forget to have fun and be silly every once in a while. Yes, it was amazing to see such kindness thrown Miles’ way, but the bigger picture is that Batkid made people’s lives brighter. Nachman understands the true value and meaning of Miles’ story, and with luck Batkid Begins will keep his dream alive for years to come.

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Felix De Givry and Sven Hansen-Løve on ‘Eden,’ Terrifying Sex Scenes http://waytooindie.com/interview/felix-de-givry-and-sven-hansen-love-on-eden-terrifying-sex-scenes/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/felix-de-givry-and-sven-hansen-love-on-eden-terrifying-sex-scenes/#respond Tue, 23 Jun 2015 17:06:36 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=34927 Star Felix De Givry and co-director/inspiration Sven Hansen-Løve talk 'Eden.']]>

Inspired by the life of former DJ Sven Hansen-Løve, Eden is also a sprawling document of the origins of electronic music in France in the early ’90s. Directed by Hansen-Løve’s sister, Mia, the film wades through his journey as a DJ in a scene that spurned acts like Daft Punk (who make an appearance in the film). It’s an intoxicating story that moves at its own pace, and Hansen-Løve takes great care to create a sense of time’s ephemerality. The film stars Felix De Givry as the central character, Paul, and also stars Pauline Etienne, Vincent Macaigne, Hugo Conzelmann and Greta Gerwig.

In conversation at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival, I spoke to Sven and Felix about their experience working on Eden and representing the roots of French electronic music on-screen.

Eden is out in San Francisco this Friday.

Eden

Something I found interesting is that the film, chronologically, ends around where we are now, in the present.
Felix: When I spoke about the film to Mia, she said she likes all her films to end in the present time.

Why is that?
Felix: To remember when she makes her film? I don’t know. I think it’s to feel the passage of time even more in the film. I think if she did a movie in the 1800s she wouldn’t end today, but she’s only been doing movies about modern times.

Sven: We end up in about 2014 because she wanted to put the Daft Punk “Within” in the movie. The story is mostly based on my souvenirs, my memories. Some of the things you see happened to me, but only up to 2011, actually. Not 2014. [laughs]

I heard that you were an aspiring teacher.
Sven: I’m doing some studies, and then I’m moving to Spain. Maybe I’ll be teaching French there.

So you stopped your literature studies way back when to be a DJ, and you’ve just now picked that back up?
Sven: Yeah, it’s true. When my sister decided to do the film I had already decided to do literature again. More or less, it relates to reality.

Let’s talk about the inception of the film. Were you and your sister looking for a way to collaborate on a project, or did this just kind of happen organically?
Sven: It was a few years ago. She wanted to do a film different from her previous ones, which she saw as a trilogy. She wanted to try a new direction. She asked me if I was interested. It was natural, but I wouldn’t say organic.

I was just a kid in the ’90s, so I had no idea about this subculture you guys cover in the film. How old were you in the ’90s, Felix?
Felix: I was born in ’91, so I was just a kid. Every movie about a generation either happens while it’s happening or twenty years later. It’s a new trend to do a biopic. It wasn’t as common in previous years of cinema.

Sven: This is the first film to really show this scene. Usually, biopics are about things that are way in the past, but this is pretty recent.

Felix, your career’s very young, but so far you’ve got a great resume going.
Felix: This is my first film. I had a very small part in Olivier Assayas’ film, Something in the Air. But this is the first real film I’ve done. I plan on being selective. That doesn’t mean a lot of projects will come to me, but I plan on not doing several movies a year. I’m not planning on being an actor the way most other actors are.

Sven: It’s not so easy to find good projects. There are not so many.

Felix: Right. And in order to be an actor there’s this vicious circle, that you have to do a lot of movies in order to be present in the media. It’s a vicious circle. I do a lot of other projects on the side, and if I do act in other films, which is something I want, it would only be in movies that feel essential to me. I would love to act in a Coen brothers film.

Is that a goal of yours?
Felix: Yeah. They’re the best [storytellers] these days. They jump between genres of film. Really fascinating.

If I was a first-time actor approaching Eden, like you did, I’d be really scared.
Felix: Yeah. It’s huge. The script was 170 pages or something. I read it at night and it was for two films, and it was even more fluid. It was a gigantic project.

Sven, Mia’s said that this movie was a way for you to move on from that period of your life.
Sven: Yeah, it was a sort of catharsis, from A to Z. I was invested in every aspect of the process. I was so into it that I didn’t have distance from it, but now I can see that it helped me.

Do you have a sense of pride in the fact that you’re representing in film this culture that hasn’t really been seen before?
Sven: I wouldn’t use the word “pride.” Giving something to people that they didn’t know before is interesting.

After acting in this movie, has your musical taste changed at all?

Felix: I do listen to more garage and house and deep house music. My taste is more contemporary; I have a label and I produce music. What’s funny is that I understand more now a certain scene that is very present today, the deep house and techno scene. I know the roots through the film. It helps me have a clear vision of music today. The film really traces the roots, and it’s really fascinating that it was really just a group of 200, 300 people who committed to this music at first in the early ’90s.

Sven: We actually had a lot of teenagers who saw the film come to see us. They’re so happy to discover all of this.

The movie’s all about details. What’s a small moment that was particularly true to life for you?
Sven: The Daft Punk scene where they try to get into the club. They told us that story, and it’s completely real.

Felix: It makes them more human. That’s what they liked about the movie.

Sven: There’s also the scene near the end where there’s the New Years Eve party on the boat and no one came. That happened. Nobody showed up.

Would you have agreed to do a film about your life with anyone but your sister?
Sven: No, I don’t think so.

Are there any plans to expand on this project? You said it was originally two films.

Sven: No. That time is over. [laughs]

Felix: There were scenes in Sweden that were in part 2 originally but were cut due to budget issues. There’s also a short film that’s about the same character.

Did you film chronologically?
Felix: No. In the apartment we shot all of the scenes with the three girlfriends over three days. It was really strange. The biggest challenge maybe were the sex scenes. We were supposed to shoot one in New York, but we went over budget and over time. We shot it three months later in Paris, so the pressure was on. It’s strange. There are many reasons why sex scenes are strange. One of the actresses was married to a guy who was working on the scene, so her husband was right there.

How do you feel about the state of music today?
Sven: I think it’s getting better, much better than in 2000. Music’s starting to sell again. Obviously CDs are over, but on the internet, things are moving.

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San Andreas http://waytooindie.com/review/movie/san-andreas/ http://waytooindie.com/review/movie/san-andreas/#respond Fri, 29 May 2015 17:54:40 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=36282 Peyton's natural disaster flick is destructively satisfying but emotionally tame.]]>

In the advertising for Brad Peyton‘s natural disaster flick San Andreas, there’s an unspoken promise. It’s one of unbridled tectonic terror and eye-popping structural devastation, the sort of stuff we used to lap up like thirsty dogs every summer in the ’90s, when disaster movies came out seemingly every week. In this respect, San Andreas makes good on its promise, with a sizable chunk of its nearly 2-hour runtime dedicated to demonstrating in painful detail the effects of a series of earthquakes that rattles California and reduces San Francisco to a pile of urban mush.

But there’s another, deeper promise that comes as a package deal with all of the NorCal mass destruction: death (minor spoilers inbound). Earthquakes and tsunamis are frightening because they kill us, simple as that. The script written by Carlton Cuse (Lost) has a major flaw in that nobody of consequence dies. Aside from a bit player meeting a heroic demise early on, every death we see involves either an extra (typically computer generated) or a character whose death Cuse makes one hundred percent certain will not make us sad. The establishing of stakes and value of life is the difference between a bad disaster movie and a good one, and on this front San Andreas bites the dust.

Dwayne Johnson plays Ray, a rescue helicopter pilot for the Los Angeles Fire Department. He’s a family man, though that’s been a stressful role to upkeep as of late as his family’s been recently fractured. He and his wife, Emma (Carla Gugino) are in the process of getting a divorce. What’s worse, Emma’s getting ready to move in with her millionaire developer boyfriend, Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd), and she’s taking she and Ray’s daughter, Blake (Alexandra Daddario), with her. This obviously doesn’t sit well with Ray, who’s a ball of pent-up frustration and regret, but he’s got lives to save.

When a “swarm” of earthquakes surges up the San Andreas fault from Los Angeles to the Bay Area, Ray and Emma reunite to save their daughter, who’s flown up with Daniel to the soon-to-be-flattened San Francisco. Daniel, of course, reveals himself to be a sniveling villain who leaves Blake for dead in a pile of rubble. Thankfully, while her parents race against the clock to make their way up the coastline, Blake befriends two British brothers (Hugo Johnstone-Burt and Art Parkinson), who aid and accompany her in her mission to find higher ground in the hilly city by the bay.

Bolstering the parents’ drive to save their daughter is the dark memory of their other daughter, Mallory, who died in a river rafting accident years before. Aside from providing grandiose views of buildings toppling into each other like sky-high dominos, the 9.6 quake at the center of the movie also serves to shake up the repressed guilt and sorrow Ray’s bottled up inside since his daughter’s death, feelings that contributed heavily to he and Emma’s divorce. This is meant to be touching, but really, it’s just another way for the film to tiptoe around death. While tragic, Mallory’s death is a red herring, a plot device designed to give the story gravity without actually killing off a character we actually get to know. Nice try, Cuse, but no cigar.

San Andreas

The film’s obligatory scientific expert is played by Paul Giamatti, who’s cast perfectly. The “expert” character’s job in any disaster film is to sell us on the seriousness and consequences of the impending events. Giamatti does a bang-up job, especially when he screams at his fellow seismologists at Cal Tech to “TAKE COVER!” whenever he senses an incoming tremor. His character develops technology that’s able to predict the time and magnitude of earthquakes, but of course, it’s too little too late. It’s essentially a detail written in as an excuse for him to deliver the “here comes the Big One” speech, a speech which obviously can’t be made in real life since seismologists have no way of predicting when the next “Big One” will strike.

The images of destruction the filmmakers and visual effects teams conjure up look great. I’m a Bay Area boy, but there was a sadistic thrill in watching the landmarks and buildings I’ve grown up with smashed into oblivion. Some memorable shots: the Bay Bridge twisting and contorting so violently it takes the shape of a DNA strand; a gang of boats racing up a towering tsunami to make it to the other side before it crests; a long shot of Emma frantically scrambling to the roof of a crumbling building. These sequences, exhilarating as they are, are strung together so poorly by the narrative that they offer no more enjoyment than a Universal Studios theme park ride.

When Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson left the world of professional wrestling to conquer Hollywood, everyone laughed (including me, a lifelong WWE fan). When he started, he was awful (The Scorpion King is an unwatchable shlock-fest). But San Andreas is yet further proof that “Rocky” has proven everybody wrong: he ties with Giamatti as best actor in the movie. (That’s not for lack of competition, either, as the rest of the cast do a great job themselves.) He nails not just the action scenes, but the somber ones where he laments the loss of his daughter.

His casting feels a bit off, though. He’s got more muscle on him than everyone else in the movie combined, but he rarely gets to use them. Mostly, we see him driving things: helicopters, trucks, boats—you name it. I don’t want to see him drive stuff; I want to see him smash stuff! He punches one guy and moves the occasional semi-heavy thing out of the way. I’m not saying Johnson should be hitting things in every movie. But in this movie, more physicality would have been nice.

[Spoiler warning #2.] San Andreas is just one kill away from being pretty good. If just one of the main five characters had died, it would have made a world of difference. The effects are great and the destruction is extensive, but the loss of someone we care about is the one thing that could have truly sold us on the weight of it all. Instead, Peyton and Cuse are gun-shy and baby us like over-protective parents covering their children’s eyes during the “scary” parts. The scariest thing about San Andreas is that, as a depiction of such wide-spread death and devastation, it only elicits a half-hearted shrug.

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Michiel Huisman Talks ‘Age of Adaline’, ‘Game of Thrones’, Working With Harrison Ford http://waytooindie.com/interview/interview-michiel-huisman-age-of-adaline/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/interview-michiel-huisman-age-of-adaline/#respond Wed, 22 Apr 2015 13:41:44 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=33794 Michiel Huisman is best known for his work on TV, his turns on Treme, Nashville, and Game of Thrones making him the object of desire for female (and male) binge-watchers everywhere. And rightfully so! He’s crazy handsome, and despite hailing from Amsterdam, he can pull off any accent asked of him, making him a shoe-in for every hunky TV […]]]>

Michiel Huisman is best known for his work on TV, his turns on TremeNashville, and Game of Thrones making him the object of desire for female (and male) binge-watchers everywhere. And rightfully so! He’s crazy handsome, and despite hailing from Amsterdam, he can pull off any accent asked of him, making him a shoe-in for every hunky TV role that pops up.

The Dutch actor has greater aspirations than being relegated to playing the muscly eye candy on every project he takes, though. Despite the success of Game of Thrones, in which he plays Daenerys Targaryen’s oft-disrobed lover and quasi-advisor Daario Naharis, between shooting seasons of the show, he’s made it a mission to take on more dimensional roles and jump from the world of TV and into the movie theater.

Enter The Age of Adaline, Lee Toland Krieger’s San Francisco-set romance with a sci-fi twist. In it Blake Lively plays Adaline, a twentysomething who at the turn of the 20th century is struck by lighting following a fatal car accident, reviving her and, most amazingly, stopping her body’s aging process. As the people she loves begin to out-age her (including her daughter), she’s forced to live a life on the run to avoid being caught by people who may want to exploit her anti-aging properties.

Huisman plays Ellis, a modest philanthropist whose connection with Adaline might be strong enough to compel her to stop running. Ellis seems like standard rom-com fare at first, but when his father (played by Harrison Ford) comes into the picture, the story takes an unexpected turn that changes everything. Huisman’s first major role in a feature film is a memorable one that gets his movie career of on the right foot.

I spoke with Mr. Huisman in a roundtable interview during his visit to San Francisco to promote The Age of Adaline, though Game of Thrones talk inevitably popped up as the conversation went on.

The Age of Adaline hits theaters nationwide this Friday, April 24th.

The Age of Adaline

How much filming did you guys do in San Francisco?
That’s the kind of question I try to avoid, and you start with it! [laughs] The thing is, shooting in San Francisco is a pain. We shot most of the movie in what we refer to as “San Francouver.” It was very strange for me, playing a character that is very much rooted here in San Francisco. It wasn’t until later, after we chopped the movie, that I made my first visit to the city. It seems to be the story of my life, shooting somewhere that’s supposed to take place somewhere else. I was here two weeks ago for the Game of Thrones premiere. Apart from one afternoon walking around and seeing as much as I could, the next day I had somebody take me around town, and I saw a lot. I managed to see the Bliss Dance statue on Treasure Island. You guys see that one?

No!
You should go see it! It’s awesome!

How did you get involved with the film?
By the time the script reached me I was already aware of Blake [Lively] being attached to it, as well as Harrison Ford. The thought of being able to play the male lead opposite Blake and being the son of Harrison Ford in one movie is too much for me, really. That was before I had even read the script. When I read the script, I was swept away by this journey of a woman through time. I thought it could become a very, very romantic movie that kind of feels like a small, independent, well-crafted movie, but at the same time, hopefully it appeals to a large audience. For me there is not a doubt in my mind; I was dying to be a part of it. Also, I come from doing a lot of great TV stuff, which I’m very proud of, but I was really eager to make that step and break into film. The Age of Adaline is special for me from that perspective because it marks the first time I’m playing a leading role in a proper Hollywood production.

Are you getting more offers now to play the “hunk” in movies and TV?
Yes, but I think it’s very important as an actor to spread your wings constantly and to not fall for the same thing. One of the things I thought was important during my hiatus between two seasons of Game of Thrones was to shoot a cool movie in which I’m not holding a sword. The Age of Adaline really hit that button.

One through line in your work is that you play a lot of characters that support strong, incredible female characters. Are you drawn to that?
I’m very thankful for the opportunity to work with [those actresses]. I love stories about strong women. I think that there aren’t enough stories about strong women in film and TV. I worked with Reese Witherspoon on Wild and I admired that entire project so much, and the way she played that character, too. If you look at it from that perspective, yeah, I get to support strong women, and that’s cool. I love that. But I also love stories about strong men. [laughs] Maybe in the future I get to play the strong man.

One of the most beautiful messages in the movie is about the quality of time as opposed to the quantity of time.
This woman’s found the so-called fountain of youth, and it turns out to be such a burden. I thought it was a very nice concept. I thought [the sci-fi element of the story], at least on the page, was not so far of a stretch. For a second I thought, “Maybe I should Google whether this is scientifically possible.” Maybe not with a human, but with a mouse. Can you actually kill it and then bring it back to life? I like that idea. You have to kind of go along with the movie’s concept, and I hope the audience will.

What kind of roles do you seek out?
I shot this movie basically a year ago. I went back to Game of Thrones, and it’s a show that’s so much about moments. There’s such a big cast, and as an actor I feel like I want to try to nail the moment. I was hoping to do projects during my next hiatus that don’t force me to nail a moment, that really allow me to be a character and carry a story not for a couple of scenes, but the whole way through. That’s how I pick, together with my team, the project I’m working on during this hiatus. I’m about to finish a movie we shot in Australia. We have a week left of stuff in New York…there you go! [laughs] San Francouver, shot in Sydney, takes place in New York. It’s very much a story in which I get to carry it the whole way through. I really enjoyed the freedom it gave me. In a certain sense, it adds a little pressure because I’m carrying the story. If the movie doesn’t work, it’s kind of on me. But when I’m shooting, I don’t really think about that. That comes a year later when I’m talking to people and they’re actually going to see this movie. When was shooting, I didn’t have four scenes to tell a story and sell a character, but one hundred and four.

Did you feel like you got to have that kind of arc on Treme? Even though it’s an ensemble, it was developed very thoroughly.
That arc was very gratifying to play, but it was that same thing. You get a couple scenes every episode. I love being part of a show, like Game of Thrones for example, that is so well made and so well written. The moments I’m trying to nail as an actor…they’re handing them to me on a little golden plate. “Here you go! You can say to the mother of dragons, ‘The queen of dragons without dragons is not a queen.'” You’re going to do everything you can to try and nail that line! I’m so grateful for that. But when I’m off of [the show], I try to do different stuff. Not only different genres and different characters, but [projects] I can carry.

The Age of Adaline

I’ve met Harrison Ford once, and it was the most terrifying experience. I said, “Hello Mr. Ford!” and he just grunted and walked away. Was it intimidating working with him?
It was a different experience, really. [laughs] It’s a little intimidating for the first ten minutes because of who he is and because I admire him. But when we started working I was kind of surprised by how invested he was in this project and in this story. I think part of me though that, for him, this is just a little movie on his roster. But I felt like it wasn’t, and he gave it his all. Once he enters the movie, it not only puts it into another gear, but he also put me into another gear. He forced me to step it up. God, I loved it.

Harrison’s kind of known to not play well with fans. He hates hearing about Indiana Jones and Star Wars.
Everybody’s constantly asking me, “Did you ask him about Star Wars?!” Obviously not! [laughs]

Now you’re getting a little taste of that with Game of Thrones. You’re playing Daario!
The strange thing is, people are probing, but not really. They don’t really want to know. At least that’s my experience. “What’s happening? Don’t tell me!” I think it’s funny. You don’t want to know, really. You’d go crazy if I told you.

Daenerys’ storyline is going differently on the show than in the book.
We’re letting go of the books this year. I shouldn’t say more. [laughs] Everything I say is some kind of spoiler-y thing.

To bring it back to The Age of Adaline, your character, Ellis, uses his wealth philanthropically. What would you do if you suddenly came into tens of millions of dollars?
I would definitely set up some philanthropic foundations. A line in the movie I really liked was when he says, “It’s actually really hard to do good.” You try to do good and make the most of the money, but it’s actually really hard. Maybe it would be [a foundation] for the arts, something helping kids find a way into expressing themselves through music or acting, things that have given me so much fun and eventually a career.

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The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Kicks Off Tomorrow http://waytooindie.com/news/the-san-francisco-jewish-film-festival-kicks-off-tomorrow/ http://waytooindie.com/news/the-san-francisco-jewish-film-festival-kicks-off-tomorrow/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=23524 The most renowned Jewish film festival in the world, the 34th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, kicks off tomorrow night at the Castro Theater for a three-week run of stunning, independent films from across the globe. Through every genre of cinema–from action, to documentary, to comedy, to romance–the festival’s line-up celebrates Jewish-ness for people from all […]]]>

The most renowned Jewish film festival in the world, the 34th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, kicks off tomorrow night at the Castro Theater for a three-week run of stunning, independent films from across the globe. Through every genre of cinema–from action, to documentary, to comedy, to romance–the festival’s line-up celebrates Jewish-ness for people from all walks of life to enjoy and embrace.

18 countries are represented in the festival’s 70-film line-up, which includes 7 world premieres. Housing the screenings are several theaters across the Bay Area, including Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater and New Parkway, the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, CinéArts in Palo Alto, and more.

Opening the festival is The Green Prince, a poignant docu by Nadav Schirman that follows the journey of Mosab Hasaan Yousef, a young Palestinian who grew up hating Israelites. Following being captured by the Israeli security service, the Shin Bet, he comes to realize the true brutality of his own people’s tactics, from suicide bombings to needless torture, compelling him to work for Israel as a spy, the greatest shame known to Palestinians. Pepe Danquart’s sweeping narrative drama Run Boy Run, the festival’s centerpiece narrative picture, tells the story of a young boy struggling to survive in the fields and forests of wartime Poland, evading Nazis and scrounging for food and meeting strangers–both helpful and harmful–along the way.

Diversity is a key theme throughout the festival, exploring subjects that reach beyond the Jewish community, but viewing them from a Jewish perspective. Hannah Espia’s Transitwhich screens this Friday at the Castro, follows the hard lives of Filipino workers in Tel Aviv who are under constant threat of deportation. The Village of Peace, a docu by filmmakers Ben Schuder and Niko Philipides, takes us inside the titular community in the Negev Desert, founded by African Americans from Chicago in the ’60s who journeyed a great distance to make a place for themselves in the Promised Land.

Arlo & Julie

On the lighter side of the festival are several comedic films. In Arlo and Julie , by director Steve Mims, a quirky couple in Austin begin receiving a series of envelopes in the mail, with each containing puzzle pieces to a larger jigsaw. Part romance, mystery, and comedy, the film is a lighthearted affair with a great cast and a charming vintage soundtrack. Capturing comedy as a tool for healing is Comedy Warriors, a documentary about military veterans who cope with their injuries by facing their fears in front of an audience and doing stand-up comedy. Seasoned comedians like Lewis Black, B.J. Novak, and Bob Saget act as the soldiers’ mentors, guiding them on their journey to becoming successful comedians.

A personal favorite for me, Julie Cohen’s tight docu The Sturgeon Queens outlines the history of Russ & Daughters, one of New York’s best Jewish smoked fish shops, celebrating its 100-year anniversary this year. Narrated by long-time customers, the film tempts us with delicious-looking food and glowing endorsements by celebrity R&D devotees (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Mario Batali), creating a loving portrait of one of the city’s most charming old-school institutions.

Receiving the 2014 Freedom of Expression Award is Theodore Bikel, who will be in attendance for the July 31st screening of Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholem Aleichem at the Castro.

For tickets and more info, visit sfjff.org. Stay tuned for interviews and reviews from the festival.

 

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Chris Mason Johnson On ‘Test’, The Camera as a Moving Body http://waytooindie.com/interview/chris-mason-johnson-on-test-the-camera-as-a-moving-body/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/chris-mason-johnson-on-test-the-camera-as-a-moving-body/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com?p=21830&preview_id=21830 A multi-layered character portrait set in 1985 San Francisco in the early days of the AIDS panic, Test follows Frankie (Scott Marlowe), a young dancer torn between his sexual cravings and fear of contracting a mysterious, deadly disease. Director Chris Mason Johnson’s sensuous, cinematic film sidesteps queer cinema tropes, telling an earnest story of desire and terror full of gorgeous […]]]>

A multi-layered character portrait set in 1985 San Francisco in the early days of the AIDS panic, Test follows Frankie (Scott Marlowe), a young dancer torn between his sexual cravings and fear of contracting a mysterious, deadly disease. Director Chris Mason Johnson’s sensuous, cinematic film sidesteps queer cinema tropes, telling an earnest story of desire and terror full of gorgeous modern dance numbers steamy one night stands.

We spoke to Chris in San Francisco about conveying the fear of the early AIDS epidemic, the examining the human body in film, shooting in San Francisco, the camera as a moving body, his favorite dance films, and more.

Test

The film’s been doing very well on the festival circuit.
Chris: It’s been to Berlin, Athens, Taipei, Buenos Aires…it’s everywhere. Festivals are an amazing thing for independent filmmakers. You travel everywhere for a year, they treat you like a rock star, and it’s amazing.

The period in time your film covers is a somewhat distant memory here in the states, but I imagine there’s an even bigger disconnect in other countries.
Chris: They do have a disconnect, and I got a bit of that in Berlin. I love the Germans–they have a very intellectually oriented and earnest national character–but I don’t think they had the same weird, backlash, scapegoating moment in the early AIDS epidemic that we did here, where it was just horrible and homophobic.

It was a scary time, and your film is about fear. It’s not about getting sick; it’s about the fear of getting sick.
Chris: Exactly. It’s a story about people who don’t get sick, and most AIDS films tend to be, for obvious reasons, deathbed narratives, which have a long fictional history. It sort of falls into that fictional trope, and I wanted to do something different. The film is about the fear of getting sick, and that was the experience for a lot of people in those years. For everyone who lived through that time, whether you were positive or negative, there was this period of fear where you didn’t know. It was this huge existential reality that I didn’t think had been represented.

What was your experience like back int he ’80s?
Chris: Fear! [laughs] I was a teenager, a little younger than the guys in the movie, but I was petrified. Mortified. When you’re in the middle of something like that, you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. The analogy must be the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s. In hindsight, it’s like, “Why didn’t they get out? Why didn’t they know?” But when you’re in the middle of something, there’s the fog of war. You don’t know how big it’s going to be or how long it’s going to last, but specifically, in those early years people didn’t know if you could get AIDS from sweat, from food…even after the first scientific information started coming out, there was ambiguity for years. It was perfect breeding ground for fear and paranoia.

Talk about creating that sense of paranoia cinematically. There’s that very telling scene where one dancer is anxious about another being too sweaty.
Chris: I didn’t want to make a dialogue driven film. I really like cinema of images. I wanted to tell this internal portrait and stay focused on my lead character: his face, how he moves through space, what he’s going through. But to answer your question, that sweat scene in the studio is one of my favorites in the movie. It’s a scene in which the choreography is interwoven with the drama very directly.

The human body plays a big role in the film; you photograph it in so many ways and examine your characters’ bodies in various contexts.
Chris: When the story is the disease and not the fear of getting sick, it’s understandable how the body gets looked at as the site of disease, because you don’t really want to think about erotics and sensuality when you’re thinking about infection and disease. I wanted to create this different territory where that’s exactly what’s intersecting: the eroticized body and the paranoia. The choreographer Sidra Bell and I worked really hard on the choreography to get these kind of morbid, creepy gestures in there that are still very erotic. The body is the site of disease, but it’s also the site of sex and sensuality. These guys are young, beautiful, and frightened.

I’m not a filmmaker, but if I was, I think it would be a dream come true to shoot a dance film. Dance is so inherently cinematic; it must be a blast to film.
Chris: I wanted to strike a balance between being able to see the body and see the whole space like in Pina and old Fred Astaire movies, and a more dynamic style where there’s editing so that if feels volatile and modern. It was about getting on stage with our dolly and moving around and through the dancers. This is where my dance background really helped, because I knew the choreography. I knew the phrases of movement. In a dialogue scene, you have to match the over-the-shoulders and the wides and where they’re moving in space, but something like this is a little more of a jigsaw puzzle.

Your skill set is useful, because you understand both body movement and camera movement very well.
Chris: I think dance and filmmaking really complement each other, and there’s a long history of dancers and choreographers who become filmmakers: Maya Deren, Herbert Ross, Rob Marshall, Bob Fosse. When you’re a dancer and/or choreographer, you’re thinking about how movement connects in space, and film is really that as well. You have the body moving, but the camera is another body moving, and you have the movement in between cuts and that connect cuts.

As Walter Murch–a great San Francisco filmmaker–points out in his book In the Blink of an Eye, how the eye moves is also how we “cut” in real life. You know when there’s a POV shot in a movie and the camera turns to see something and it feels fake? If you’re looking here, and you want to look over there, you blink. That’s a cut. You don’t pan; you cut, internally. The argument is that the ontology of cinema is very much like consciousness itself. As a dancer or choreographer, you’re already aware of that, and it fits well with cinema.

Test

Your actors had to be dancers first. It wouldn’t work the other way around.
Chris: I wanted real dance in the movie so that dancers would like it, and that means I had to have real dancers in it. You can’t have actors who dance. People can sing a song or carry a tune, but very few can sing opera. This is opera. I found Scott [Marlowe] in San Francisco and worked with him for six months. He’s really talented, and he’s going to continue acting. Scott has a great sensibility, and that was what I was looking for. His face is great on camera. It reminds me a little of Michael Fassbender and Ewan McGregor.

What’s the reaction to the film been now that it’s hit so many festivals?
Chris: It’s been great. I came out of a more commercial project that didn’t get off the ground, one of those stories one hears often, and I turned around and did something personal and small that I knew I could make. I didn’t have super high expectations. I was also dealing with some survivor’s guilt; I was there at the time and I didn’t get sick. Was my story worth telling? To have people respond well to it has been really, really rewarding and validating. The responses from audience members after screenings, the emails I get…that’s the good thing. That’s the rewarding thing. You want the film to get good reviews, but if you let your ego get bound up in that, it’s a tricky thing.

You were living in New York in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, if I’m not mistaken.
Chris: Yeah, that’s correct.

Why is the film set in San Francisco?
Chris: Because I was living here when I wrote it and also because I got a grant from the San Francisco Film Society. I really love this city, and it’s underused in film. There are only a few cities that are dance cities that are comparable to New York, and San Francisco definitely has a great dance scene. Plus, San Francisco and New York have parallel AIDS histories.

Did you shoot the whole thing here?
Chris: Yeah, shot the whole thing here.

That’s good to hear, because nobody shoots here!
Chris: I know, and I don’t know why! I guess it’s money and logistics. That’s changing a little, isn’t it?

I hope so. It’s such a cinematic city.
Chris: It was a bit of a challenge shooting here because the film is a period piece, and we didn’t have any budget, and there are cars! The strategy I developed really early on was to point the camera up, because I couldn’t show any cars. We got four cars for one scene and put them in the parking lot at the Cowell Theater, and that was, like, our big day. [laughs] I’m looking forward to doing a movie here that’s not period. You see people do San Francisco, and they’re in Toronto and they only do a couple of actual shots of the city. You don’t get the detail of cities in film.

Frankie’s bed is underneath bay windows, so you know you’re in San Francisco!
Chris: Yeah! We found that building. It was empty, and we did six or seven sets there. It was amazing.

It was like a little studio.
Chris: Yeah, and it was dirt cheap. It was a godsend. I understand why people like shooting in studios.

What are some of your favorite dance films?
Chris: The Red Shoes is amazing. Cabaret and Hair are awesome dance movies. Saturday Night Fever is great. I love the way social dance is used in movies. In Roman Polanski’s Frantic, with Harrison Ford, there’s this short social dance scene. I’d like to see more imaginative social dance scenes. The Lindy Hop is coming back, I hear. The gold standard for Lindy Hop scenes is an old movie called Hellzapoppin’. Find it on Youtube–you’re going to freak out. It’s all these amazing African American Lindy Hop dancers that the studio brought in for this one number, and they do things that you won’t believe.

For your viewing pleasure, here’s the Hellzapoppin’ scene Mr. Johnson’s raving about below. Test will be screening at the Presidio Theater on June 6th, 7th, and 8th, at Rialto Cinemas Elmwood on June 7th, and at Rialto Cinemas Sebastapol on June 8th. The film will also be available on iTunes, Amazon, and other on demand services on June 6th.

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J.P. Chan and Cast Talk ‘A Picture of You’ http://waytooindie.com/interview/jp-chan-and-cast-talk-a-picture-of-you/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/jp-chan-and-cast-talk-a-picture-of-you/#comments Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=21677 In A Picture of You, a brother and sister (Andrew Pang and Jo Mei) return to their rural childhood home in Pennsylvania to sort through their recently deceased mother’s belongings. They discover shocking photos that change their perception of their mother (Jodi Long) entirely. The siblings process and reckon with the startling discovery in radically different […]]]>

In A Picture of You, a brother and sister (Andrew Pang and Jo Mei) return to their rural childhood home in Pennsylvania to sort through their recently deceased mother’s belongings. They discover shocking photos that change their perception of their mother (Jodi Long) entirely. The siblings process and reckon with the startling discovery in radically different ways, and together they venture down the rocky road toward the truth, clashing the whole way. The film also stars Teyonah Parris and Lucas Dixon.

More refined than your typical domestic drama, A Picture of  You transcends the label of “Asian Film”, portraying its protagonists as siblings, flawed souls, and emotionally textured human beings, a treasure in today’s movie industry, which typecasts Asian Americans rampantly. The film is funny, well-written, relatable, and at times gut-wrenching, and director J.P. Chan exhibits an impressive measure of finesse in his debut feature.

We spoke to Chan and his cast after the film’s screening at this year’s CAAMFest, discussing the personal inspirations behind the film, what it’s like to discover old pictures of your parents, CAAMFest, Asian American roles disappearing, a woman thinking the film was shot in Japan (seriously), and more.

For more info, visit apoyfilm.com. Stay tuned for Part 2 of our interview, coming tomorrow.

Let’s start off with the most basic question. What was the inspiration behind the film?

JP: There was a combination of inspirations for the movie. It’s emotionally based on my grieving for my mother when she passed away a few years ago and how it affected my family dynamic, especially with my brother. Also, I realized at that point that I only knew a portion of her. She was so much more than just my mom; she was someone’s wife, someone’s best friend, someone’s co-worker. There was such a fuller picture of her than I realized. Not what happens in my movie, of course, [laughs] but more than I realized.

Can you remember a time when you were rifling through old family stuff and found a picture of your parents that you’d never seen before? How did that feel?

Jodi: I found this picture of my parents sitting on a dock. My mother was spraying the water with her feet. My dad was really into her, and she looked like, “I’m not sure about this.” [laughs] They were in bathing suits in the ’40s.

Jo: My parents immigrated from China, so there’s a big divide in the pictures between when they were young in China and when they immigrated and came to the US. Their younger pictures are black and white. Any time I see pictures of them in black and white, they just look like entirely different people. I think of who they were before me, before moving their lives to the US. They were different people.

How was the screening at CAAMFest last night?

Jo: The challenge of an indie film coming to a small festival is that you’re always worried about how much outreach you can do or how much it’s going to connect with the audience. I was really happy that we filled up the theater and people stayed for the Q&A.

Jodi: I thought it was great. There wasn’t this mass exodus after the screening ended! [laughs] Everyone pretty much stayed. People were laughing and crying.

Did you get the laughs you were looking for, JP?

JP: Oh yeah. This is only our third festival, so not many people have seen the movie, but enough people have seen it for me to feel confident that it works for the audience. I feel like my job now is mainly to get people in the seats and make sure the picture is in focus. The folks at CAAM have been great.

A Picture of You

This is a tiny cast, so you had to get the right people to fill those roles, since they’re all important. How did you assemble your actors, and for Jodi and Jo, what was the dynamic like on set?

JP: Jo Mei and I have worked on several shorts before. We knew a bunch of the actors personally. Andrew Pang was someone we knew from the New York Asian American theater scene. He’s done a lot of smaller roles in big movies and TV. I’ve wanted to work with him for a long time, so it was amazing. Jodi came on because people have been saying for years that Jo Mei looks like a young Jodi. She was our first choice for the mother role, so we’re really lucky.

Jo: At first we were worried that she would ignore us! [laughs]

JP: Teyonah was the lead in one of my shorts, before she did Mad Men.

Jo: Teyonah and I went to Julliard together, and Andy and Lucas are Yale grads. I knew of Lucas through my friends at Yale, and he was the perfect type of actor we wanted.

The neighborhood you shot the film in looks gorgeous.

JP: The house is actually owned by a friend of mine and his partner. When they bought the house, they told me that if I ever wanted to shoot a movie there, I could use it. I wrote a script set in his house, and in 2012 showed up at his house with it. We had free access for three weeks.

Jodi: It’s also a really interesting house, architecturally. It’s another character in the movie. The architect designed an upside-down house. It’s really modern. Usually, you walk in and it’s the living room, the kitchen, whatever. In this house, the office is downstairs, then the bedrooms are upstairs, and the kitchen, living room, and dining room are on the top floor, where the best views are. I got to stay in the master bedroom!

JP: Knowing that we had that location nailed down, it allowed us to create the story around it. It really enhanced the story. The clean lines of the house really relate to what the characters are going through, and it’s a nice juxtaposition to the nature outside.

What has your experience been as an Asian American in cinema?

Jodi: JP doesn’t bang the Asian American thing over the head. The characters have this sister-brother relationship, which everybody has. The house is so modern, so indicative of where we’ve come as Asian Americans.

Jo: In the film, we address the fact that we’re Asian, but it’s not the point. We joke about it, because we recognize that we’re in a rural, white town in Pennsylvania in the movie. But we don’t talk about our race over breakfast! We’re human beings. As somebody who’s coming out of school and trying to break into the business, there are circumstances where people are aware that we don’t have to cast Asian actresses as the nail salon worker, or the newscaster, or the waitress, so they give it to somebody else. They’re not expanding those roles, so those little roles are disappearing.

JP: I feel like I would be dishonest if I wrote the film any other way. You could have made the argument, before we hired the cast, that if we hired non-Asian actors, the film would have wider appeal. That may be true. But there’s an inability in the indie film world to process what a film like ours looks like. We don’t think it’s particularly Asian American. I’ve had plenty of white folks come up to us and say, “This isn’t that Asian.” People see Asian faces on a poster and think, “This isn’t for me.” It’s crazy. If I don’t put my work out there the way I want to, then I’m part of the problem. If we white-wash our own movies, we’re fucked!

Jodi: This movie couldn’t exist without all those movies before that focused on being Asian American. It’s an evolutionary process. I mean, I did Flower Drum Song on Broadway, and people still look at that play as the “Asian play.” People were hearing this at the ticket booth. “Do you want to see the Asian play?” This is Rodgers and Hammerstein! Oh my god. Can we ever get beyond this?

JP: In the indie world, I think if people see Asian faces, frankly, they tend to be Asians, and the film is about Asia, or they’re victims of men. I don’t think they know how to process an Asian American, middle-class family drama. At one of our Q&A’s, in Bend, Oregon, a woman that had seen the entire film raised her hand and said, “Was the entire film shot in Japan?” We had a great premiere there, and I wasn’t offended, but to me, that struck me. There’s nothing to indicate that the film takes place anywhere other than America in the present day, but because this woman saw Asian faces, she thought it was in another country.

Jo: In mainstream cinema, they don’t acknowledge the existence of Asian Americans in society. You’re in a hospital, and all the faces are black and white. Even if we were extras, it would at least acknowledge that we exist. When this begins to happen more, women like the one in Oregon wouldn’t think that Asians only exist in Asia.

Jodi: We have to tell our own stories in movies and include faces like ours. Otherwise, we’ll never get into the mainstream. Even if this movie only does an eighth of what X-Men does…

JP: I’d be happy with an eighth! [laughs] I’d be happy with one eight-hundredth!

Jodi: [laughs] You know what I’m saying!

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Anita Monga On the 2014 SF Silent Film Festival http://waytooindie.com/interview/anita-monga-on-the-2014-sf-silent-film-festival/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/anita-monga-on-the-2014-sf-silent-film-festival/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=21646 It’s time once again for San Francisco’s silent era Castro Theatre to do what it was made to do and show eager audiences once again why silent films define what movie magic really is. Starting tomorrow, Thursday May 29th, and running through Sunday, June 1st, the San Francisco International Film Festival will emanate from the […]]]>

It’s time once again for San Francisco’s silent era Castro Theatre to do what it was made to do and show eager audiences once again why silent films define what movie magic really is. Starting tomorrow, Thursday May 29th, and running through Sunday, June 1st, the San Francisco International Film Festival will emanate from the Castro, harboring some of the rarest, most beautiful, classic films from the early days of cinema, before color, before sound, and before our computer screens and smartphones became plastered with shameless ads for movies we don’t care about. These are films from a time when filmmakers helmed their cameras with love.

The festival is bookended this year by two essential works in the story of early film. Rex Ingram’s sweeping epic The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, starring Rudolph Valentino, will open up the festival, a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Great War. Closing out the festival is Buster Keaton’s aquatic ballet The Navigator. Keaton’s fourth film contains some of his most intricately staged stunts, including a gorgeous underwater sequence. Also playing at the festival are films by Carl Dreyer, Yasujiro Ozu, Max Linder, the always entertaining Amazing Tales From the Archives program, an in-depth look into the world of film preservation, and many more.

We spoke to the festival Artistic Director Anita Monga about converting silent film newbies by getting them in the theater, the importance of thoughtful musical accompaniment, the genius of Keaton, the festival line-up, and more.

For tickets and more information, visit silentfilm.org

The Navigator

For every lover of silent film, there’s this constant struggle you have with your friends and family, trying to get them to give silents a try and get them into that theater.

Anita: It’s really hard to describe silent film. It’s so difficult. It’s a whole experience, with these beautiful, beautiful images that are lying dormant, because you can’t really watch a film without sound. I mean, you can, but it’s a very academic experience. A lot of the silent films on the internet have been badly transferred and paired with horrible music. We pay a lot of attention to the musical aspect of silent film. The films at the festival are examples of live cinema events, bringing these ancient texts to life. Film is the only medium where people think the past is not worth dredging up. People read books from the 17th century, read Shakespeare, and put on Shakespeare plays. That’s what we’re doing: making these films accessible to people who think that these films have nothing to say to modern audiences. We have a hindsight of 100 years to pick the very best. People transform when they see them, but it’s hard to get them into that auditorium.

What does silent film offer that modern film doesn’t?

Anita: Silent film is different. You can’t watch it on your cell phone and get everything there is to get about it. It requires having thoughtful music to be able to see these images. It gains a lot from being presented in the theater.

You’ll never see a modern film presented with live musical accompaniment. Silent films are an event.

Anita: Right. What we’re doing is really different. People understand that you can see something like Avatar on your computer screen months down the line after it hits theaters, but if you want to partake in this experience, you need to go to the theater and be immersed. People think silent films are boring because they’re old, but they are NOT! It’s the opposite. If we can get them in the door with an open mind, they’re converts. It’s a simple as that.

There’s something for everyone in this program. Harbor Drift is a story that’s so moving and harsh. It doesn’t sugarcoat the horrible economic reality that was Germany [in 1929.] We could use a little dose of that from our artists, too, with our world economy not on its firm footing.

Well, let’s get into the films playing at this year’s festival, starting off with Mr. Buster Keaton. Last year, I asked you to rank him, Chaplin, and Lloyd as far as who your favorite is, and it was an easy, quick answer from you.

Anita: Keaton, Chaplin, Lloyd.

You’ve got Keaton’s The Navigator playing at this year’s festival, which is right up there with my favorites from him. Where does it rank for you in his catalogue?

Anita: I love it. It’s one of the top ones for me, too. I think I love The Cameraman most…[trails off] Wait. No. I can’t even rank Keaton. Everything is so beautiful. Sherlock Jr. is so beautiful.

That was my jumping on point. It’s an easy one to get into, Sherlock Jr. The imagination on display in that film is unbelievable, and in The Navigator, you have the underwater sequence, which is incredibly cinematic.

Anita: Yes, incredibly cinematic! That was Keaton. He thought in cinema. He understood how to make the story move cinematically. He was the most cinematic of the comedians.

The underwater bit perhaps isn’t his most spectacular feat, but it’s easily one of his most challenging. You’ve also got The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse playing.

Anita: Yes. The Four Horseman is our commemoration of The Great War. It’s kind of remarkable. The film was made not far after World War I concluded. It was the first major world event that cinema commented on. Cinema and the history of that war are really intertwined. The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra are doing the accompaniment, and it’s their 25th anniversary of being a group. They started out as The Mont Alto Ragtime and Tango Orchestra, and for people who don’t know, The Four Horsemen starts in Argentina, and it’s where Rudolph Valentino became “the Latin lover.” The whole idea of “the Latin lover” came from The Four Horsemen.

It’s his first starring role.

Anita: Yes, and it’s really what made him a star.

You’ve got an Ozu film as well, Dragnet Girl, which is actually a gangster film. It’s a bit of a departure from the style he’s known for, and there’s also a film from the great Carl Dreyer that’s a departure for him as well, The Parson’s Widow.

Anita:  People know Dreyer from The Passion of Joan of Arc and from later, very beautiful, very somber work. This is a light-hearted departure for him, but it’s quintessentially Dreyer in its beautiful imagery and thoughtful filmmaking. It has a very funny sense of humor.

That’s atypical of him, but it’s funny that we say “departure”, because these films were actually early works in Ozu and Dreyer’s careers.

Anita: Right. They’re departures from what we know about them today. The other day, I re-watched Herb Ross’ Pennies From Heaven, and I knew Christopher Walken from later roles with David Cronenberg and others. Seeing him as a song-and-dance man felt like a departure from him, but it’s not. It’s a departure from what I thought I knew about him.

You also have on the line-up the Amazing Tales From the Archives program, which is always exciting.

Anita: Yes, and also along that line we have Serge Bromberg’s Treasure Trove. Serge Bromberg is a great raconteur, and he’s bringing some real surprises from his archive. If people are interested in seeing real rarities, presented by a cinema lover and great communicator, the Treasure Trove can’t be missed.

Seeing a Keaton film in the Castro Theatre is a wonderful experience, but what’s great about these rarity programs is that they’re truly a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

Anita: I really encourage people to stretch themselves. There’s not a film in here that I would say isn’t worth seeing. The Girl in Tails is hilarious. The early Sherlock Holmes film, The Sign of Four, was filmed in London, which is extraordinary. The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks was filmed all around Moscow in the ’20s. Think about that. think about Red Square in the ’20s. How amazing is that?

I think the festival is best experienced as an all-day thing. You need to see at least two films in a row to get how truly fun it can be.

Anita: I’ve had people express it this way, and I think it’s true: It’s like entering a dream state. We balance the program very carefully; we’re not just showing one very dark, deep film after another. We’re not showing one comedy after another. It’s a varied experience and rewards sticking around.

It requires a lot of thought to present these films well. We’re presenting The Good Bad Man, which is a restoration. We’re running it at 17 frames per second. If you see the film at 24 frames per second, it’s going to seem extremely sped up and jerky. It requires thoughtfulness to present these things to express what the filmmaker had in mind. We also have to be thoughtful about the musical accompaniment so that it embraces and enhances the image.

What’s the state of film preservation?

Anita: There’s amazing work being done in preservation, aided by many things, like the internet. BFI put out a list of the “top lost films”, and those films are being found because of communication around the world. Ramona is a title that people were looking for for years and was found in the Czech archives and was recently restored. We have archivists coming to the festival from around the world.

Let’s run through what this year’s festival has to offer once more. For someone who enjoys action and adventure, they should watch…

Cosmic Voyage

Anita: The Good Bad Man. Also, the documentary The Epic of Everest, an actual attempt at reaching the summit of Everest. It’s the first look at Tibetan culture on film. Extraordinary. Also, Cosmic Voyage, which is a sci-fi film where they go to the moon.

For those who enjoy comedy…

Anita: Oh! Buster Keaton. Also, The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks is highly hilarious.

For those who love dark dramas…

Anita: Harbor Drift and Under the Lantern are two German, expressionist titles that are so incredibly beautiful.

For kids?

Anita: Seven Years Bad Luck is by Max Linder, who a lot of comedians credited as an influence, including Charles Chaplin, who was a huge fan. Max Linder originated that mirror scene that the Marx Brothers used so effectively. A very funny French comedian. I’d advise some kids to come to Cosmic Voyage and The Navigator, but they’re late!

At least one of them isn’t a school night!

Anita: Right! Stay up late and come to Cosmic Voyage and The Navigator. Also, kids will love the Serge Bromberg program on Saturday afternoon.

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Gia Coppola Talks Representing Teen Life Authentically in ‘Palo Alto’ http://waytooindie.com/interview/gia-coppola-talks-representing-teen-life-authentically-in-palo-alto/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/gia-coppola-talks-representing-teen-life-authentically-in-palo-alto/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=21025 Gia Coppola’s debut feature Palo Alto captures the struggles of modern teens better than any movie in memory. The film is based on a book of short stories by James Franco, who c0-stars in the film alongside young breakouts Jack Kilmer, Emma Roberts, Nat Wolff, and Zoe Levin. A series of interweaving tales of teens partying, […]]]>

Gia Coppola’s debut feature Palo Alto captures the struggles of modern teens better than any movie in memory. The film is based on a book of short stories by James Franco, who c0-stars in the film alongside young breakouts Jack Kilmer, Emma Roberts, Nat Wolff, and Zoe Levin. A series of interweaving tales of teens partying, getting into late-night trouble, and crushing on all the wrong people encapsulate serious themes of lust, confusion, ego, and young vulnerability.  Atmospheric, honest, and cinematic, the film marks an impressive inaugural artistic statement for the young filmmaker.

During the 57th annual San Francisco International Film Festival, Coppola spoke with us about the pressures of making her first film, representing teens authentically, begging Jack Kilmer to act for her, James Franco’s strengths as a mentor, bridging the generation gap, and more.

Palo Alto

Now that you’re on the other side of making your first film, do you find you enjoy the process of promoting it, introducing it to the world?
Gia: Yes and no. It’s a very important part of the process to talk about your film and try to get it out there, especially because the industry right now is rapidly changing. It’s a very important element in making movies. I didn’t realize that that was a whole other side to it.

So that was a surprise!
Gia: Yeah! (laughs) Having to talk about the film is difficult for me because I feel like I’m so close to it. To think about it generally and try to articulate everything I’ve gone through is hard for me. I’m not good with words; I use pictures to articulate things. It’s fun when the cast is around because I can let them take over. (laughs)

A surprise for me in the film was how authentic the characters’ bedrooms looked. Teenage bedrooms that look fake always bug me in movies for some reason…
Gia: For Teddy’s bedroom we used Jack Kilmer’s real bedroom, and Emma’s bedroom was my old bedroom at my mom’s house when I was in high school. [Zoe Levin’s] bedroom, with all the stuffed animals, we dressed because it was an interesting dynamic to have this young woman who maybe a year ago was playing with stuffed animals, now has a boy in her room. It’s a weird juxtaposition.

I think your film is important in that it accurately represents what the modern teen is like for future generations. If they looked at most other high school movies they’d probably get a terribly wrong impression.
Gia: I feel like the emotions and dynamics surrounding teens haven’t changed over the years. I remember showing the movie to older relatives, and they said, “This is exactly what we went through.” I wanted to show something in an authentic way. Teens in movies today just don’t look real. They don’t smoke cigarettes, they don’t curse, everything’s perfect, the actors are older…using real teenagers was kind of a no-no.

I think you also capture that state of limbo teenagers find themselves in. They’re too old to stay home every night, but they’re too young to really do anything once they get out there, so all they can do is drink at house parties and sit in their cars in parking lots.
Gia: What I remember growing up is just sitting in parking lots, trying to figure out what to do. Those moments seemed so boring and lame at the time, but when you look back on it, those were the best moments.

Did your skills as a photographer translate well to directing film?
Gia: In a sense. I felt very comfortable in the cinematography aspect of things. Filmmaking is an extension of photography, but there’s so much more to incorporate. I was really nervous about working with actors. I’m shy, so that was hard. It’s a collaborative experience, and it was a first feature for all of us, so we were very enthusiastic. We became like a family, and it was really sad when it was over.

Your cast is very normal-looking, in the best way possible. They look like actual, awkward teenagers.
Gia: When I look at teenagers in the real world, they’re so interesting and they have great style. I was trying to reflect that. Because Jack and Nat [Wolff] were 17 at the time, we used their clothes and let them style themselves. It was so much more interesting that way.

You’ve known Jack for a long time.
Gia: I’ve known him since he was 4 years old.

Growing up, did he ever want to act?
Gia: No. I had to chase him down a little bit because, like me, I don’t think he wanted the pressure of what comes along with his background. All of that attention, you know? Now, he really appreciates having that bonding experience and being collaborative and creative with everyone, which I don’t think he was really getting with his friends as much. But no, he didn’t want to take it on at first…but I begged him and he was willing to do it for me. (laughs)

Palo Alto

I feel like adults sometimes put too much pressure on their kids because they forget just how intense those teenage years can be. Do you think your film may help teens and parents understand each other a bit better?
Gia: I hope it bridges the gap and both demographics can understand each other a little bit. There’s that point in your life when you understand that parents are human beings, too, and you see them for how they’re just as flawed as you, trying to figure out their own lives. With movies today, teens are made fools of. They just want to get drunk, and there’s not much meaning behind why they do the things they do. It’s such an interesting time for a person. It’s a physical thing; our bodies are changing and you can’t help but feel awkward. James says that teenagers are good subjects for talking about emotions because everything’s on the surface and magnified, so it’s easier to talk about those emotions.

You’ve said that you wanted to stake your own claim as a filmmaker without much help from your family name. Instead, you adopted James as a mentor. What did he teach you?
Gia: He’s totally fearless, and that’s something to admire. His character is really challenging, and it was nice to have him there to teach me how to direct an actor of that caliber. He’s a director, so whenever I’d get stuck he’d help me with the blocking or whatever needed to be done. He has so many talents that he could help with anything I needed.

When James entrusted you with putting his stories to screen, what was your attitude? Were you ready to rise to the challenge, or were you nervous?
Gia: It was a little bit of both. I’d never considered making a feature length film; I was doing photography and had made one little short film. I really loved James’ book, and I was excited at the chance of working with him. He really set the tone, so I didn’t have to feel nervous about anything. I could just enjoy being collaborative with my peers. All of the pressure dropped off and I was just having a good time. We struggled with getting financing, and that was heartbreaking. When we finally started filming, I was in the state of mind of, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” I was so heartbroken that I didn’t want to string myself along anymore. On the first day of shooting I thought, “Oh my god…I’m not ready for this!” But there’s no way to really be ready for your first film. I think that was sort of to my advantage to not have a lot of time and not know what to expect.

It’s crazy to be here [in San Francisco] with the film because I thought it wasn’t going to be in theaters. I really didn’t know what was going to come of this small indie film.

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SFIFF57: Alex of Venice Red Carpet Interviews http://waytooindie.com/interview/sfiff57-alex-of-venice-red-carpet-interviews/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/sfiff57-alex-of-venice-red-carpet-interviews/#comments Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=20947 This past Thursday we chatted with the stars of Alex of Venice, which closed out this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival at the Castro Theatre. Director Chris Messina, stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Don Johnson, and SFIFF57 Director of Programming Rachel Rosen spoke with us about Messina’s directorial debut, the festival buzz, and why Winstead will […]]]>

This past Thursday we chatted with the stars of Alex of Venice, which closed out this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival at the Castro Theatre. Director Chris Messina, stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Don Johnson, and SFIFF57 Director of Programming Rachel Rosen spoke with us about Messina’s directorial debut, the festival buzz, and why Winstead will never call Don Johnson “Daddy”.

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SFIFF57: Closing Night, Alex of Venice, Night Moves, I Origins http://waytooindie.com/news/film-festival/sfiff57-closing-night-alex-of-venice-night-moves-i-origins/ http://waytooindie.com/news/film-festival/sfiff57-closing-night-alex-of-venice-night-moves-i-origins/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=20885 Noah Cowan has only been San Francisco Film Society Executive Director for about ten weeks, but in that short stay his presence has lit a fire under an already lively film community. Last night, at the Closing Night screening of Alex of Venice at the Castro Theatre, Cowan addressed the crowd from the same podium he […]]]>

Noah Cowan has only been San Francisco Film Society Executive Director for about ten weeks, but in that short stay his presence has lit a fire under an already lively film community. Last night, at the Closing Night screening of Alex of Venice at the Castro Theatre, Cowan addressed the crowd from the same podium he did when festival began two weeks ago, thanking Programming Director Rachel Rosen and her team for putting together a fantastic lineup of films, thanking the festival staff and volunteers for their hard work, and thanking the audience for partaking in the festivities. His enthusiasm for the future of the festival and SFFS–community building, educational programs, the fall Cinema By The Bay series–was echoed by the buzzing crowd. The future looks bright for the longest running film festival in the Americas.

Rosen then took the stage to introduce the night’s guest of honor, actor Chris Messina (The Mindy Project), whose directorial debut Alex of Venice would close out the festival. Also in attendance were stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Don Johnson, and Katie Nehra (who also co-wrote the screenplay), and producer Jamie Patricof. A soul-searcher family drama, the film follows Winstead’s Alex, an environmentalist attorney so preoccupied with work that her husband (Messina), feeling neglected and trapped as a stay-at-home dad, takes a sabbatical from the family, leaving Alex to take care of her aging actor dad (Johnson) and ten-year-old son (Skylar Gaertner).

Winstead is given a lot to work with in the role of Alex, as the material requires her to explore myriad colors of emotion as a mother overwhelmed by a sense of abandonment, isolation, a scattered home life, and a hefty workload. She rises to the occasion and emerges as the film’s greatest asset. Johnson, who’s been enjoying a second wind career-wise as of late, is on the money as usual, but it would have been nice to have seen a few more layers of texture added to his character in the unpolished script, which gets hung up on family drama tropes every time it starts to build a bit of momentum. Messina shows major promise as a director, and with a couple more films under his belt could be great.

Night Moves

Also screening on the last night of the festival across town at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas was Kelly Reichardt’s latest, Night MovesJesse Eisenberg (in his second festival appearance, the first being The Double) and Dakota Fanning play Josh and Dena, a pair of environmental activists who, with the help of an ex-Marine accomplice named Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), blow up a dam in Oregon, and then wade through the dark world of paranoia, guilt, and suspicion that descends upon them following their extreme, costly actions.

Reichardt, lauded for minimalist, meditative pictures like Meek’s Cutoff and Wendy and Lucy, has fashioned a dark psychological thriller in Night Moves, her most accessible film to date. She still gives her actors a football field’s worth of emotional ground to cover with understated, revealing long takes and deceptively deep dialogue, but compared to how hushed her previous efforts were, this film seems to move along briskly. Some of the night time photography is bone-chillingly gorgeous, and this may be Reichardt’s most visually refined film to date, but the script slips off the edge in its third act, providing little food for thought. Still, we’re still left with the thick, atmospheric imagery and fine performances to chew on, which is more than enough to warrant a watch.

I Origins the latest effort from Another Earth director Mike Cahill, takes an excellent, heady sci-fi premise and mucks up the execution, resulting in a disappointingly half-hearted picture. We follow Dr. Ian Gray (Michael Pitt), a young scientist with an obsessive  fascination with eyes and their origins. His life’s work is to end the debate between scientists and religion by proving that eyes are a product of evolutionary development, not Intelligent Design. He takes close-up photos of people’s eyes regularly, and meets the love of his life (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) at a party while using the eye-photo line as an icebreaker. She’s a spiritual soul, though, and isn’t on the same page when it comes to his work in the lab, unlike his lab assistant (Brit Marling), who with Ian unlocks a mystery that could change the world.

I Origins

Far-fetched isn’t always a bad thing, especially when it comes to sci-fi; unbelievable plots can work as long as the drama is convincing and the filmmaker convinces us to invest in the characters’ plight. Cahill falls short in this regard, beating the spirituality vs. pragmatism drum too loudly stretching the one-dimensional characters so thin you begin to wonder where the story is going with all the scientific jibber-jabber and rudimentary existential debates. After the film’s predictable, overwrought, dud of an ending, it’s unclear what exactly the film is trying to say. What’s the big idea? There’s some poignant statement or metaphor buried underneath the piles of pseudoscience jargon and fleeting moments of serendipity, but Cahill fails to mine it.

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SFIFF57: Jeremy Ambers and Ben Davis Talk ‘Impossible Light’ http://waytooindie.com/interview/sfiff57-jeremy-ambers-and-ben-davis-talk-impossible-light/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/sfiff57-jeremy-ambers-and-ben-davis-talk-impossible-light/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=20573 Jeremy Ambers’ directorial debut, Impossible Light, chronicles the conception, design, and construction of The Bay Lights, the world’s most massive light sculpture. Ben Davis, the founder of Illuminate the Arts and the man who dreamed up the gargantuan project, teamed with artist Leo Villareal and a group of dedicated workers to string LED lights up and […]]]>

Jeremy Ambers’ directorial debut, Impossible Light, chronicles the conception, design, and construction of The Bay Lights, the world’s most massive light sculpture. Ben Davis, the founder of Illuminate the Arts and the man who dreamed up the gargantuan project, teamed with artist Leo Villareal and a group of dedicated workers to string LED lights up and down the suspension cables of San Francisco’s utilitarian Bay Bridge, creating a giant, abstract, illuminated canvas for randomly generated light patterns to dance across.

The road to completion for The Bay Lights was fraught with challenges, however, from acquiring permits, to raising money, to battling the elements, and Ambers encountered roadblocks himself while capturing remarkable affair, filming the process and funding the film all by himself. (You can’t get much more indie than that!) Impossible Light is an inspiring story of an impossible dream made real through passion and perseverance.

In our video interview below, Ambers and Davis share their thoughts on why San Francisco is the perfect city for The Bay Lights, Leo Villareal’s expressionistic style, making decisions based on love, how the documentary itself helped the project to succeed, how the lights have affected the San Francisco community, and more.

Impossible Light screens May 5th (Exploratorium at Pier 15), May 7th (New People Cinema) as a part of SFIFF57, the Roxie Theater on May 8th for a one-night screening, and a weeklong run at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland starting May 9, with three screenings per night.

Video by Adam Clay

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SFIFF57: Hellion, The Sacrament, Kumiko, Ping Pong Summer http://waytooindie.com/news/sfiff57-hellion-the-sacrament-kumiko-ping-pong-summer/ http://waytooindie.com/news/sfiff57-hellion-the-sacrament-kumiko-ping-pong-summer/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=20509 The 57th annual San Francisco International film festival has been taking over Japantown in the Sundance Kabuki Cinema and New People Cinema, and the lineup of films so far hasn’t disappointed, with domestic and international gems from all genres. We’re only a few days into the festival, and there have already been plenty of highlights that […]]]>

The 57th annual San Francisco International film festival has been taking over Japantown in the Sundance Kabuki Cinema and New People Cinema, and the lineup of films so far hasn’t disappointed, with domestic and international gems from all genres. We’re only a few days into the festival, and there have already been plenty of highlights that you should keep your eye on in the near future (most of these selections have secured domestic distribution), plus one major disappointment.

Let’s start off with the bad news. Part of the festival’s Late Show program, Ti West’s found footage horror flick The Sacrament gathers the usual suspects West pals around with on indie film sets (Joe Swanberg, Amy Seimetz, Kate Lyn Sheil, AJ Bowen) and throws them into a secluded encampment called Eden Parish, constructed and inhabited by people who have a creepily cultish way about them. The film is presented via two cameras our protagonists (Vice journalists) bring to the jungled community to film a profile piece.

Though brimming with talent as is per usual for the merry bunch of indie darlings, their gifts are wasted, as the film can’t avoid the pitfalls of the found footage format, breaking the docu-style illusion when it begins to look too much like a narrative feature in its overblown third act. West, ever the inventive filmmaker, does some interesting things with the limitations the camera, building a decent amount of suspense as the journalists sneak around the open grounds of Eden Parish, but The Sacrament is a disappointment coming off the heels of modern horror powerhouses The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers.

Hellion

It’s clean sailing from here. Hellion (above), a gritty family drama by Kat Candler set in dusty Southeast Texas, flaunts an excellent cast of screen vets and new blood alike, all of whom deliver the goods in a big way. The film stars Aaron Paul as a widower trying desperately to get his act together as his oldest son (impressive newcomer Josh Wiggins), the titular hellion who’s obsessed with metal, motocross, and vandalizing their tiny town with his punk friends, begins to drag his younger brother (Deke Garner) into his world of dangerous hijinks. The town catches wind of the family’s chaotic home situation, calling child services and threatening to tear them apart forever.

The film is subtle and tasteful, and also has a killer metal soundtrack that jibes well with the dirt-road, tin can setting. Wiggins, who Candler discovered in a Youtube video, is as talented a child actor as I’ve seen in quite some time, especially for a first-timer. His potential is scary. Paul fits into the fatherly role quite well considering he’s coming off of the most definitive role of his career as a hellion himself in Breaking Bad. Juliette Lewis is surprisingly cast in a subdued role as the aunt of the troubled boys, and it’s a bit of a delight to see her excel in such an un-cartoonish role.

A funny and surprisingly dark odyssey movie, David Zellner’s Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter has an incredibly unique premise that never loses its novelty or charm. Rinko Kikuchi plays Kumiko, a Japanese office worker who finds a VHS copy of Fargo and sets out on a journey to the American city in search of the briefcase full of cash Steve Buscemi buries in the snow in the Coen’s classic, which Kumiko for some reason believes to be a documentary of some sort. Rinko is charming as Kumiko, the certifiable sociopathic, unstoppable treasure hunter, and the film, while comedic, also explores mental instability in a meditative, eerie fashion.

Ping Pong Summer

On a much, much lighter note, Ping Pong Summer (above) by Michael Tully  is an entertaining time warp for anyone raised in the taste-deficient 80s-90s era of Nickelodeon, B-boys, ICEEs, and arcades. Set in 1985, the film follows young Rad Miracle (Marcello Conte) who, while on a family vacation at a beachside resort town, meets his best friend, the girl of his dreams, the biggest bully in the neighborhood, and a former ping pong legend (Susan Sarandon). Wave after wave of ’90s nostalgia washed over me throughout the film, and I found myself mouthing “wow” constantly at how authentically cheesy the props, costumes, and sets are. Perfect watching conditions: afternoon on a school day, eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch, wearing neon shorts and L.A. Gears.

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Jeremy Irons to Receive Peter J. Owens Award at SFIFF 2014 http://waytooindie.com/news/jeremy-irons-to-receive-peter-j-owens-award-at-sfiff-2014/ http://waytooindie.com/news/jeremy-irons-to-receive-peter-j-owens-award-at-sfiff-2014/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=20167 The San Francisco Film Society announced today that Jeremy Irons will be the recipient of the Peter J. Owens Award for excellence in acting at the 57th annual San Francisco International Film Festival. Previous recipients include Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall, Sean Penn, Nicholas Cage, and more. The film legend (The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Lion King, Dead Ringers) will receive the […]]]>

The San Francisco Film Society announced today that Jeremy Irons will be the recipient of the Peter J. Owens Award for excellence in acting at the 57th annual San Francisco International Film Festival. Previous recipients include Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall, Sean Penn, Nicholas Cage, and more.

The film legend (The French Lieutenant’s WomanThe Lion KingDead Ringers) will receive the award at the Film Society Awards Night, where Richard Linklater (Founder’s Directing Award), screenwriter Stephen Gaghan (Kanbar Screenwriting Award), and the recipient of the George Gund III Craft of Cinema Award will also be honored.

From the SFFS press release:

“Jeremy Irons is the perfect choice to receive the Peter J. Owens Award, SFIFF’s top honor for the actor’s craft,” said Noah Cowan, Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society. “He embodies the international spirit that defines our festival, and the phenomenal work he has done on screens big and small is an inspiration. We are thrilled to pay tribute to an actor whose range, depth and wonderful sense of humor have delighted lovers of world cinema for decades.”

Irons will also be honored at An Evening with Jeremy Irons at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, Wednesday April 307:30 pm. A screening of a film featuring one of his iconic performances will follow an onstage interview and a selection of clips from his impressive career.  

Stay tuned for more news and coverage coming out of the festival.

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SFFS Announces 2014 Documentary Film Fund Winners http://waytooindie.com/news/sffs-announces-2014-documentary-film-fund-winners/ http://waytooindie.com/news/sffs-announces-2014-documentary-film-fund-winners/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=19796 The San Francisco Film Society has announced the winners for their 2014 Documentary Film Fund with awards totaling more than $75,000. All films are in postproduction, and since its inception the fund has awarded over $300,000 to filmmakers with non-fiction documentary films. Previous winners include Cutie and the Boxer, American Promise, and Narco Cultura. Below are this year’s […]]]>

The San Francisco Film Society has announced the winners for their 2014 Documentary Film Fund with awards totaling more than $75,000. All films are in postproduction, and since its inception the fund has awarded over $300,000 to filmmakers with non-fiction documentary films. Previous winners include Cutie and the BoxerAmerican Promise, and Narco Cultura.

Below are this year’s winners, with descriptions provided by SFFS.

The Joneses, Moby Longinotto
$30,627

The Joneses is a portrait of Jheri, a 73-year-old transgender trailer park matriarch, who lives in bible belt Mississippi. Reconciled with her family after years of estrangement, and now living with two of her sons, Jheri embarks on a new path to reveal her true self to her grandchildren. Will their family bonds survive?

Romeo is Bleeding (pictured), Jason Zeldes
$22,500

Donte Clark’s poetic voice was honed on the violent street corners of a struggling city. Yet rather than succumb to the pressures of Richmond, CA, Clark uses his artistic perspective to save his city from itself.

$22,500

In a new America where the promise of education, safety and shelter are in jeopardy, three Detroit men fight to build something lasting for themselves and future generations.

“We are thrilled to continue our tradition of supporting innovative documentary films that feature compelling stories told through a strong visual aesthetic,” said Michele Turnure-Salleo, director of Filmmaker360. “This round of winners has captivated us with their striking and charismatic characters, and we can’t wait to see the finished films and experience the unique and fascinating worlds their subjects inhabit. Our deepest thanks go to Jennifer Battat, whose generous support has been critical to the growing success of the Documentary Film Fund.”

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Patrick Epino Talks Becoming an Awesome Asian Bad Guy http://waytooindie.com/interview/patrick-epino-talks-becoming-an-awesome-asian-bad-guy/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/patrick-epino-talks-becoming-an-awesome-asian-bad-guy/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=19505 Awesome Asian Bad Guys, which screened a couple of weeks ago at CAAMFest, is an action-comedy that follows The National Film Society, a couple of Asian Los Angeles Youtubers (Patrick Epino and Stephen Dypiangco), as they attempt to track down and assemble the baddest, scariest, most awesome Asian bad guys from the ’80s and ’90s […]]]>

Awesome Asian Bad Guys, which screened a couple of weeks ago at CAAMFest, is an action-comedy that follows The National Film Society, a couple of Asian Los Angeles Youtubers (Patrick Epino and Stephen Dypiangco), as they attempt to track down and assemble the baddest, scariest, most awesome Asian bad guys from the ’80s and ’90s like Al Leong (Die Hard) and Yuji Okumoto (The Karate Kid, Part II) to kick ass and carry out a dangerous rescue mission. An homage to badass Asian actors that highlights them as the stars of the show and not throwaway two-bit villains, Awesome Asian Bad Guys is a fun, silly comedy that should tickle the fancy of anyone who fondly remembers guys like Dante Basco (Rufio, Hook). The film also stars Randall Park, Tamlyn Tomita, and Aaron Takahashi.

Co-director Patrick Epino chatted with us at CAAMFest about the National Film Society, tracking down the bad guys in real life, filming action for the first time, his experience at CAAMFest, and more.

Awesome Asian Bad Guys

The films at CAAMFest showed the Asian American experience in many ways, but your film views it from a different angle, one that’s more light-hearted and funny.

Patrick: We’ve done our fair share of films…We just wanted to make something kind of fun. The story of the National Film Society is that Steve and I were both in odd places. I’d made a feature that was this dark, brooding comedy. Stephen made a lot of serious short films. Things weren’t super awesome, and we met at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. We both had an interest in building audiences, new media, stuff like that. I had this idea, he had one, we combined them, and we decided to work together and become the National Film Society, which is different from both of our ideas. He wanted to use online video, I wanted to create this Wu-Tang Clan of filmmakers and really leverage audiences and networks and stuff. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s helped us to get to where we are. We started doing goofy online videos, and it translated into Awesome Asian Bad Guys. We still love all kinds of films and still have ideas for different types of projects, but for NFS and Awesome Asian Bad Guys, it’s like, let’s just make this as fun as we can.

You study film and Asian-Am stuff, and you hear about the Long Duck Dongs, the Mickey Rooney character in Breakfast at Tiffany’s…all these marginalized, emasculated Asian characters. What about the bad guys?! Those are the ones I remember! They’re awesome!

So it was as simple as that. They’re awesome!

Patrick: Yeah, it was awesome! I remember Al Leong as a kid. That guy scared me.

So you got this idea for this project about these Asian bad guys. Did you then pursue the actors?

Patrick: When we first made this Youtube video in 2011 called Awesome Asian Bad Guys, we hypothesized about making, like, The Expendables but with Asian bad guys. In maybe May 2012 we thought about making it and we brought Phil Yu, Angry Asian Man, on as an executive producer. We brought on Milton Liu as our writer, a funny, smart-ass-y kind of guy. He introduced us to Diana Williams, a great producer, super talented. With the actors…we’d shot a couple online videos with Aaron Takahashi and Dante Basco. Tamlyn Tomita knew of us. We went to Aaron, Randall (Park), just asking them to be in it. They were totally down, so we got some momentum from  that. We had contacted Al Leong through facebook for our original video, and he was super cool. It was a lot of fun hunting those guys down.

Randall is hilarious.

Patrick: Randall’s amazing. There were a couple times on set where that guy would just go. It was just him–everyone else had left the scene, and he’d so some funny things. He did this web series called “The Food” that’s just the best.

Was the film pretty scripted or was there some ad-lib involved?

Patrick: It was mostly scripted. Everyone threw in things here and there on different takes, but for the most part it’s what was in Milton’s script. We would have loved to play with more improv stuff, but we were always on the fly.

I was actually surprised at how good the action scenes were in the film.

Patrick: We were looking for fight coordinators and we ended up with this guy, Sunny Sun. He’s amazingly talented. He was a stuntman on The Expendables, he’s choreographed stuff for The Avengers. He brought some of his guys on to do the fights, and it was a pleasure working with him. So much fun. I thought I was a 90’s indie film guy. I wanted to make a Jarmusch film or a Kiarostami film or something, you know? I never learned how to choreograph action, but then I learned I don’t have to! There are people to do that for me!

Awesome Asian Bad Guys

There’s a great child actor in the film. She gets to participate in a lot of the action scenes as well, doing cartwheels and stuff! Where did you find her?

Patrick: We held some auditions for a girl who could do action. She’s a martial artist named Jasmin Currey. Her whole family are, like, black belts in Tae Kwon Do. She’s the sweetest kid, and it was great to work with her. I was like, oh man, this girl could kick my ass! She’s training right now, trying to perfect everything she does as a martial artist and potentially a stuntwoman.

Was the plan all along to string the webisodes together as a film?

Patrick: No, I don’t think so. The script was written, and it was a pretty long script. 60 pages. I guess it was kind of written as a TV show, with act breaks, but when it became and option to screen in festivals, we though we should make it a full piece. The vlog interjections in the film were done after the fact to act as transitions that contextualize what we do for people who don’t know who the hell we are. (laughs)

How has your experience at CAAMFest been?

Patrick: Great. I’m from the Bay, so it’s been a real pleasure. Friends and family came to our screening last night.

Who are some working Asian American filmmakers you particularly enjoy?

Patrick: I really like J.P. Chan’s stuff. I’m a big fan of Ham Tran’s work. I met him in ’04 in Toronto for his short film, The Anniversary. There are a lot of people doing good stuff online. I’m excited to see what the Wong Fu guys do with the money that they raised on Indiegogo. I have no idea what their script is about, so I’m excited for that.

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57th Annual SFIFF Announces Full Program http://waytooindie.com/news/57th-annual-sfiff-announces-full-program/ http://waytooindie.com/news/57th-annual-sfiff-announces-full-program/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=19566 Today, the San Francisco Film Society (and its new executive director Noah Cowan) announced the full lineup for the 57th annual San Francisco International Film Festival, running from April 24-May 8. Consisting of 169 films from 56 countries, the festival looks to present a broad selection of both domestic and world cinema features. 200 filmmakers […]]]>

Today, the San Francisco Film Society (and its new executive director Noah Cowan) announced the full lineup for the 57th annual San Francisco International Film Festival, running from April 24-May 8. Consisting of 169 films from 56 countries, the festival looks to present a broad selection of both domestic and world cinema features. 200 filmmakers and special guests are expected to attend.

Opening up the festival will be Hossein Amini’s The Two Faces of January, a Greece-set suspense-thriller starring Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, and Oscar Isaac. Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto will serve as the fest’s Centerpiece Film, while actor Chris Messina’s directorial debut Alex of Venice, starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Don Johnson, will wrap up the festival’s 15-day run.

Receiving awards at this year’s festival will be Pixar’s John Lasseter (2014 George Gund Craft III of Cinema Award), Richard Linklater (Founders Directing Award), screenwriter Stephen Gaghan (Kanbar Award), and film historian David Thomson (Mel Novikoff Award), with more to be announced.

Some standouts: Kelly Reichardt’s (Meek’s Cutoff) environmental activist drama Night Moves starring Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, and Peter Sarsgaard, looks to be another excellent entry into the acclaimed indie filmmaker’s oeuvre;  The Skeleton Twins, a sibling drama starring SNL favorites Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, who will be in attendance at the fest; Young & Beautiful, a drama from Francois Ozon (Swimming Pool) billed as “a portrait in four seasons and four songs”; and Boyhood, Linklater’s unprecedented coming-of-age story filmed over 12 years.

For the full schedule, check out sffs.org

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SFIFF Announces Opening and Closing Night Films http://waytooindie.com/news/sfiff-announces-opening-and-closing-night-films/ http://waytooindie.com/news/sfiff-announces-opening-and-closing-night-films/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=19447 The 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival, which runs from April 24-May 8, has announced its opening night film as The Two Faces of January, starring Oscar Isaac, Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst, which will be making it’s North American premiere at the fest. Closing out the festival will be Alex of Venice, the directorial […]]]>

The 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival, which runs from April 24-May 8, has announced its opening night film as The Two Faces of January, starring Oscar Isaac, Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst, which will be making it’s North American premiere at the fest. Closing out the festival will be Alex of Venice, the directorial debut of actor Chris Messina starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Don Johnson.

“We are delighted to offer these exceptional films by first-time directors who are best known for their work in other areas of the film world,” said San Francisco Film Society Executive Director Noah Cowan. “Championing talented artists who aren’t afraid of taking risks is at the heart of the Film Society’s mission and our ongoing support of filmmakers around the world. I can’t think of a better pair of films to kick off and wrap up what is going to be an amazing festival.”

The Two Faces of January

The Two Faces of January (above) marks a directorial debut as well, in this caseof screenwriter Hossein Amini (Drive). Set in Greece, the thriller sees Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst play a couple who fall into a dangerous dilemma with an Athens tour guide (Oscar Isaac) following a murderous incident at their hotel.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars in Chris Messina’s Alex of Venice as a workaholic environmental lawyer whose husband (Messina) is fed up with being a stay-at-home father and decides to stay elsewhere. Winstead is left at home with her son and actor father (Don Johnson) and is forced to hold the family together all by herself.

For more festival info, visit sffs.org

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CAAMFest: How to Fight, Grace Lee Boggs, Cold Eyes http://waytooindie.com/news/caamfest-how-to-fight-grace-lee-boggs-cold-eyes/ http://waytooindie.com/news/caamfest-how-to-fight-grace-lee-boggs-cold-eyes/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=19119 How to Fight in Six Inch Heels Last Thursday night at San Francisco’s beautiful Castro theater, CAAMFest 2014 kicked with a silly-fun romantic comedy to set the tone for the rest of the 11-day fest. With a ritzy red carpet and droves of sharply-dressed attendees, there was ample excitement in the air for what is […]]]>

How to Fight in Six Inch Heels

Last Thursday night at San Francisco’s beautiful Castro theater, CAAMFest 2014 kicked with a silly-fun romantic comedy to set the tone for the rest of the 11-day fest. With a ritzy red carpet and droves of sharply-dressed attendees, there was ample excitement in the air for what is one of the most important film festivals in the country for the Asian American community.

CAAM executive director Stephen Gong and festival director Masashi Niwano thanked the packed house of festival-goers and prepped them for what this year’s festival has in store (check out our festival preview for more). They then introduced director Ham Tran to the stage, a long time friend of CAAMFest who’s been showing his films at the festival for over a decade. This year he brought How to Fight in Six Inch Heels, an Asian-American production that was a box office hit in Vietnam, where the majority of the movie is set. With him were his cast and crew, who participated in a Q&A following the film.

Click to view slideshow.

Following a short film centered on the evolution of the real-life career of  How to Fight star Kathy Uyen, the feature film got underway. It follows a pretty, neurotic Vietnamese American girl working as an assistant to a domineering French designer in the New York fashion industry. With her fiancé working abroad in Vietnam, she begins to suspect he’s cheating with one of three models working with him when she spies a pair of red heels in his apartment during a Skype call. Determined to smoke out the would be skank, she flies out to Saigon, leaving her best friend George to cover her ass at work. When she arrives, her fashion-god friend Danny glams her up with a makeover and shoves her into the Saigon fashion world where she inadvertently becomes a bit of a runway phenomenon. Now in close proximity to the models in suspect, she’s surprised when she finds herself developing friendships with each of them.

This is light material with cutesy humor running throughout. The film is well crafted and should please general audiences, bouncing between Vietnamese and English dialogue smoothly. Uyen is strong, but it feels like we’ve seen this same quirky, romantically naive character before (The Devil Wears Prada being the obvious example). Every note she hits, while in tune, feels too familiar, which points to the film’s biggest weakness. How to Fight in Six Inch Heels derives too much from American cinema, hitting every rom-com trope and story beat in the book. Many of the characters feel overblown (the gay men especially), but most of the performances hit the mark.

American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs

American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs

A documentary that matches its subject’s witty, piercing intellect in its style and form, American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs chronicles the philosophies and staggering accomplishments of Boggs, a Chinese American who dedicated most of her 95 years on this earth to empowering and inspiring the African American community. Director Grace Lee (no relation) uses archival footage, interviews with Boggs and several of her colleagues and friends, and clever vignettes explaining the core principles of two of her major influences, Hegel and Marx, to bring to light not just Boggs’ lifetime milestones, but her tendencies and complexities as a person.

Detroit is the setting, as Boggs calls it home and has played a big part in working to restore the city in the wake of the industrial fallout. Boggs’ most defining characteristic is her hunger to challenge and open the minds of everyone she meets. In the film’s most memorable moment, she sits with Danny Glover in her home and poses that when people talk about “quality education”, what they’re really talking about is black students aspiring to be more like white students. Glover is floored, rendered speechless, and it’s at once hilarious and inspirational. Though Detroit is a shell of its former self, activists like Boggs help to remind us of where its fallen from, why it fell, and where we can take it, if we’re willing to put in the effort and thought. A terrific film.

Cold Eyes

Cold Eyes

A remake of Yau Nai Hoi’s Eye in the Sky, Cold Eyes, by co-directors Ui-seok Jo and Byung-seo Kim, is a crime thriller set in Seoul that pits a group of undercover surveillance cops against a gaggle of gangsters, with the good guys trying to smoke out the criminals’ mysterious leader. Our hero is Yoon Joo (Han Hyo Ju), a new recruit who has a prodigious photographic memory (if she can clear her head enough to access it) who’s brought in and mentored by veteran Detective Hwang (Sol Kyung Gu). Earning the codename “Piglet”, she joins the team in identifying suspects on the street (while retaining their anonymity, of course). Leading the baddies is the cerebral, deadly James (Jung Woo Sung), who overseas the heists from tall rooftops and viciously dispatches of weak links in the operation without hesitation. The two parties are on a collision course, and as Piglet’s skills help the team close in on James and his crew, he begins to fight back, showing them exactly what he’s capable of.

Jo and Kim have crafted a worthy remake, a tense, riveting look at the classic cops vs. robbers scenario with a focus on advanced technology and modern stratagems. Watching Hwang maneuver his team through the Seoul streets like a chess mastermind is a treat, but it can wear thin. Sometimes the film gets carried away with using video game-like CG street maps that lay out the team’s positions in the city, which serves its function but feels like a bit of a cheat at times. Still, the on-foot, shadowy pursuits are heightened by the public arena, with each of the players moving through the environments swiftly but without looking suspicious. It’s incredibly gripping stuff, and the surprisingly deep character arcs for the mains (the supporting players seem half-baked) makes Cold Eyes’ characters more relatable than those in your average Hollywood heist picture.

 

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Love & Demons http://waytooindie.com/review/movie/love-demons/ http://waytooindie.com/review/movie/love-demons/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=18575 Love and Demons opens with San Francisco-based writer-director J.P. Allen, playing a demon named “Mister D.”, addressing the camera directly, delivering a chilling monologue, assessing the lives of mortals like you and I from a devil’s-eye view. “Let me tell you a little story. The story of your life.” It’s a striking, statement for Allen […]]]>

Love and Demons opens with San Francisco-based writer-director J.P. Allen, playing a demon named “Mister D.”, addressing the camera directly, delivering a chilling monologue, assessing the lives of mortals like you and I from a devil’s-eye view. “Let me tell you a little story. The story of your life.” It’s a striking, statement for Allen to open up his film with, and he does it with utter confidence. He’s asking us to participate in the experience up front, and the frankness of it all sets the stage for an inventive, devilishly playful romantic comedy that breaks the mold and overcomes its paltry budget.

We follow an unnamed couple (Chris Pflueger and Lucia Frangione) who live in San Francisco and are under a lot of domestic and financial stress. Addressing us directly, just as Mister D. did, the man tells us of hallucinations he’s been having lately, of another man (Mister D.) stalking him in his home who asks him to meet in the park. (Allen places himself in the blurred out background of the shot behind the man, a nice touch.)

Love and Demons

Once Mister D. convinces the man that he isn’t a hallucination at all, he begins to manipulate him into turning against his lover, planting seeds of suspicion and doubt. The woman gets a demon of her own, played by Arnica Skulstad Brown, who counters Mister D’s scheme by feeding the woman’s paranoia as well. Watching the demons prod at their respective pawns and try to outmaneuver each other with their silver tongues is entirely entertaining, and the actors clearly relish the opportunity to be open and playful with the material.

Aside from Allen, whose delivery is spot-on (he’s clearly loving every minute of screen time), the actors aren’t going to wow anyone with their performances. But the great thing is that the surrealist, cheeky material doesn’t require any more of them. Allen is a filmmaker of conviction and bravado, using simple editing tricks and flourishes (like quick flashes of a gun being cocked or a filter that floods the screen in red and makes the actors look hand-drawn) with complete confidence. He’s having fun, and it’s hard not to be won over by his enthusiasm.

Love and Demons

The plot isn’t constructed particularly well, but the film’s style oozes and masks it well. The film’s final standoff, which is eluded to early on, is probably the least effective moment, disappointingly. Though the film’s exuberant editing is a treat, the actual camerawork–the movement, the framing–leaves a lot to be desired.

Sexy, mischievous, and provocative, Love and Demons is a singular moviegoing experience in that it engages us directly, breaking the 4th wall and creating a sense of immediacy and interactivity typically reserved for the theater. It’s hard to pull off on screen, but Allen infuses the film with so much attitude that he makes it work. This is a San Francisco production from top to bottom and is playing for a one week run starting tonight at the city’s Opera Plaza Cinema. Don’t miss it if you’re in the area.

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CAAMFest 2014 Kicks Off Tomorrow Night In San Francisco http://waytooindie.com/news/caamfest-2014-kicks-off-tomorrow-night-in-san-francisco/ http://waytooindie.com/news/caamfest-2014-kicks-off-tomorrow-night-in-san-francisco/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=19070 CAAMFest, formerly known as the San Francisco International Asian Film Festival, kicks off tomorrow night, Thursday, March 13th, and runs through March 23rd. Presented by the Center for Asian American Media, the festival pays tribute to pioneers of Asian cinema while also providing a platform for emerging Asian filmmakers to showcase their new projects. With […]]]>

CAAMFest, formerly known as the San Francisco International Asian Film Festival, kicks off tomorrow night, Thursday, March 13th, and runs through March 23rd. Presented by the Center for Asian American Media, the festival pays tribute to pioneers of Asian cinema while also providing a platform for emerging Asian filmmakers to showcase their new projects. With Asians and Asian Americans being woefully underrepresented in all forms of media, the festival gives much needed exposure to the Asian cinematic perspective.

Opening Night, Centerpiece, Closing Night, and Special Presentations

The fest kicks off at the Castro Theater with the North American premiere of How to Fight in Six Inch Heels, a Vietnamese box office hit that’s been compared to The Devil Wears Prada. After a post-screening Q&A with director Ham Tran and his cast and crew, the festivities will continue at the Asian Art Museum for the Opening Night Gala.

The festival has not one, but two centerpiece films this year. American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, by director Grace Lee, chronicles the life of Grace Lee Boggs, the 98-year-0ld feminist and social activist. Also being highlighted is a film on the other side of the spectrum entirely: Cold Eyes is a South Korean crime thriller that had great success overseas.

Closing out the festival is Delano Manongs, which will be screening in the East Bay at the New Parkway theater in Oakland, a first for the festival. The doc follows the story of Larry Itliong, a Filipino American labor organizer who spearheaded strikes for farmers on the west coast.

Other festival highlights:

  • Spotlight on Grace Lee
  • Retrospective on filmmakers and Dharamshala International Film Festival directors Ritu and Tenzing
  • A Run Run Shaw tribute
  • Out of the Vaults, a showcase of two films from Joseph Sunn Jue’s Grandview Film Company
  • Memories to Light 2.0, an exploration of Asian America through home movies

Directions In Sound and Superawesome Launch

The folks at CAAMFest has always been known to throw the biggest, coolest festival parties and events around, and they aren’t slouching this year. Directions in Sound is a live music program showcasing music acts from Korea, Vietnam, and the Bay Area, and this year CAAM is presenting two live concerts: “Here Comes Treble”, an all-female show, and “Korean Showcase”, consisting of all Korean bands.

My most anticipated event is the “Superawesome Launch Featuring Awesome Asian Bad Guys”, which will be held at the Oakland Museum of California. Featuring live music, an Asian-focused Off the Grid, the event also includes a screening of Awesome Asian Bad Guys, an action-comedy by Patrick Epino and Stephen Dypiangco that stars old Asian actors who you’ve seen play evil dudes in movies for years.

For more info, visit caamfest.com 

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Arie Posin Talks Seeing Double in ‘The Face of Love’ http://waytooindie.com/interview/arie-posin-talks-seeing-double-in-the-face-of-love/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/arie-posin-talks-seeing-double-in-the-face-of-love/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=19011 In Arie Posin’s The Face of Love, we follow a widow named Nikki (Annette Bening) who meets a man named Tom (Ed Harris) who looks, impossibly, exactly like her dead husband. Memories of her husband come rushing back to her as she and Tom start a relationship. Is she falling in love with Tom, or falling […]]]>

In Arie Posin’s The Face of Love, we follow a widow named Nikki (Annette Bening) who meets a man named Tom (Ed Harris) who looks, impossibly, exactly like her dead husband. Memories of her husband come rushing back to her as she and Tom start a relationship. Is she falling in love with Tom, or falling in love with her husband all over again? The film also stars Robin Williams and Jess Weixler.

Director/co-writer Posin chatted with us about working with Bening and Harris, how the film is inspired by his mother, paying homage to Vertigo, making Los Angeles romantic again, and more.

The Face of Love opens this Friday in San Francisco and is playing now in select cities.

The Face of Love

You have two incredible collaborators manning your lead roles. As a director and storyteller, what was it like having such seasoned talents at your disposal?

Arie: It was a gift, a joy. The summer that I spent editing this movie was the best summer I’ve had maybe ever. It was a season of pure joy. On set they’re just so true and authentic, take after take. I feel like my job on set is to be kind of a firs line lie detector. Do I believe what I’m seeing? Do I believe the emotions? In the editing room, you can see that there were 5, 6, 7 takes that are all true and identical in their believability, but they’re also all subtly different. [Annette and Ed] are able to shade things and give you dimensions. It gives me such freedom to shape the movie. But at the same time, the hardest thing to do was to edit, because there are so many wonderful takes.

The story of how the idea for this story came to light is pretty remarkable. It came from your mother, correct?

Arie: Yeah. Years ago, a few years after my dad had passed away, my mother would come over to see me. She said words that are pretty similar to what Annette’s character says in the movie. She said, “A funny thing happened to me today. I was by the museum, in a cross walk on Wilshire Boulevard. I looked up and I saw a man coming towards me who looked like a perfect double of your father.” I said, “What did you do?” and she said, “It shocked me. He had a big smile on his face…and it felt so nice. It felt like it used to.” That’s the story that stuck with me and that I began to obsess, dream, and eventually write about.

I imagine going through something like that, you must feel a little bit crazy inside. What do you think the relationship is between sanity and love?

Arie: I think it’s different for everyone. My thought on it for this movie was, in a sense, that kind of love you have…you know, she spent 30 years with her husband, and she had him ripped away from her violently, tragically, just when they were at this stage where they’re thinking, “What are the two of us going to do together for the rest of our lives?” Seeing someone again who wakes up those feelings would be almost like an addiction. You get a taste, and you want more, despite yourself and despite the fact that it’s a transgressive relationship. It’s a compulsion, an obsession.

In terms of sanity, that was one of the biggest questions for me in writing the script and even throughout production. Annette’s falling in love through the course of the story, but she’s also falling back in love with her late husband. The question is always, she’s on this journey towards madness, but where is she at? How do we chart that? Is she crazy here, not crazy here? And it went back to the story with my mom, which became a real touchstone for us. The truth in that situation is that my mom wasn’t crazy, you know? She wasn’t imagining it. She saw this guy that looked like my dad, and it shook her to her core. I thought it was important that Nikki be sane, but as long as we could bear it. Once she goes mad, the audience becomes an observer of that. But to really participate, I thought it was important for her to be sane, then spiraling eventually into madness, but being able to hold that off as long as possible.

There are obvious similarities between the plot of your film and Vertigo.

Arie: Vertigo is one of my favorite movies. Hitchcock is unquestionably the master. There’s so much film grammar that we take for granted that was first proposed and best used by him. We all owe a lot to him. Having said that, when we wrote the first draft of the script, we set it in a museum because my mom’s story happened at the museum. The best cinematographers ask, “How few lights can I bring to a location in order to catch the naturalness of it?” That’s where the museum came out of. It didn’t come out of trying to do a take on a Vertigo type story. It all evolved from a very natural, organic place. But once we had the first draft and read it, it occurred to us: there’s a double in Vertigo, and there’s a double here. There’s a museum in both. A friend of mine saw the movie last week and said there was more than that. He said, “Well, she jumps into the bay in Vertigo, and she jumps into the ocean in your movie.” There are other movies that we love, and we had to check and make sure that if we were stealing, we we’d be stealing deliberately. (laughs) Another movie we talked about was The Double Life of Veronique. There’s a double there, as well, and it takes this metaphysical look at people who look alike. It’s been done many times.

Although this is a romantic movie, I wanted it to be infused with tension and suspense. The premise doesn’t naturally suggests suspense and tension, and yet I love so many of those movies in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s that were romantic but also had a bit of tension. And that’s certainly true of Vertigo.

The Face of Love

San Francisco plays a big part in Vertigo, and Los Angeles plays a big part in yours.

Arie: That was something that I was very much inspired by Vertigo about. San Francisco is so much a character in that movie. I’ve fallen in love with Los Angeles, and I wanted it to become a backdrop. I live here, and I feel the romantic side of the city. It’s beautiful, but I haven’t seen it in movies in a long, long time. That was my hope. There was actually a moment when a financier offered to make the movie with us if we shot it in Baton Rouge. We turned it down with hopes of staying in LA and using the city as the backdrop for our story, a character in itself.

What scene are you most proud of?

Arie: One of the most challenging scenes in the movie is the scene where the daughter comes in and discovers that her mom has been in a relationship with a man that looks like her father. From the moment Nikki keeps this secret, the audience is savvy enough to know that the secret is going to come out. The question is how and when, and who’s going to find out. On one level, you want to fulfill that expectation, but on the other hand also make it surprising. In that scene, you have three people in a very hot, violent confrontation, and what I wanted to convey was the three points of view. They’re each coming at it with their own point of view, and I wanted the audience to identify with all three of them. As we bounce around the scene, you know why each person is reacting the way they are, and you can see the story from their perspective. That was a real challenge in the writing, shooting, and editing.

It’s a big scene to carry on your shoulders. I had a director friend of mine say, “It takes some nerve to take potentially the biggest scene in your movie and put it on the shoulders of the least experienced actor in the scene.” On top of that, he said, “If that scene didn’t work, the movie would fall apart.” It was a really critical scene, and Jess (Weixler, who plays the daugher) played it so brilliantly, against two of the best actors that we have.

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SFIFF Announces Feature Film Competition Contenders http://waytooindie.com/news/sfiff-announces-feature-film-competition-contenders/ http://waytooindie.com/news/sfiff-announces-feature-film-competition-contenders/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=18918 The 57th annual San Francisco International Film Festival has announced the slates for its 2014 New Directors Prize and Golden Gate Award for Documentary Feature. The festival runs April 24-May 8. From the official press release: San Francisco, CA — The 57th San Francisco International Film Festival(April 24 – May 8) today announced the films in […]]]>

The 57th annual San Francisco International Film Festival has announced the slates for its 2014 New Directors Prize and Golden Gate Award for Documentary Feature. The festival runs April 24-May 8.

From the official press release:

San Francisco, CA — The 57th San Francisco International Film Festival(April 24 – May 8) today announced the films in competition for the New Directors Prize and the Golden Gate Award (GGA) contenders in the documentary feature category. SFIFF will award nearly $40,000 in total cash prizes this year. The New Directors Prize of $10,000 will be given to a narrative first feature that exhibits a unique artistic sensibility and deserves to be seen by as wide an audience as possible. The GGA documentary feature winner will receive $10,000 and the GGA Bay Area documentary feature winner will receive $5,000. A total of 25 countries are represented in this year’s competing feature films. Independent juries will select the winners, which will be announced at the Golden Gate Awards, Wednesday, May 7.

In conjunction with the announcement of the feature film competition slates, SFIFF has launched the sale of CineVoucher 10-packs. These discounted ticket bundles are now available for $120 for SFFS members and $140 for the general public. CineVouchers can be redeemed for film tickets beginning April 1 for SFFS members and April 4 for the general public. For more information and to purchase CineVoucher packages, visit sffs.org.

2014 NEW DIRECTORS PRIZE (NARRATIVE FEATURE) COMPETITION

The Amazing Catfish, Claudia Sainte-Luce, Mexico
Set in Guadalajara, The Amazing Catfish follows the quiet transformation of a solitary young woman informally adopted and absorbed into a rambunctious matriarchy in a state of crisis. Filmed by Claire Denis’ long-time cinematographer, Agnès Godard, Claudia Sainte-Luce’s debut feature, based loosely on events from her own life, blends a wry and moving naturalism with moments of inspired comedy.

The Blue Wave, Zeynep Dadak and Merve Kayan, Turkey/Germany/Netherlands/Greece
In this low-key, loosely plotted coming-of-age tale, a Turkish teenage girl wrestles with mood swings, unfocused restlessness, familial responsibilities, shifting friendships and romantic complications during a year of quiet tumult.

Difret, Zeresenay Berhane Mehari, Ethiopia
In a contemporary Ethiopian village, a 14-year-old girl is abducted from school in an attempt at forced marriage, a tradition in her community. Her efforts to free herself from a preordained future set off a legal firestorm in this powerful drama inspired by a true story that pits the law against an entrenched cultural mindset.

The Dune, Yossi Aviram, France/Israel
Delving into issues of identity and aging, this nuanced relationship drama portrays the personal crises faced by an aging gay cop in France and a younger Israeli man who is found on the beach, mute and without any identification.

History of Fear, Benjamín Naishtat, Argentina/France/Germany/Uruguay/Qatar
Paranoia runs rampant in this accomplished first feature, instilling a disorienting sense of dread in the viewer. Are the strange occurrences in an affluent Buenos Aires suburb evidence that the skittish residents are actually being targeted? Naishtat foregoes ready explanations or assurances in favor of foreboding suggestions in a film that is sprawling both in scope and implications but astonishingly exacting in its execution.

Manos Sucias, Josef Wladyka, USA/Colombia
A reluctant smuggler and his eager neophyte brother shepherd a dangerous narco-torpedo up the coast of Colombia, posing as fishermen. Paramilitary, guerrillas and hardscrabble desperation suffuse every inch of the jungle and waters that surround them, eager to separate the siblings from their only opportunity to escape the circumstances of their lives.

Of Horses and Men, Benedikt Erlingsson, Iceland/Germany
The relationship between man and beast is explored in a series of dryly humorous, linked episodes set in a small Icelandic hamlet. With its idiosyncratic portrait of village life, this remarkable debut features several unforgettable visual tableaux.

Salvation Army, Abdellah Taïa, Morocco
Adapting his autobiographical novel, director Abdellah Taïa tells the story of a gay Moroccan boy finding self-realization and personal strength within a society that shuns him. Shot by the brilliant Agnès Godard, the film takes the form of a diptych, telling the protagonist’s story in two different time periods and locales.

South Is Nothing, Fabio Mollo, Italy/France
Miriam Karlkvist took a well-deserved Shooting Star award at the Berlinale for her portrayal of an androgynous teenage girl negotiating life in a mafia-controlled town whose code of silence is destroying her family. Filmed in Reggio Calabria, this debut feature combines poetic realism with hard-edged cynicism.

Trap Street, Vivian Qu, China
What’s it like to be a 21st-century young adult-with access to gadgets, the Internet and other high-tech conveniences — within China’s surveillance state? First-time writer-director Vivian Qu’s taut, slow-building noir cleverly uses a simple boy-meets-girl tale to unearth a hidden world of government control lurking just under the surface.

White Shadow, Noaz Deshe, Italy/Germany/Tanzania
Inspired by news reports of the ongoing perils faced by albinos in Tanzania, Noaz Deshe’s film depicts a fractured and uneasy world, where superstition and the rule of law collide. An albino youth named Alias must learn to navigate through a culture not just unsympathetic to his condition, but actively violent towards it.

In addition to these 11 first features in competition, the New Directors section of SFIFF57 includes 14 out-of-competition films, which will be announced at the Festival’s press conference Tuesday, April 1.

2014 GOLDEN GATE AWARDS DOCUMENTARY FEATURE COMPETITION

Coast of Death, Lois Patiño, Spain
From the first entrancing images of trees being cut down in a fog-filled forest to the later blues of the sky and ocean fusing to erase the horizon, the always static frames of this documentary offer a meditative and prismatic view of Spain’s much storied and dangerous “Coast of Death.”

The Last Season, Sara Dosa, USA
Every September, over 200 seasonal workers, many of them Cambodian, Lao, Hmong, Mien and Thai, descend upon the tiny town of Chemult, Oregon, to search the woods for the rare Matsuke, a fungus highly prized in Japan. This documentary examines the bond between two of these hunters, an elderly Vietnam vet and a survivor of the Khmer Rouge, during one unusually hard season.

The Overnighters, Jesse Moss, USA
Unemployed men and women across America want new oil jobs in North Dakota, but housing is at a premium. Enter Pastor Jay Reinke. Despite protests from his own congregation, he opens up his church to “overnighters” — people in search of a second shot at the American Dream. The film expertly and compassionately depicts the conflict between locals, these new residents and Pastor Reinke’s controversial policy.

Return to Homs, Talal Derki, Syria/Germany
Winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at Sundance, this dispatch from the besieged Syrian city of Homs is both an elegy and a call to action. Filmed between 2011 and 2013, it presents a visceral eyewitness account of the conflict as a peaceful uprising descends into civil war and idealistic young men are transformed into revolutionary martyrs.

Soul Food Stories, Tonislav Hristov, Bulgaria/Finland
Muslim, Christian, Roma and atheist Communists live together peacefully in Satovcha, a Bulgarian village. They have differing theologies and politics, but are united by a love of food and the eternal mystery of being men and women. Beautifully shot, the film unfolds like a 10-course meal, with observations of food preparation and religious diversity laced into the recipes.

Stop the Pounding Heart, Roberto Minervini, USA/Italy/Belgium
This unique hybrid of documentary and narrative offers an evocative portrait of the quotidian lives of a devout young Christian goat farmer and the bullriding cowboy who lives nearby. As much a portrait of the East Texas town where they live as it is a relationship drama, the film combines ethnography and budding romance to compelling effect.

Three Letters from China, Luc Schaedler, Switzerland
Luc Schaedler’s latest work presents distinct and illuminating portraits of contemporary life in China. Attentively observing life on a parched farm, a grim industrial zone, a rural village and a booming megacity, the documentary expressively reveals the upheaval and uncertainty of a rapidly changing nation through the deeply engrossing stories of its people.

We Come as Friends, Hubert Sauper, France/Austria
South Sudan may have declared its independence but that hasn’t stopped multinationals and missionaries from laying claim to its natural resources and influencing its people’s religious beliefs. Employing intrepid techniques and striking visuals, documentarian Hubert Sauper (Darwin’s Nightmare) delivers another piercing examination of the human cost of neocolonialism that will provoke both thought and outrage.

In addition to these eight features by emerging filmmakers in the documentary competitions, the Golden Gate Awards also will include competitors in six other categories. These films will be announced at the Festival press conference on Tuesday, April 1.

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SFFS Announces Finalists for Spring 2014 Filmmaking Grants http://waytooindie.com/news/sffs-announces-finalists-for-spring-2014-filmmaking-grants/ http://waytooindie.com/news/sffs-announces-finalists-for-spring-2014-filmmaking-grants/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=18838 The San Francisco Film Society (SFFS) and Kenneth Rainin Foundation (KRF) have selected 15 finalists for the latest round of SFFS / KRF Filmmaking Grants; more than $300,000 will be awarded to one or more narrative feature film projects at any stage of production. SFFS / KRF Filmmaking Grants are awarded twice annually to narrative films that will have significant economic or […]]]>

The San Francisco Film Society (SFFS) and Kenneth Rainin Foundation (KRF) have selected 15 finalists for the latest round of SFFS / KRF Filmmaking Grants; more than $300,000 will be awarded to one or more narrative feature film projects at any stage of production. SFFS / KRF Filmmaking Grants are awarded twice annually to narrative films that will have significant economic or professional impact on the Bay Area filmmaking community. More than $2 million has been awarded since the launch of the Film Society’s flagship grant program in 2009. Winners of the spring 2014 SFFS / KRF Grants will be announced in late April.

Previous grant winners include Destin Cretton’s Short Term 12, Bay Area native Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station (which just took home the 2014 Film Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature), and Benh Zeitlin’s breakout Beasts of the Southern Wild.

“This is always an exciting time of year, when we get an early look at so many impressive projects at every stage of production,” said Michele Turnure-Salleo, director of Filmmaker360. “The talent on display here is inspiring, and it’s great to see so many new faces in the mix among the filmmakers we’ve worked with before. I’m particularly struck by the breadth of range in the subjects of these finalist projects, and it is immensely satisfying to see the increasingly international reach of our flagship grant program.”

SFFS / KRF Filmmaking Grants are made possible by the vision and generosity of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. In addition to the cash grant, recipients will receive various benefits through Filmmaker360, the San Francisco Film Society’s comprehensive and dynamic filmmaker services program. These benefits, customized to every individual production, can include one-on-one project consultations and project feedback, additional fundraising assistance, resource and service recommendations, and networking opportunities, among many others

SPRING 2014 SFFS / KRF FILMMAKING GRANT FINALISTS

Ad Inexplorata
Mark Elijah Rosenberg, director; Josh Penn, producer — postproduction
Captain Stanaforth is a NASA pilot alone on a one-way mission toward the unknown.

Afronauts (Pictured at top)
Frances Bodomo, writer/director — screenwriting
In March 1965, the U.S. and the USSR rush to get the first man on the moon. Thousands of miles away, the Zambia Space Academy hopes to enter the race with their “spacegirl” Matha Mwamba. Based on true events.

Betamax
Terrie Samundra, writer/director; Xandra Castleton, producer — packaging
With the release of the first home video camcorder, a teenage Sikh boy and a squatter punk girl become unlikely friends and filmmaking collaborators. It’s complicated, but so is London, which is at the brink of race riots and a punk youth uprising in the summer of 1976.

Black Metal
Kat Candler, writer/director — screenwriting
After a career spent mining his music from the shadows, the lead singer of a metal band and his family experience a chain reaction of turmoil following the murderous actions of a teenage fan.

Chickenshit
Jessica dela Merced, writer/director — screenwriting
In struggling Detroit, a lonely middle-school girl befriends a daring group of boys who adventure through the ruins of the once majestic city. With their help, she devises a plan to track down and capture the arsonists responsible for a recent string of fires, including the one that claimed the life of her father.

Clash
Mohamed Diab, writer/director — screenwriting
In the wake of the recent Egyptian military coup, Hayman — a jaded, claustrophobic revolutionary — is stuck in an overcrowded truck with clashing brotherhood and military supporters. Engulfed in hatred and violence, he must learn to reconcile his love for Egypt in order to survive.

Five Nights in Maine
Maris Curran, writer/director/producer; Carly Hugo, producer — production
A young African American man, reeling from the tragic loss of his wife, travels to rural Maine to seek answers from his estranged mother-in-law, who is herself confronting guilt and grief over her daughter’s death.

The Fixer
Ian Olds, cowriter/director; Paul Felten, cowriter; Caroline von Kuhn and Lily Whitsitt, producers — preproduction
An Afghan journalist is exiled from his war-torn country to a small bohemian community in Northern California. When he attempts to turn his menial job on the local police blotter into “Afghan-style” coverage of local crime, he gets drawn into the underworld of this small town — a shadow Northern California where sex is casual, true friendship is hard to come by, and an unfamiliar form of violence burbles up all around him.

IO
Clay Jeter, writer/director; Jason Berman, producer — production
One of the last survivors on a post-cataclysmic Earth, the idealistic daughter of a famous scientist races to find a cure for her poisoned world before the final Exodus shuttle abandons the planet forever.

Mobile Homes
Vladimir de Fontenay, cowriter/director; Danielle Lessovitz, cowriter — screenwriting
A young runaway must decide between defending the life she knows with the man she loves and protecting her young son from them both.

Oscillate Wildly
Travis Matthews, cowriter/director; Keith Wilson, cowriter/producer — packaging
When his disability check arrives much reduced, a hot-headed young gay man with cerebral palsy is forced to confront the disability he has let define his whole being.

The Other Kids
Chris Brown, director/producer — postproduction
The Other Kids takes a raw, intimate look into the struggles of six small-town teenagers as they push through their final days of high school.

Our Lady of the Snow
Tom Gilroy, writer/director — Screenwriting
When the Bishop decides to sell a gothic convent isolated in the snowy woods, the elderly nuns living there begin to have ecstatic visions, which he dismisses as faked. But as the visions spread to the convent’s teenaged atheist cook, inexplicable supernatural events follow, with no one sure of their cause.

Patti Cake$
Geremy Jasper, writer/director/composer; Dan Janvey, producer — packaging
Patricia Baccio, aka Patti Cake$, is a big girl with a big mouth and big dreams of rap superstardom. Stuck in Lodi, New Jersey, Patti battles an army of haters as she strives to break the mold and take over the rap game.

Snow the Jones
Alistair Banks Griffin, writer/director/producer — production
When teenage vagabond Lexi joins a traveling door-to-door sales crew, she discovers a world much darker than the one from which she was trying to escape.

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Eddie Mullins Talks Peak Oil, Cameras On Sticks, “Doomsdays” http://waytooindie.com/interview/eddie-mullins-talks-peak-oil-cameras-on-sticks-doomsdays/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/eddie-mullins-talks-peak-oil-cameras-on-sticks-doomsdays/#comments Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=18629 Dirty Fred (Justin Rice) and Bruho (Leo Fitzpatrick), believe that peak oil–the theory that we will soon deplete the earth of petroleum, causing the demise of our modern lifestyles–will bring upon mass hysteria and a societal breakdown. In preparation of the impending apocalypse,  they’ve chosen to stay ahead of the curve, adopting a vagabond lifestyle, […]]]>

Dirty Fred (Justin Rice) and Bruho (Leo Fitzpatrick), believe that peak oil–the theory that we will soon deplete the earth of petroleum, causing the demise of our modern lifestyles–will bring upon mass hysteria and a societal breakdown. In preparation of the impending apocalypse,  they’ve chosen to stay ahead of the curve, adopting a vagabond lifestyle, trekking through the Catskills, scavenging through rich people’s vacation homes for supplies (and booze, pills, and other fun stuff). When they accept a smart-ass teenager (Brian Charles Johnson) and a fiery young woman (Laura Campbell) into their group, however, they’re forced to reevaluate their pre-apocalyptic lifestyle.

Doomsdays is a meticulously crafted, devilishly funny road movie on foot (though cars do play a role as the smash-able victims of Bruho’s rage). First time director Eddie Mullins was a film critic for a decade prior to becoming a filmmaker, and as a result has an encyclopedic pool of filmic reference from which to pull from. During SF Indiefest, we spoke to him about whether he’d have the same reaction to the apocalypse as his characters, how film criticism can numb enthusiasm, his directorial influences, the art of blocking as opposed to editing, and more.


If the world did break down as a result of peak oil, would you behave the way your characters do?

Eddie: Most of the crew were young men, guys in their 20s. The same comment was made over and over again. “I could see myself doing this.” It could be peak oil, or global warming. There are so many possibilities.

Singularity may be a different movie entirely.

Eddie: I didn’t actually name check Ray Kurzweil, but I wanted the Reina character to at least pay lip service to an alternative possibility. I guess because I’m an old man, I still buy and read the hard copy of Rolling Stone every month. I know it’s like saying, “I read Playboy for the articles,” but I actually read Rolling Stone for the articles. Matt Taibbi is the man. There was a piece about Her, and they asked a couple notables in the tech world, “When will we be at a point where an operating system that is this close to being human?” Ray Kurzweil said, “Oh. 2039.” I was like, that’s really specific, man! You seem really confident! I was impressed an appalled at the same time.

You got some beautiful shots in the film. Since you shot in the town you live in, did you already have a lot of these shots in mind before production began?

Eddie: Absolutely. Most of the homes are friends’ places. The art gallery is my house. My girlfriend and I run an art gallery out of that room. It was great because I knew well in advance where I was going to be shooting, so I could tailor my shots as I was blocking them out on the page months and months before I started hiring a crew. I shot the film in a fairly idiosyncratic way. There are maybe four match cuts in the entire film. The idea was to have each scene rendered in one shot. You have to figure out how to sustain visual interest through blocking. We have a lot of deep focus shots where different theaters of activity encourages a different kind of spectatorship than what you normally get at the movies. This is certainly not something I dreamt up on my own; I’m standing on the shoulders of giants.

At times the shots remind me of Tati.

Eddie: Tati is certainly an influence. I’m in the minority. I think Traffic is his masterpiece. I’m not a Playtime guy. Shohei Imamura and Mizoguchi Kenji [are influences]. William Wyler, particularly Little Foxes. None of those filmmakers are quite as locked off as us. I think we have one tracking shot in the picture. Every single shot is on sticks.

Did you go to film school?

Eddie: Yes I did.

The reason I ask is, you don’t really see a lot of people making films the way you made Doomsdays anymore. There isn’t much editing involved in your film.

Eddie: The way Hollywood films are made…it’s like capitalism, or air. Most of us are just born into it, and we take it for granted. You go to film school and they say, “This is how you film a shot. You do the wide, the medium, the close-ups, the over-the-shoulders, and then you figure it out in the editing room.” No one ever presented to me in film school alternatives to this approach. My real education as a filmmaker came during my ten years as a critic. It’s an enormous privilege to be able to think and write about movies for a decade. Had I not done that, I’m not sure whether I would have become a filmmaker. And if I had, I probably would have been a rather shitty one.

Doomsdays

How did those ten years of being a critic shape your taste in film?

Eddie: Being a critic can numb your enthusiasm for movies. You’re obliged to see so many, so often, and the majority of them are bad. I was fortunate to write for a fairly hip magazine. My longest tenure was at BlackBook, which is an awesome culture magazine. I’d be able to watch what I wanted sometimes, but I’d still have to muddle through Paul Blart: Mall Cop or whatever. It can be so demoralizing. It’s been a pleasure to stop being a film critic and no longer have to swim all the time and keep up with everything. Now people have to keep up with me. I much prefer this. (laughs) But I have seen Nymphomaniac. I ask myself this all the time: Who’s the American Lars Von Trier? Or Wong Kar Wai? Or Johnnie To? I don’t think we have them, certainly not in Hollywood. Independent filmmaking is becoming so vanilla, so jejune. You don’t really see a lot of edgy pictures coming out of Sundance or SXSW. Beasts of the Southern Wild is certainly an independent film, and it’s a lovely picture, but it slides very easily into the art house market that, in this day and age, is dominated by what we call in this industry “blue hairs”. Older women are the biggest consumers of independent cinema. This wasn’t true in 1992, when we had this rash of people coming through every day, like Richard Linklater, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, and even Kevin Smith, who I have no love for, but Clerks was a breath of fresh air. These were edgy filmmakers. There doesn’t seem to be an appetite for this anymore.

What shot are you most proud of in Doomsdays?

Eddie: Probably the shot where Leo goes to the window and sees Laura talking to her boyfriend outside. They start having a little fight, then Leo exits the upstairs window and comes down into the frame he was watching before. As he does that, Justin comes in and takes his place to watch the fight play out. There are, like, 12 different moving parts to that shot. We actually had the cops come during that shot. They had a number of calls that said there was a fight going on. The crew was scared, andI felt like a real champ, because the cop got out of his car and I said, “Oh, I know that guy. His name’s Mark.” The shot in the bar was incredibly difficult. I talk about different theaters of activity, and there’s the bit where Leo and the drunk go outside and fight, and you only see them as they go back and forth in front of this glass window.

That shot is so much fun.

Eddie: I like for the violence to be hyperbolic, and I think I get that from Godard. People mention Weekend in talking about the film, and they’re dead-on. That’s a huge influence on me, and I was thinking about it while I was writing the picture. I think the difference is that my film is much more self-consciously comic. It’s a black comedy, basically. The staging that I’m doing in this picture is a very specific formal agenda that I have going on in this picture. Very few people thought it was going to work, myself included. I thought, is this just going to be incredibly static? The camera’s on sticks, there’s no cutting, there’s zero coverage. I’ve often speculated that if the producer were anyone other than myself, this idea might not have flown. It’s so unforgiving. There’s no going back and fixing anyone’s timing. If your best take has a boom mic shadow in it…well, that’s the best take.

It’s approaching theater.

Eddie: Yeah, it is. It’s a mixed blessing for the actors because they have to sustain. If one person cocks it up and everybody else gets it right, that cock-up might stay in there. Alternately, it’s great for them because they don’t have to shoot a scene 47 times. I think the most amount of takes we had to do on a certain scene was 16. Once we got it right, we moved on. Justin Rice is my neighbor, and all of the actors stayed in his house. I think I got along famously with all of my actors. With a few exceptions, we always went straight to the bar after shooting.

Doomsdays

How important was that rapport?

Eddie: It was indispensable. Everyone asks how I got this wonderfully organic relationship between all of these people. It’s easy! They all lived cheek by jowl for a month! Everyone liked one another, and they’re all still my friends. I’m quite fortunate.

Justin’s dialog is so peculiarly poetic. His lines are great.

Eddie: Justin came onboard before I’d even finished the script. He hadn’t done anything in 3-4 years, but he has 9 movies under his belt, all in lead roles. He’d always been type-cast as the sensitive, milquetoast type. I don’t think he’s ever had a role before Doomsdays where he doesn’t play guitar. I didn’t know if either of the characters were right for him, but then a light bulb went off in my head. Bing! I was like, “Oh my god…do you want to play Dirty Fred? It would completely upend your image. I want you to grow your hair long, grow a beard, wear glasses. And no guitar!” He even got method. I’d written in the script that Dirty Fred had a chipped tooth. One of Justin’s teeth had a crown from an accident that happened, so we got a dentist friend to shave it down. But with the way I shot it, you can’t see it at all! (laughs) Justin’s a Harvard graduate, so I knew he wouldn’t have a problem with the dialog. He’s a very Withnail-y character. Knowing what his energy is like, I knew he was going to do it deadpan. I think if I had read other people for the part, I’d have had a lot of people doing really flamboyant stuff. I love how you have Leo Fitzpatrick as Bruho with all of this angry energy, and then Justin who quietly goes about his business with all these pearls in his mouth.

I love the jokes in the movie. They match the characters perfectly. Dirty Fred’s is so poetic, and Jaiden’s is a fart joke. And Jaiden is so juvenile he can’t even recite Dirty Fred’s!

Eddie: (laughs) No, it’s too subtle for him. I like the idea of, as a piece of entertainment, to stipple throughout people telling jokes. The one that Dirty Fred tells is actually something my grandfather used to tell. When I showed it at the Virginia film festival, my two aunts were there. That joke always gets laughs, but that night you could hear peals of screaming laughter in the back! (laughs)

And Bruho’s joke is simply, “Fuck your mother”.

Eddie: (laughs) I think that’s in keeping with the character. Leo was really helpful. He had more experience than any of the actors, and he was encouraging to me, as a first time director. It was a really good time. It was very intimate–we shot the picture in 18 days. And lo and behold, people have actually given a shit.

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SF Indiefest Capsules: Hide Your Smiling Faces, Bluebird, More http://waytooindie.com/news/sf-indiefest-capsules-hide-your-smiling-faces-bluebird-more/ http://waytooindie.com/news/sf-indiefest-capsules-hide-your-smiling-faces-bluebird-more/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=18535 Hide Your Smiling Faces Set in a beautifully photographed forested town in the rural North East, Hide Your Smiling Faces by Daniel Patrick Carbone is a moving, richly atmospheric coming-of-age film in the vein of Terrence Malick. It centers on two young brothers who, following the death of a friend, are forced to come to terms […]]]>

Hide Your Smiling Faces

Hide Your Smiling Faces

Set in a beautifully photographed forested town in the rural North East, Hide Your Smiling Faces by Daniel Patrick Carbone is a moving, richly atmospheric coming-of-age film in the vein of Terrence Malick. It centers on two young brothers who, following the death of a friend, are forced to come to terms with the bitter taste of mortality, both in their own way. It’s a hauntingly accurate depiction of the dark side of boyhood and puberty. The boys wrestle with overwhelming emotions they don’t have the faculty to contain, and they wrestle with each other as well, literally, in their lush, deep green surroundings. Carbone and DP Nick Bentgen capture the landscape in amazingly composed, majestic shots that serve as the perfect framing for the boys’ bubbling emotions. Performances are good across the board, though the young actors feel more naturalistic and raw than the seasoned adults, whose polished skills feel less appropriate to the material. Highly recommended.

Bluebird

Bluebird

When Lesley (Amy Morton), a good-natured school bus driver, is distracted by a pretty bluebird perched inside her bus, she fails to discover a young boy hiding in a back seat during a routine end-of-the-day check-up. The boy goes into hypothermic shock when he’s left in the freezing cold overnight. Set in a frigid industrial town in Maine, Bluebird follows the families of both the boy and the bus driver as they’re stricken with guilt, grief, and inner turmoil. Morton and Louisa Krause (who plays the boy’s mother) are fantastic, and the supporting cast (including John Slattery, Margo Martindale, Emily Meade, and Louisa Krause) back them up solidly, despite their characters feeling like quickly-sketched small town stereotypes. Despite the horrifying nature of the incident at the center of the drama, the film lacks a sense of urgency or intensity, making it feel emotionally distant. Director-writer Lance Edmands shows promise, however, even though his potential isn’t fully realized here.

Rezeta

Rezeta

Following a free-spirited, 21-year-old Albanian fashion model whose jet-setting lifestyle has brought her to Mexico City, Rezeta is a somewhat messy, but peculiarly charming indie romance film starring talented non-actors. While at first Rezeta (Rezeta Veliu) has fun in her new environment, sleeping around with various handsome men, her romantic side begins to yearn for a more stable relationship. She finds this in a tatted-up punk rocker named Alex (Roger Mendoza), whose shy, bad boy personality draws her in. Rezeta’s flirtatious tendencies begin to form cracks in their relationship, and Alex eventually reaches a breaking point, though Rezeta won’t let him slip away without a fight. Director-writer Fernando Frias has an ear for naturalistic dialog, and he pulls good performances out of his actors. He makes Mexico City look as colorful and vibrant as Rezeta’s personality.

Congratulations!

Congratulations

Writer-director Mike Brune’s nutty missing-person drama Congratulations! will appeal to those who enjoy films about the stranger side of suburbia, like Blue Velvet or Quentin Dupieux’s Wrong, which played at Indiefest last year. When an 8-year-old boy named Paul mysteriously disappears during a house party, Mr. and Mrs. Gray (Robert Longstreet and Rhoda Griffis) are left frozen in a state of utter confusion. To the rescue comes Detective Dan Skok (John Curran), who believes that there is “no such thing as a missing person; only missing information”. All evidence points to Paul still being somewhere in the Gray family home, so Dan takes up residence, incessantly searching for clues, driven by the nagging memory of a similar case. As everyone’s mind begins to unwind, their behavior, including Skok’s, grows more bizarre by the minute. Brune conjures some deliciously weird shots (the image of the entire house covered in missing person posters is unforgettable), and the film’s pacing is spot-on. The cast is constantly, constantly deadpanning, which is hilarious at times, grating at others.

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SF Indiefest: Opening Night, The Congress http://waytooindie.com/news/sf-indiefest-opening-night-the-congress/ http://waytooindie.com/news/sf-indiefest-opening-night-the-congress/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=18190 SF Indiefest kicked off its “Sweet 16” celebration at the beautiful Brava Theater last night with a screening of Ari Folman’s The Congress, a buzzing after party in the theater lobby, and a live music show that had the indie-lovin’ festival-goers on their feet late into the night. After we shuffled down the aisles and settled […]]]>

SF Indiefest kicked off its “Sweet 16” celebration at the beautiful Brava Theater last night with a screening of Ari Folman’s The Congress, a buzzing after party in the theater lobby, and a live music show that had the indie-lovin’ festival-goers on their feet late into the night.

After we shuffled down the aisles and settled into their seats to fill up the theater at the night’s outset, Indiefest founder Jeff Ross took the stage to welcome us and tell us what we can expect of our two-week festival experience this year. The lineup was carefully picked–the festival programmers watched and considered around 1,000 films and plucked 75 prime selections. (That’s dedication, people!) San Francisco’s famous Roxie Theater is the undisputed epicenter of the festival, but Ross noted that for those living in the East Bay, Oakland’s New Parkway Theater will be showing selections from the festival program as well.

Ross’ brief introduction was followed by the opening night screening of The Congress, which proceeded to blow half of the audience’s minds while befuddling the rest (see my thoughts on the film below). It’s a heavily experimental film that could only ever exist in the indie landscape, so it was a fitting choice to set the tone for the rest of the fest. (Check out these five films at the fest to get excited about.)

Following the screening, libations flowed in the lobby while people attempted to reorient themselves with reality. Struck with a case of the munchies, I walked down the street and ate best tacos I’ve ever had (seriously). When I returned to the Brava Theater, the drinks were still flowing (Indiefest doesn’t slouch on the booze!), and the live music portion of the night was in full swing. Hip Hop/EDM band Vokab Kompany and Motown revivalists Gene Washington and The Ironsides sent the crowd home happy and capped off the night in style.

Click to view slideshow.

The Congress

With The Congress, director Ari Folman refused to follow anyone’s roadmap and made the movie he wanted to make, without pretense, or timidness, or restraint. The film centers on Robin Wright, playing herself, as she sells her digital likeness to “Miramount Studios”, with which the they can make any movie they please. The catch is, she must never act again. It’s a strange, beautiful, part live-action, part animated film about the fickleness of reality, the toxicity of media and celebrity, and the ephemerality of life itself. It’s also flawed; the psychedelic animated portion feeling inflated and meandering, and the story can feel more elusive than intriguing at times. But the boldness and ambition of Folman’s vision helps to polish up the film’s rough edges.

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SFFS Announces Finalists for 2014 Documentary Film Fund http://waytooindie.com/news/sffs-announces-finalists-for-2014-documentary-film-fund/ http://waytooindie.com/news/sffs-announces-finalists-for-2014-documentary-film-fund/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=18175 Today, the San Francisco Film Society announced its 11 finalists for the 2014 SFFS Documentary Film Fund awards, totaling more than $75,000. The fund supports feature-length documentaries in postproduction, and previous winners include Joe Brewster and Michele Stephenson’s American Promise, Shaul Schwartz’s Narco Cultura, and Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer, which won the Sundance Directing Award […]]]>

Today, the San Francisco Film Society announced its 11 finalists for the 2014 SFFS Documentary Film Fund awards, totaling more than $75,000. The fund supports feature-length documentaries in postproduction, and previous winners include Joe Brewster and Michele Stephenson’s American Promise, Shaul Schwartz’s Narco Cultura, and Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer, which won the Sundance Directing Award for documentary and is up for an Oscar this year for Best Documentary Feature. This year’s winners will be announced in late March.

“This was a very competitive group of applicants, and we continue to be inspired by the quality of work we have encountered with the Documentary Film Fund,” said Michele-Turnure Salleo, director of Filmmaker360. “Our team is particularly drawn to projects that feature the intersection of a compelling subject and a creative aesthetic approach to the nonfiction form, and these finalists are fantastic examples of that quality. They all explore fascinating worlds and intriguing characters, and I can’t wait to get my hands on their final work samples as we head into the process of selecting winners.”

Since its launch in 2011, the SFFS Documentary Film Fund has distributed more than $300,000 to advance new work by filmmakers nationwide. Expected to grow in the coming years as further underwriting is secured, the 2014 Documentary Film Fund is made possible thanks to a generous gift from Jennifer Battat and the Jenerosity Foundation. For more info, visit sffs.org

2014 Documentary Film Fund Finalists

Anatomy of an American Dream — John Ryan Johnson, director
Antoine Hood is a charismatic 28-year-old former college basketball star and captain in the U.S. Air Force. He is a regional sales manager for Michelin and lives in a beautiful suburban house with his wife and son. For most, this is the American dream, but not for Hood, who could lose all of the above trying to play in the NBA … and he just might.

The Bolivian Case — Violeta Ayala, director
Trying to fly out of Bolivia, three Norwegian teenage girls are arrested with 22 kilograms of cocaine in their luggage, triggering a media storm that would change their lives forever.

The Dreamcatchers — Kim Longinotto, director, Teddy Leifer and Lisa Stevens, producers
The Dreamcatchers, Brenda Myers-Powell and Stephanie Daniels-Wilson, are two former prostitutes who use their inside knowledge to help women who are selling sex on the streets of Chicago, and to prevent very young girls from doing the same. This film reveals the true devastation of sexual exploitation: how it affects the women, their families and the communities where they live.

Gennadiy — Steve Hoover, director and Danny Yourd, producer
Gennadiy Mohkenko is an ex-firefighter who, since the fall of the Soviet Union, has been rescuing drug-addicted kids from the streets of Mariupol, Ukraine. Today, there aren’t many kids left, and the war has moved from the streets into homes, but he continues throwing his seemingly endless energy into it. Will he and his family have to pay a price for his devotion?

In Country (pictured above)— Mike Attie and Meghan O’Hara, codirectors
War is hell. Why would anyone want to spend their weekends there? In Country takes you deep into the world of Vietnam War reenacting. Fantasy and reality collide as combat veterans from Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan try to relive a war that most people want to forget.

The Joneses — Moby Longinotto, director and Aviva Wishnow, producer
The Joneses is a portrait of Jheri, a 73-year-old transgender trailer park matriarch, who lives in bible belt Mississippi. Reconciled with her family after years of estrangement, and now living with two of her sons, Jheri embarks on a new path to reveal her true self to her grandchildren. Will their family bonds survive?

Mythical Creatures — David Charles, director
Sundance New Frontier Lab project Mythical Creatures is the story of internationally acclaimed artist Gary Baseman. Baseman’s work uncovers the deepest and darkest secrets of his parents’ holocaust experiences in the Ukraine, reimagining them through his art and dream reality. His hybrid approach uses animation, stop motion, performance art and installation to bring the holocaust story to a diverse and new generation.

Rodents of Unusual Size — Quinn Costello, Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer, codirectors
Rodents of Unusual Size is an offbeat environmental documentary about giant swamp rats invading coastal Louisiana and the defiant people on the edge of the world who are defending their communities, culture and livelihoods from the onslaught of this curious and unexpected invasive species.

Romeo Is Bleeding — Jason Zeldes, director and Michael Klein, producer
Donte Clark’s poetic voice was honed on the violent street corners of a struggling city. Yet rather than succumb to the pressures of Richmond, CA, Clark uses his artistic perspective to save his city from itself.

Street Fighting Man — Andrew James, director and Sara Archambault, producer
In a new America where the promise of education, safety and shelter are in jeopardy, three Detroit men fight to build something lasting for themselves and future generations.

Western — Bill Ross and Turner Ross, codirectors
Eagle Pass, Texas and Piedras Negras, Mexico are border towns and the vision of the modern frontier. Cowboys and lawmen share the country while international business and multicultural bonds flourish. But when darkness descends, two men in Eagle Pass face a new reality that threatens their way of life.

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SF Indiefest Celebrates Its Sweet Sixteen http://waytooindie.com/news/sf-indiefest-celebrates-its-sweet-sixteen/ http://waytooindie.com/news/sf-indiefest-celebrates-its-sweet-sixteen/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=17776 From Febuary 6-20, SF Indiefest will be celebrating 16 years of independent film goodness with a stacked program of indie films of all kinds, from docs, to comedies, to horror flicks, to dramas, to shorts…and the list goes on. The lineup is super exciting: for fans of independent film (you guys), this is going to be […]]]>

From Febuary 6-20, SF Indiefest will be celebrating 16 years of independent film goodness with a stacked program of indie films of all kinds, from docs, to comedies, to horror flicks, to dramas, to shorts…and the list goes on. The lineup is super exciting: for fans of independent film (you guys), this is going to be freaking Disneyland. Plus, to get to talk to up-and-coming filmmakers before they hit it big is indie cred in the bank. The films will play at the Roxie and Brava theaters in San Francisco, and at the New Parkway Theater in Oakland.

This year’s theme is “Sweet Sixteen”, and keeping with the tradition of “keeping the festival festive”, there will be a slew of off-the-wall parties and events to keep you busy: an opening night party, a Roller Disco Party, the Bad Art Gallery (awesome), a Pub Quiz, an Anti Valentine’s Day 80’s Power Ballad Sing-along, the famous annual Big Lebowski Party (featuring a 35mm screening of the film and a costume contest), and more. It’s a great time (I had a blast last year), and the parties give the festival a more quirky, fun, inviting atmosphere than any other film fest in the Bay Area. For more info, visit sfindie.com

This is my personal favorite festival of the year, and we at Way Too Indie obviously have a close connection with the films being showcased. Stay tuned for comprehensive coverage, including reviews, interviews, photos, videos, and more. If you live in or around the Bay Area, I hope to see you there!

Here are 5 films we’re looking forward to (though there are plenty more):

I Hate Myself : )

I Hate Myself :)

This subversive documentary by filmmaker Joanna Arnow should please fans of Girls and docs alike. Centering on Arnow’s relationship with her racially provocative, instigative boyfriend, the film features exceedingly intimate, hard-to-watch footage of the couple (both emotional and sexual) that will make you cringe and squirm in your seat, guaranteed. Themes of femininity, sexuality, dysfunctional love, and racism pervade, making the film a catalyst for rich post-screening conversation. The film has been garnering a lot of buzz on the festival circuit, and it’s heading into San Francisco with a lot of momentum. Arnow will be in attendance at the festival along with her “naked” co-editor Max Karson, who bares all in the doc. It’s said he may appear “in costume”, whatever that means…

Screens at New Parkway 2/11 7pm, Roxie 2/14 7pm, 2/18 7pm

A Field in England

A Field in England

At last year’s festival, Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers was one of the strangest (in a good way) films that played, and his entry this year, A Field in England, looks to be just as darkly bizarre. Set in the English civil war, the film follows a group of starving soldiers fleeing from battle. They fall under the control of a sadistic necromancer who induces them into a state of wild hysteria. I’m a big fan of strange cinematic mindfucks (The Legend of Kaspar Hauser, which played at last year’s Indiefest, was one of my favorites), and Wheatley’s film looks to scratch that itch. Shot in grimy black and white, it’s praised by Martin Scorsese as being a “stunning cinematic experience”. If Scorsese’s endorsement isn’t enough to whet your appetite, I don’t know what is.

Screens at Roxie 2/8 7pm, 2/9 1215pm

 The Congress

The Congress

Based on a sci-fi novel by Stanislaw Lem, The Congress stars Robin Wright as herself in a version of the future where actors can sell their digital likeness to movie studios for them to use in any way they see fit (depending on contract stipulations, of course). She’ll be gracing the silver screen for all eternity, forever young, and she gets a hefty payday, but as she grows older the ugly ramifications of signing away her likeness begin to surface. Waltz With Bashir director Ari Folman utilizes both live-action and animated techniques to tell his story, with a trippy, psychedelic animated middle section that’s sure to blow a mind or two. The Congress will open up the festival this Thursday at the Brava theater, and should set the tone for the festival nicely with its reality-bending style.

Screens at Brava 2/6 7pm

Blue Ruin

Blue Ruin

Jeremy Saulnier’s outrageous horror-comedy Murder Party played at SF Indiefest in 2007, and after a long directorial hiatus he returns to the festival with Blue Ruin. The film Dwight (Macon Blair), an unassuming bum who lives in his car, as he seeks to avenge the death of his parents by tracking down their recently-released-from-prison killer. It won the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes and kept the buzz buzzing at Sundance. Blair’s performance has been garnering universal acclaim as well. It’s great when you find the rare genre piece crafted with an artful sensibility (You’re Next), and Blue Ruin looks to be a violent, thrilling piece of indie filmmaking. The film will close out the festival.

Screens at Roxie 2/9 7pm, 2/20 915pm

Proxy

Proxy

Zack Parker’s Proxy harbors some of the most unsettling, look-through-your-fingers movie moments I’ve seen in years, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s a must-see for festival attendees, if only to share the shock of these devilish images with a room full of people. Collective gasps, moans, screams, and theater walk-outs are almost a guarantee, and honestly, there are few festival experiences more enjoyable than watching a crowd of people pushed to their limits by a movie. The film opens with  a pregnant woman, Esther Woodhouse, being brutally attacked in an alleyway. The film only gets darker and more disturbing as she seeks mental help at a support group and descends into a world of sexual obsession as she befriends a woman who may be just as fucked-in-the-head as she is. The film, which features indie darling Joe Swanberg in a supporting role, is best suited for those with an appetite for unadulterated sadism and gore.

Screens at Roxie 2/16 915pm, 2/20 7pm

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Another Hole in the Head Capsule Reviews 2 http://waytooindie.com/news/another-hole-head-capsule-reviews-2/ http://waytooindie.com/news/another-hole-head-capsule-reviews-2/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=17078 San Francisco’s Another Hole in the Head genre film festival comes to a close tonight at New People Cinema, with the world premieres of The G-String Horror Demon Cut, a horror film by Charles Webb set in the streets of San Francisco, “re-cut by demons”, and Senn, a sci-fi otherworldly fantasy by Josh Feldman. Celebrating its tenth […]]]>

San Francisco’s Another Hole in the Head genre film festival comes to a close tonight at New People Cinema, with the world premieres of The G-String Horror Demon Cut, a horror film by Charles Webb set in the streets of San Francisco, “re-cut by demons”, and Senn, a sci-fi otherworldly fantasy by Josh Feldman. Celebrating its tenth year, the festival welcomed dedicated genre film-lovers with open arms, screening the bloodiest, strangest, most excessive fims in the horror, fantasy, and sci-fi genres out there.

Below are my thoughts on a trio movies we saw at the festival. One, Thanatomorphose, was so mesmerizing in its yak-inducing body horror that I’m still thinking about it, and while the other two weren’t quite as enrapturing, all three were welcome, bloody distractions from the super-serious films I’ve been drowning in during this festival season.

For more reviews from the festival, click here.

Thanatomorphose

Thanatomorphose

 

A body horror opus that would make David Cronenberg blush, Thanatomorphose is the sludgiest, blackest, stinkiest piece of cinema I’ve seen smudged across a movie screen maybe ever. And you know what? I dug it (not at first, but ultimately, yeah. I dug it). Following a lonely young woman and taking place exclusively in her Montreal apartment, we watch as she falls into an increasingly disgusting state of bodily decay that’s so visually vile and unwatchable to the weak-of-stomach, thanks to the intimate and patient style of director Éric Falardeau and cinematographer Benoit Lemîre.

The film opens with our lonely protagonist (Kayden Rose) screwing her douchebag boyfriend (with a perfectly douchey French-Canadian Montreal accent).  Our girl somehow contracts the titular disease that at first manifests itself as small bruises. Then, as the days wear on, the symptoms get worse and more gruesome: her skin begins to rot, her nails fall off, her bones become more brittle. Every step of her degradation is filmed as up-close and personal as possible, testing even my stomach (it’s usually pretty hard to gross me out). Falardeau’s camera is always uneasy, swaying from side to side, framing everything way off-center, creating a sense of constant unbalance. As our girl’s body grows more grotesque (maggots eventually begin to feast on her blackened, dead flesh), Falardeau shoves our face in it and makes us watch every detail, with shots that linger much longer than most could stand.

The crawling pace of the film moves a slowly as the bile and puss dripping down Rose’s almost always-nude body, and is at first hard to latch on to. But, I began to fall in step with the lurching rhythm of the film, I was induced into a buzzing, nightmarish state that had me riveted. There are a couple deeper themes and metaphors at play here, touching on agoraphobia, loneliness, depression, and female self and sexual worth. But really, what’s fascinating is Falardeau’s terribly disturbing imagery, an unblinking, patient depiction of a woman wasting away to nothing, physically, mentally, sexually, and spiritually.

Motivational Growth

Motivational Growth

Yet another gross-out film that takes place entirely in an apartment, Motivational Growth is a silly, irreverent, bizarre film about a guy named Ian (Adrian DiGiovanni) and his relationship with a talking giant piece of mold (looks more like a piece of shit) on his bathroom floor. Ian is a complete slob, and his rotting, filthy apartment (which he never leaves) is a reflection of his mess of a life. When his ancient television set (which he’s named Kent) breaks down on him, he throws a panicked fit and tries to kill himself, but fails and ends up bumping his head, which presumedly leads to him having perceived conversations with The Mold (Jeffrey Combs).

The film goes on way too long, and while Ian’s conversations with The Mold are worth a chuckle, at least, his human interations–with a snappy grocery delivery girl (Hannah Stevenson), his hulking landlord (Pete Giovagnoli), and his pretty neighbor (Danielle Doetsch)–are poorly acted, too long, and only worth a shrug. Stylistically, director Don Thacker excels, with unique, trippy editing, wonderful set design, and enjoyable, off-kilter dialog (particularly between Ian and The Mold). Worth a look for midnight-movie heads, but for no one else.

Bath Salt Zombies

Bath Salt Zombies

A potent strand of bath salts have been circulating the New York drug scene, turning people into devoted junkies. But these aren’t your run-of-the-mill, paranoid coke-heads; they’re violent, crazed, flesh-eating, Bath Salt Zombies! Resembling a pothead student film, director Dustin Mills’ crack at the zombie genre doesn’t excel at anything, though it seems Mills and his crew probably had a good time making it, which is definitely worth something. The various characters–some junkies, some government officials trying to contain the epidemic, some dealers–are almost all amateurishly acted, and the nothing plot is a patchy string of sloppily produced set pieces. An “action sequence” sees a DEA agent taking down a group of criminals in the hallway of a suburban household and looks like it was made by Boondock Saints-loving high school kids. Maybe I would have liked it better if I were on bath salts…

 

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Another Hole in the Head Celebrates 10 Years of Genre Madness http://waytooindie.com/news/another-hole-head-celebrates-10-years-genre-madness/ http://waytooindie.com/news/another-hole-head-celebrates-10-years-genre-madness/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=16618 Tonight, after the insanity of Black Friday shopping has passed and everyone’s Turkey-itis has subsided, the Another Hole in the Head Film Festival will be kicking off its three-week-long program, introducing San Franciscans to a whole new kind of madness, full of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy flicks that’ll delight fans of hardcore genre film (and […]]]>

Tonight, after the insanity of Black Friday shopping has passed and everyone’s Turkey-itis has subsided, the Another Hole in the Head Film Festival will be kicking off its three-week-long program, introducing San Franciscans to a whole new kind of madness, full of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy flicks that’ll delight fans of hardcore genre film (and likely make everyone else want to hurl. In a good way, of course.) The program, consisting of 54 feature films and 27 shorts, will be taking place at the Balboa Theater from today, November 29th, to December 5th. Then, the fest moves on to the New People Cinema in Japantown until December 19th.

For opening night, the festival is kicking off with Stalled, an interesting take on the zombie genre that places all the gory action in a tiny bathroom stall, The Battery, a zombie flick about two former baseball players navigating an undead-filled New England, and The Shower, about a twisted, homicidal baby shower.

All Cheerleaders Die
All Cheerleaders Die

 

Films we’re looking forward to at the festival:

All Cheerleaders Die–Lucy McKee and Chris Sivertson’s All Cheerleaders Die, the festival’s opening night film, is an ode to the slasher films of the ’80s in which the rebellious new girl at Blackfoot High convinces recruits her fellow classmates into the cheer-leading squad to combat a dark supernatural enemy. (Plays Dec. 5 at Balboa)

Face–Following a string of harrowing acts committed by college students that turned into the massacre of the Delta Chi Kappa sorority on Halloween 2012, Face looks to be a treat for fans of gross-out violence and…boobs? Sounds like there will be boobs. The film will be making its world premiere at the festival. (Plays Dec. 18 at New People)

Bath Salt Zombies–“Drugs, sex, & cannibalism!” Those are the three wonderful words the makers of Bath Salt Zombies use as a tagline for their zombie outbreak epic. I’ve seen the film, and I’ll just say it delivers on just two of the three promises. It’ll be interesting to see how an audience reacts to this frantic mess of a movie. (Plays Dec. 16 at New People)

Cheap Thrills–When a man (Pat Healy) loses his job and isn’t able to provide for his family, he teams up with an old high school buddy (Ethan Embry) to do dirty work for a wealthy couple to make extra dough. How far will he go to make ends meet? Here’s hoping he goes as far as the eye can see. (Plays Dec. 18 at New People)

Thanatomorphose–My pick for catchiest title of the festival (doen’t it just roll off the tongue?), Thanatomorphose is a Canadian film that follows a pretty girl as she wakes up to find her body rotting away (the title is a hellenic word that means “the visible signs of an organisms decomposition caused by death.” Sounds lovely! (Plays Dec. 16 at New People)

Thanatomorphose
Thanatomorphose


Senn
–Making its world premiere as the closing night film of the festival, Senn follows the titular character, a worker on a forgotten world called Pyom, as he’s chosen by an alien being called the Polychronom for reasons that could spell doom for the humble factory worker. Sci-fi zaniness is sure to be abound. (Plays Dec. 19 at New People)

One of the biggest highlights of the festival for me will be the screening of two horror classics in gorgeous 35mm: Steven Spielberg’s textbook in suspense,  Jaws, and Stanley Kubrick’s legendarily enigmatic The Shining. In addition to these screenings, there will be a presentation of The Shining: Forwards and Backwards, which will probably drive me crazy, but will most importantly offer a fascinating new perspective on Kubrick’s classic.

Another very cool event will take place tomorrow at the Balboa Theater at 1pm, where the festival will screen two hours of Saturday morning cartoons and serve cereal and milk, all for FREE! The opportunity to watch “Jem & the Holograms”, “Looney Toons”, “He-Man” and more is one no self-respecting 90’s kid can pass up.

Another Hole in the Head runs from November 29th-December 19th. For scheduling and ticket info, visit sfindie.com. Stay tuned to Way Too Indie for more news from the festival!

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The Lisinac Brothers Talk ‘Along the Roadside’, Celebrating Californian Diversity http://waytooindie.com/interview/lisinac-brothers-talk-along-roadside-celebrating-californian-diversity/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/lisinac-brothers-talk-along-roadside-celebrating-californian-diversity/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=16420 In Along the Roadside, the debut feature by Zoran Lisinac, a young man from the Bay Area (Iman Crosson) and a colorblind German tourist (Angelina Häntsch) accompany each other on a road trip to a big music festival in Southern California, learning about themselves and each other as their vastly different cultural backgrounds clash. The film […]]]>

In Along the Roadside, the debut feature by Zoran Lisinac, a young man from the Bay Area (Iman Crosson) and a colorblind German tourist (Angelina Häntsch) accompany each other on a road trip to a big music festival in Southern California, learning about themselves and each other as their vastly different cultural backgrounds clash.

The film made its North American premiere at this year’s Mill Valley Film Festival, where we spoke with Zoran and his brother, Vladimir (who produced the film), about writing the screenplay at a hotel desk, moving to California from Serbia, the beauty of diversity, the advantages of casting Youtube stars in the film, how they plan to explore Youtube culture further, and more.

Along the Roadside screens this Saturday, November 23rd, at the Roxie in San Francisco as a part of the San Francisco Film Society’s ‘Cinema by the Bay’ series.

What inspired you to make Along the Roadside?
Zoran: We both grew up in Serbia during the wars and economic collapse, so coming here was a journey on it’s own. Once we got to California, I was completely fascinated by the diversity that I found here and the tolerance that is probably unrivaled in the world in terms of people who look, sound, think, and act different. Somehow, everybody seems to coexist and live in harmony. To me, that was a big internal motivator to come up with a story that exposes California, racisms ugly face, and kind of sends a message. We come from the Eastern Bloc, where there’s some serious growing up to do. That was one of the motifs.

So, you built the story around that idea.
Zoran: Yeah. The main character is a black guy from Oakland, and we pair him up with a colorblind German tourist. Her being colorblind is a metaphor; she’s the only pure character in the film. All these other characters that they encounter along the way kind of bite at each other, but that’s just one aspect of the story.

Along the Roadside film

How long have you lived in California?
Zoran: 8 1/2 years. I didn’t speak much English when I came here, though.

You learn quick!
Vladimir: We learned to write in English, which is a whole different challenge! First, you need to learn to speak it, then you need to learn to write it. Then, you need to learn to write well, which is a whole new ballgame. I admire Zoran. He excelled fast and put in the time. Screenwriting is a process that takes work, dedication, and experience. It takes a routine, and I think he found it.

Zoran: I found it in a hotel. I wrote the script at the front desk of a hotel, while working. I had all this down time; on the busiest days, you’d put in about two hours of accumulative work. The guys next to you is on Facebook, the other guy is gambling online, so it’s like, “Fuck it.” I downloaded Final Draft and started banging away. The managers were super supportive and I didn’t have to hide anything.

How does it feel to have your film playing at the Mill Valley Film Festival?
Zoran: I love it, and I’m very honored. It legitimizes our effort, and it feels great to be in the company of these other films.

Vladimir: We’re extremely proud, because the film is very personal. We wanted to shed light on the place that we call home, Serbia. Like Zoran said earlier, it has a little growing up to do in terms of being progressive and liberal, accepting different cultures, ethnicities, backgrounds, genders, you name it. This is one place on our planet that has growing up to do, but we’re very familir with it and wanted to show our film with a Serbian star in it and how he understood where we’re coming from and came to America to work on the film for free. He really wanted to help us, understood our point of view, and understood the screenplay. He wanted to help spread the message in Serbia. I think his actions speak volumes. It all started with Zoran’s idea.

Zoran: That’s just one side of the whole story. Judging from what we’ve said, you’d think we’d made a fucking documentary! It’s just one of the layers. This is a story about two people from different parts of the world who cross paths on a journey of self-discovery to a big music festival in California. It takes place over the course of 48 hours, and it takes on issues, like taking life on it’s own terms. A lot of people seem to not do that, therefore, they escape it. They run away from it. I deals with that aspect of character internal conflict.

Along the Roadside movie

Living in the Bay Area all my life, it’s surprising to me how little this community is represented in cinema. No one shoots in Oakland. Hell, a lot of people have no idea what Oakland’s like. But, your main character is from Oakland.
Vladimir: Another underlying theme is fatherhood and what it really takes to want fatherhood. It speaks to the staggering number of single mothers, particularly in Oakland. That’s why we put our main guy there. He’s at a crossroads; he’s always wanted a certain lifestyle, and when this big news is broken in his face–that his girlfriend is pregnant–he completely flips and doesn’t know what to do. He wasn’t ready for that. He needs to let go, accept some responsibility, grow up, and want to become a father. It’s a big deal to me. I’m a father, and I understand that. We wanted to shed light on it. African-American culture in the States, especially in the city of Oakland…the statistics show that there are way too many single mothers struggling to bring up their children. Fathers are simply goners. We wanted to say, it doesn’t have to be like that. You can be present. You don’t have to marry the woman, you don’t have to be the greatest dad on the planet, but you need to be there.

Zoran: It comes down to accepting life on its terms, not trying to set your own rules. It’s kind of impossible. That’s summed up in the ending of the film.
This is a great moment for you guys, screening here at the festival. Looking forward, are you excited about your next project? Do you have a lot of ideas swimming around your heads?

Zoran: We stumbled onto this film with this unique (by other people’s account) situation where we cast a number of Youtube stars in the film along with some mainstream stars. It gives us a prominent social media presence. With today’s landscape of indie movies, that means everything. It’s really coveted to have 300,000 views on Youtube without spending money on advertising. It’s interesting. We dipped our toes into this Youtube culture, and in our second film, which we plan on hopefully shooting in January or February, we plan to cannonball into that sphere of digital media. As I like to say, bloggers are carving into digital stone for our descendants to interpret. At this point, they’re expressionists. People don’t know how to pin them. They’re not making short films, per se, and they’re not making features. It’s new. It’s driven by pure passion, and it’s definitely found its response globally. We think it’s precious.

So, your casting of Youtube personalities in this film was strategic, in terms of marketing.
Vladimir: Very much so. There’s only maybe one other film that’s done this, but it’s a horror genre film. It doesn’t have a social side to it, and it’s more for fun. But, it’s done well. What we’re trying to do is be very strategic with it, longterm. With this film and the following two films we have in development, we want to make a big splash with it. We want to shed light on the talent that aren’t mainstream actors in Hollywood. Folks on Youtube are extremely talented, not only at creating content, but at several other things: they’re courageous; they do editing; they do marketing; they do business. They do everything.

Zoran: Most importantly, they build a relationship with their fans.

Vladimir: Exactly.

Zoran: That’s the future.

Vladimir: We like the direction we’re headed, and we’re excited.

For more info, visit www.metakwon.com

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3rd i’s ‘South Asian Film Festival’ Enlivens SF, Rolls Into Palo Alto http://waytooindie.com/news/3rd-south-asian-film-festival-enlivens-sf-rolls-palo-alto/ http://waytooindie.com/news/3rd-south-asian-film-festival-enlivens-sf-rolls-palo-alto/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=16084 Celebrating 100 Years of Indian Cinema This year’s run of 3rd i’s San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival had a fantastic four day run this past weekend in San Francisco, and continues this Saturday night, November 16th in Palo Alto at the Aquarius Theatre. With the theme of “100 Years of Indian Cinema” and […]]]>

Celebrating 100 Years of Indian Cinema

This year’s run of 3rd i’s San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival had a fantastic four day run this past weekend in San Francisco, and continues this Saturday night, November 16th in Palo Alto at the Aquarius Theatre. With the theme of “100 Years of Indian Cinema” and a focus on women directors, the festival features a wide array of features representing South Asian cinema, from documentaries, narrative features, shorts, indies, and, of course, Bollywood.

The closing night film of the San Francisco portion of the festival was Pratibha Parmar’s poetic profile of one of literature’s most powerful, influential, and undervalued female figures, Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth. Chronicling the storied life of Walker (whose most familiar work to most is her tenth novel, The Color Purple), from her early days in Georgia; to her rebellious early adulthood when she married a white man partly to make a point; to her current stance against Israel in the Middle Eastern conflict. Parmar’s gorgeous camerawork and elegant storytelling capture the essence of what makes Walker such an inspiration. Check out our interview with Parmar, conducted a couple days before the closing night screening.

Beyond All Boundaries

Sushrut Jain’s documentary, Beyond All Boundaries, examines the phenomenal popularity of cricket in India, through the eyes of three cricket-lovers; Sudhir, a hooligan-like fanatic who cycles around the country covered in body paint, following the national team and cheering them on; Akshaya, a teenage girl cricketer whose dream of making a living in the sport is hindered by gender bias; and Prithvi, a boy cricket prodigy and future hope of a nation. The film, narrated by The Big Bang Theory‘s Kunal Nayyar, celebrates a sport that helps a nation escape the crushing difficulties of everyday life.

Celluloid Man, which profiles P.K. Nair, founder of the National Film Archive of India, is a lovingly composed documentary and comprehensive look at one of the saints of Indian cinema. The film has won multiple awards over it’s over 50-festival run.

Peddlers movie

Another highlight from the festival was Peddlers, a dark thriller of a Bollywood movie by Vasan Bala, set in the seedy drug underworld of Mumbai. A twenty-year-old punk named Mac gets trapped in the world of drug trade, setting him on a collision course with a corrupt young cop with a dangerous mean streak. It’s an edgy, moody piece with a modern-noir style, packed with enough drama and action-packed foot-chases to make the 120-minute length fly by.

This Saturday’s Palo Alto four-film program includes Beyond All Boundaries along with three other features. Gulabi Gang, a documentary by Nishtha Jain, follows Sampat Pal and the titular gang, a group of women fighting against gender oppression in Bundelkhand, India. Director Cary Mcclelland’s documentary Without Shepherds examines Pakistan’s current crisis as seen through the eyes of six unique individuals trying their hardest to cope. Closing out the night is Ship of Theseus, Anand Gandhi’s moving drama that follows a blind photographer, a monk faced with a moral conundrum, and a young stockbroker caught in the web of illegal organ trade.

For ticket info and more information, visit thirdi.org

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Interview: Stacie Passon of Concussion http://waytooindie.com/interview/interview-stacie-passon-concussion/ http://waytooindie.com/interview/interview-stacie-passon-concussion/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=14336 In Concussion, first-time writer-director Stacie Passon gives us a glimpse into the doldrums of lesbian suburbia and how a bored housewife (Robin Weigert), awakened to her unfulfilling malaise by her son (who conks her in the head with a baseball), attempts to unleash her true inner-self by becoming a hooker. Unoriginal this movie is not, […]]]>

In Concussion, first-time writer-director Stacie Passon gives us a glimpse into the doldrums of lesbian suburbia and how a bored housewife (Robin Weigert), awakened to her unfulfilling malaise by her son (who conks her in the head with a baseball), attempts to unleash her true inner-self by becoming a hooker. Unoriginal this movie is not, in a most beautiful, sensual, riveting way.

Hours before the screening of Concussion at San Francisco’s Frameline Film Festival back in June, Stacie Passon chatted with us at The Hilton San Francisco Union Square Hotel about living in the suburbs, her experience at the IFP Narrative Lab, the best week of her life, Robin Weigert’s shocking physical transformation for the role, making people squirm, and more.

Read our interview with stars Robin Weigert and Jonathan Tchaikovsky

Where did you get the idea for the story? Did your son actually hit you in the head with a baseball?
Yeah. My son has a really good arm and he wanted to practice. (laughs) My daughter was diverting my attention, he threw and the poor kid didn’t know I wasn’t looking. My behavior was awful! I had gotten to this point where I had a 9-year-old and a 6-year-old at the time, and I felt like it was my “fuck this” moment. Like, “What am I doing? What am I doing?” I started writing in short order and it was a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” moment.

Did you really call him a little shit?
No comment. Maybe you should ask him that. (laughs)

How do you like living in the suburbs?
It’s interesting. Since I’ve made the film, I’ve found a sense of community in the suburbs that I didn’t know existed. I think the lesson is–Wherever you are, be who you are, and then you’re going to meet like-minded people. I moved to the suburbs around four years ago, before production [on the film started]. I sat and painted in my house and I had nothing to do, really. This was during the financial crisis, too. I was doing a lot of commercial work, but that had kind of dried up and I became a full-time mom for a while. I was like, “Oh my god…this sucks!” It just does. You lose all sense of yourself and you feel that everything you’re doing is sacrificing for your kids. I lost myself for a bit.

Before we get into the film, could you talk a bit about the IFP Lab, the grants you received, and other support you’ve gotten for the film?
The film community is one of my favorite things of which to talk. The independent film community has really come to the table for Concussion. It started with the IFP Narrative Lab, and we halted editing to do a finishing lab with IFP in New York. That lab is led by Amy Dodson, Joana Vicente, who’s head of IFP, and Scott Macaulay, who runs Filmmaker Magazine. It’s a wonderful team that they have. What they do is, they bring in first time filmmakers who’ve made their films for under a million dollars into a finishing lab, and they teach them about what the next phase of finishing editorial–color, sound, composing, score. A lot of us have had that experience of doing all of that, but they gave us a lot of resources, etc.

The next part of it was independent distribution. They want to find a home for these films. John Reiss comes in and does the indie distribution part of it. He wrote a book called Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul with Sheri Chandler. They’re very interested in making sure all their films find either homes at distribution or have the tools for self distribution, which I thought was so awesome. It was actually the best week of my life. Through IFP many grants came as well.

Best week of your life?
IFP was one of the best professional weeks of my life because I love sitting and learning from people. It’s my favorite thing to do. It was an amazing experience. The best week of my life was Sundance.

You got a ton of support there.
I owe a lot to the programmers at Sundance, and I think John Cooper really got behind Concussion along with Trevor Groth, John Nein, Shari Frilot, Kim Yutani, Caroline Libresco…all of them. I was fortunate because at the beginning I thought, well, there are eight women directors in competition and I’m just one of them. The token gay girl or whatever. Throughout that week what I learned was that I wasn’t the token anything. I was pushed to be my own thing in many ways. They were so incredibly generous about talking about the film. They pushed me to USA Today…it was insane! We got a lot of great publicity. When Radius came and wanted to distribute the film we thought, “This is a miracle!” This just doesn’t happen. That was the best week ever. (laughs)

The film is about suburbia and feminism, but it’s about more than that. What’s at the core of the film?
I believe that finding one’s self is the subject of one’s life. Clarity. I think that’s at the core of the film for me. Many will find a take on marriage. I think we have to look at ourselves and our partners from time to time and assess what we want to do with the rest of our lives. I think the aspirations of somebody who’s 46 or 43 are very different from somebody who’s in their mid 20’s. I think that when I say that, people in my state of advanced age sort of start nodding their heads. We’ve gone through a lot of the milestones already. We’ve seen our children born, we’ve made some money. But still, there’s an emptiness. If you’re sacrificing yourself to find legitimacy, sometimes that can take its toll. I think those are some of the themes in the film. I think it’s something people like to talk about. It feeds the soul a little bit.

It’s a personal, intimate film, but I think everybody can relate to something in there.
Well, that’s the bet. I think the absence of the male figure in the film makes it sort of relatable for men. I think they feel very vindicated when they watch the film. They might feel titillated, which I love. It’s great, because the film is about sexuality and finding what makes you tick, sexually. Also, it’s a good film for people to look at two people together and find that it’s not always about gender dynamics. It’s about when two people stop having sex and what that looks like in a marriage.

There’s this thing called the Bechdel Test. If two women characters in a work of fiction talk to each other about something other than a man, it passes. Concussion passes!
I’ve never heard about that!

I think films like this are really valuable by this measure.
Thank you. My approach to subject matter is that it has to speak to me. I’m thinking about all the films I want to do, and I don’t think that issue would’ve even come up. All of the things that turn me on aren’t those old kind of ideas. It’s very interesting. There are two things that can be done. One, we can have more women talking to men about their issues, and two, we can have women talk to each other about things that aren’t about men. I don’t know…I just feel like people should do their work. I love men and I love talking about them. I think they’re wonderfully interesting creatures, just like women. In this case, it’s a personal film. Some of the themes are very much about empowerment, and her sexual goals did not involve men, so it was just a matter of what turned her on. It has a lot to do with being gay, certainly. There are absolutely tons of layers, like the fight for legitimacy and the toll that it can take when it’s really all about money and a house in the suburbs. Those are the gay issues in the film. When people say it’s not a gay film, I want to be like, “Well, maybe you’re not that straight of an audience.” You know what I mean? It has a lot of gay themes, and it has a universality about it that a lot of people seem to find.

I want to get into how you shoot intimacy. At my screening, there were some gasps, some…
Squirming?

Yes, some squirming.
I can see that you’re seeing something in your mind right now. What is it exactly? I’m interested. What was the squirmy part?

I’m picturing the scene with the young student sitting in a chair and Robin kneels down in front of her. A lot of people in the theater looked very, very nervous.
Do you remember your first kiss?

Yes.
That’s what it was. Robin and I both knew that that scene was about her first kiss. This is a woman who’s so shut down that she starts over again in many ways. I approached the whole thing as a big orgasm. There’s a build to it. It goes back to the very beautiful woman in the film who seduces Robin. That moment where she pulls Robin to her and it’s almost like Robin is a walker. She’s like stone. I was like, “You’re a column. You’re stone. You don’t know what you’re doing or how this all works anymore.” By the time Robin gets to the [student], it really is her first kiss. She learns a little more until she finds her “animal” self.

Concussion film

Talk a bit about Robin and her performance.
Early on, we thought about the arc of the character. I told her that the character punishes herself with exercise, and Robin came back three months later and she had all these muscles on her and lost all this weight. I was scared when I saw her. She’s a very tall woman, and she was a size zero. At one point, I could see the sinew in her back during the shower scene, and it was kind of sad. Sometimes, that sexiness almost became a look of hunger and desperation. As the film goes on, she finds a way to satiate her hunger. She knew that going in, and she created that arc beautifully. She’s a brilliant person and a wonderful collaborative partner. I don’t know that the film would be anything without her.

What were you looking for when you were casting that role?
I wanted to create an immersive experience. I feel like our culture has gotten so conservative that we’re afraid to go there, and I wanted someone to be able to go there with me. I said, “This isn’t going to be an expensive project, but it’s going to be expensive to your soul.” The way I wanted to do this was the way directors of the golden age of film did it–with their whole heart. I wasn’t afraid, but Robin was afraid. As we talked, she became less afraid. She can go there. That’s the beautiful thing about her. She’s just a well–there are no limits to what she can do. When I realized that, I knew we had something special because that satisfied my urge and hunger to go there creatively, and I think hers as well.

Will you talk a bit about David Kruta, your DP, and the look of the film? The colors are great.
I love to talk about David. He was a camera operator, a DIT by trade, and he shot some shorts. I loved his reel, and the thing I loved about him most was that he knew, technically, how to achieve the looks that we both wanted. The type of framing we wanted. The thing I love about him was that sometimes he saved me from myself. I’m a big fan of alternative framing and kind of “going there”. I think David really knew what this piece was, and he shot what the piece needed to be rather than some of the kooky ideas that I had. I really appreciated his steadiness throughout the process. In the chaos, when you’re doing that amount of acting, you’re doing that amount of directing and you’re really getting into these characters, you need somebody steady and somebody who can help in that way. David was always ready. We dared a little bit with the color. We took some chances. I find that a lot of digital is looking a little too creamy. We were encouraged by our producer to find the look that we wanted, so we really heightened blacks and played with that quite a bit. I think we came to a look that we felt was important for the character and the tone of the piece. I don’t know that I would make another film that looks exactly like that–it’s not necessarily going to be my way–but I felt that this piece deserved that look because of who she was.

After writing and directing your debut film, are you still open to doing films that you don’t both write and direct?
Sure. I’m a collaborator. I didn’t grow up in a world where I could call the shots. I grew up in a world where I was serving clients. That really helped make this film better. I was able to listen to my producer Rose and my editor, executive producer, and collaborator Anthony Cupo. I was very, very involved in collaboration. Rose and I would rewrite scenes, Robin would help rewrite scenes. We really played with it, and that’s something that you have to do in commercial work. You have to serve many masters. I believe in listening to people and making decisions on how to put the puzzle pieces together. I think I’d be really good at helping guide the voice of another writer. It’s something I’m definitely interested in doing.

How does it feel to have the film screening in San Francisco at Frameline?
I always get choked up when anything involves community of any kind. I’m a part of many communities–I’m a part of a suburban community with my friends and I’m part of a Jewish community–but the one that’s the most important for my soul is the gay community. It’s an incredibly important moment for the film and for us as a team. We’re absolutely thrilled to be here.

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Pasolini Film Series Hits San Francisco This Weekend http://waytooindie.com/news/pasolini-film-series-hits-san-francisco-weekend/ http://waytooindie.com/news/pasolini-film-series-hits-san-francisco-weekend/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=14488 This weekend in San Francisco, a retrospective of one of cinema’s greatest, most controversial, and visionary minds will take place in two of the city’s oldest movie houses; the magnificent Castro Theatre and arthouse haven Roxie Theater. Part of a sweeping nationwide tour, a selection of Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s boundary-pushing films, which not […]]]>

This weekend in San Francisco, a retrospective of one of cinema’s greatest, most controversial, and visionary minds will take place in two of the city’s oldest movie houses; the magnificent Castro Theatre and arthouse haven Roxie Theater. Part of a sweeping nationwide tour, a selection of Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s boundary-pushing films, which not only changed cinema, but challenged the way people thought and shattered the artistic limitations of the time, will be presented like all great films should be; in a dark room full of strangers willing to surrender themselves to the light of a projector.

The films selected for the San Francisco Pasolini film series are as follows:

Saturday, September 14th at the Castro Theatre

4:00pm—Mamma Roma
6:30pm—Medea
9:30pm—Il Decameron

Sunday, September 15th at the Roxie Theater

2:00pm—Saló, or the 120 Days of Sodom
4:30pm—Arabian Nights
7:15pm—The Cantrbury Tales
9:45pm—Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom

Most of the controversy surrounding Pasolini stemmed from his unblinking fascination with stories that featured acts of unadulterated sexuality. He didn’t shy away from presenting sex truthfully and realistically, which earned him myriad detractors and skeptics. Films like Arabian Nights and The Canterbury Tales feature unfiltered nudity and coitus in abundance, but they were Benjamin Franklin kites in the sky compared to the gargantuan lightning rod that was his most infamously revolting work, Saló, or the 120 Days of Sodom. Depicting the most harrowing acts of sadism, sexual debauchery, and ultra-violent torture, the film is banned in several countries to this day. There’s a provocative exploration of political corruption, fascism, and perversion operating underneath the parade of repulsive acts (which are hard to watch even for modern audiences), which has earned it high praise from film critics and filmmakers. The vicious tidal wave of criticism and hatred the heroically uncompromising Pasolini incited through his system-shocking oeuvre eventually took his life; he was murdered just before Salo was released.

The artistic brilliance and purity of Pasolini rests in his willingness to embrace and express the ugly truth that life can be shit. His films are seldom easy to stomach, capturing the darkest sides of humanity and the unrelenting cruelty of the world we inhabit that inevitably consumes and dusts us into nothing. Saló and Mamma Roma, a tale of a prostitute mother (unquestionably taboo at the time of its release), twist and turn morality inside out and upside down, prodding our precious principles violently until we emerge bruised, but wiser nonetheless.

It’ll be a privilege for everyone in attendance this weekend to experience Pasolini’s work in the most ideal of environments, in gorgeous 35mm. To make the exhibition extra special, Ninetto Davoli, who was discovered by Pasolini, starred in many of his films, (The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights) and had a close relationship with the director, will be in attendance to introduce some of the films and participate in a Q&A after the screening of Arabian Nights. Whether you’re a Pasolini appreciator or total newbie and you live in the Bay Area, you’d be cheating yourself to miss out on such a special experience.

For more info on the Pasolini film series, visit www.pasolinifilm.com

For tickets, visit www.castrotheater.com and www.roxie.com

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