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‘Joan Baez I Am a Noise’ Explores an Icon’s Legacy

Get a behind the scenes look at Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky, and Maeve O’Boyle’s documentary on superstar Joan Baez.

Photo Courtesy of Mead Street Films.

When Joan Baez was 13 years old, she wrote an essay declaring who she was, prescient words from a precocious teen who would grow up to be a towering figure in American folk music and political activism. A phrase from it worked its way into the title Joan Baez: I Am a Noise, Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky, and Maeve O’Boyle’s documentary that screens at the Festival on Tuesday, Apr. 18. Baez herself has thoughts on that essay.

“I was just thinking of the one thing we didn’t mention, which is the fantasy part, my ‘I’m going to start a peace movement and we’re going to save the world,’ Baez says during a recent video call with O’Connor and Navasky. “It was all very real to me, you know, I have to laugh. On the other hand, that’s the direction I went without ever looking back.

“But just to add, it is a funny combination of this shy, don’t-feel-good-about-myself, less than and, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m going to save the world.’”

What is Joan Baez I Am a Noise About?

Baez may not have saved the world in the end but not for lack of trying, as expressed through her music and her dedication to the civil rights and antiwar movement. But that is only one facet of I Am a Noise, a rich documentary that is as much about Baez’s complicated family story and her relationships with Bob Dylan and former husband, antiwar activist David Harris, as her career and politics. It is also as much about the present as the past as the filmmakers capture her during her 2018/19 “Fare Thee Well” tour. The 82-year-old artist is never less than frank and the filmmakers take a similar approach. This is not hagiography.

“I wanted to leave an honest legacy and you can’t do that if you pretty it all up,” Baez say. “So, it’s not pretty. I just held my nose and jumped in. I said, ‘Okay, here are the keys to the storage unit… What a Pandora’s box I let them open up and they just ran with it.”

O’Connor and Navasky are Emmy-winning filmmakers who frequently collaborate. The pair previously worked with O’Boyle (also the editor of I Am a Noise) when she co-produced and edited their 2015 PBS Frontline documentary, Growing Up Trans. The trio’s connection to Baez begins with O’Connor, who first met Baez in the mid-‘80s on a documentary project , the two women becoming friends. Filming for the documentary began several years before the Fare Thee Well tour but it was the idea of a final tour that kicked the project in high gear.

“There wasn’t a commitment to a last tour but the idea of a potential last tour gave Miri, Maeve, and I an opening to think about the value in documenting that with Joan. It would give us a window into somebody who had been famous for 60-plus years coming to the end of a kind of amazing career.

“There was no guarantee that would end, which made it even more interesting,” she adds. “The film itself could be a process of discovery. It was an opening and we knew it would be a narrative anchor. Over the course of time, the film shifted dramatically. As we all got in deeper and deeper and as Joan entrusted us, particularly with the family archive, the film really took a huge turn.”

O’Connor observes that Baez’s parents, Albert and Joan, kept everything. Albert, a physicist, made home movies of his family that included Baez’s older sister Pauline and younger sister, singer-songwriter Mimi Fariña. The family were also letter writers, Joan sending long written or recorded missives to her parents from the road. For the filmmakers, the trove was a gold mine.

“It cracked open the film in a lot of ways but particularly in terms of how to represent the past,” O’Connor says. “We had a chance to make the past come alive through the original source material that could make this a very different kind of biography. It would feel more like time travel than biography, so that we could see how Joan experienced things at the time rather than from the remove of 60 years later. There’s an immediacy and immersiveness that we wanted to capture in every strand of the film.”

How did the Filmmakers Find Balance?

One of the challenges of the film from the outset was how to balance the documentary’s many aspects of Baez’s family life, activism, and music career. But just in the way that she conducted her life, the filmmakers discovered some of the work was already done for them.

“The balancing of politics and music was almost natural to her from the time she was a teenager,” Navasky says. “In her letters, there is music and politics and family, they’re all interwoven. In some ways, following the course of her original primary material guided us.

“She’s had an incredibly packed life,” she adds. “We were constantly struggling with we could and couldn’t leave out.”

Baez has a son, Gabriel Harris, and a granddaughter, Jasmine, and she is an aunt to her sister Pauline’s children but she is the last of her birth family. The filmmakers were able to get footage of Baez’s mom before she died at 100 in 2013 and Pauline before she passed away at 77 in 2016. (Albert died in 2007 at 94, and Mimi in 2001 at 56.) But for the most part, it is Joan observing and speaking for her family.

“I hope I did them justice as well as I could,” Baez says. “I obviously couldn’t have made the film until they were all gone. For the Baez line, this is the end of the road. So, that, too, is part of leaving a legacy, of trying to leave an honest legacy. My family was nothing, if not honest, each in his own way.”

Joan Baez I Am a Noise is stuffed with music, from the beginning of Baez’s career when she was a teenager sensation all the way through the decades to that last tour of a venerated veteran performer. All that music will pour out of the Castro Theatre’s speakers during the film’s SFFILM Festival screening where O’Connor and Navasky and longtime Woodside resident Baez will be in attendance along with Baez’s friends and family.

“It’s different, seeing it on a big screen, because if you’re going to be overwhelmed, that’s the way to do it,” Baez says. “So each time I see it, there are different reactions and sometimes they’re very deep. They’re very sad. Sometimes I’m just delighted at the silly parts of it. I mean, does it bring up stuff? Absolutely. Absolutely, each time. Some of it I really don’t want to think about and I have to. With other parts of it, it’s okay.”

Joan Baez I Am a Noise: 5 PM. Tues., April 18, Castro Theatre. Click here for further information and tickets.

About the Author

Pam Grady is a freelance writer, whose work appears in the San Francisco Chronicle, 48 Hills, and other publications. She also has her own web site.

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A director comes out of his COVID shell to make ‘Stone Turtle’

Woo Ming Jin’s Stone Turtle plays with genre and form—see it for the first time in California at the 2023 SFFILM Festival

Film Still from Stone Turtle.

Woo Ming Jin embraced the chance to make Stone Turtle, his eerie drama that won the FIPRESCI prize at the 2022 Locarno International Film Festival and makes its California premiere at the SFFILM Festival on Saturday, April 15. It was the middle of COVID, a time of punishing lockdowns in Malaysia. In those bleak times, the filmmaker’s career seemed at a standstill.

“During COVID, there was a feeling that I wasn’t sure whether I would make another film,” Woo says during a video call. “I had the opportunity to make this film very quickly, and I thought, ‘You know, I’ll just do something that I truly want to do without any sort of expectations from anyone else.’”

What is Stone Turtle about?

The title, Stone Turtle, refers to a Malaysian folk tale, a kind of romantic tragedy involving a turtle couple who become separated, leaving the female turtle to search ever after for her missing mate. The lore comes alive in beguiling animated sequences, directed by Paul Raymond Williams (assistant animator on Studio Ghibli’s The Red Turtle).

The animation is woven into the story of Zahara (Asmara Abigail), an Indonesian migrant living on the titular island off the east coast of Malaysia. The place is sparsely populated, the province of women, all outsiders like Zahara and her 10-year-old niece Nika (Samara Kenzo). Zahara’s biggest concern besides selling enough turtle eggs to sustain her small family is getting Nika into school, a high hurdle when only Malaysian citizens are allowed to register for public education. But those challenges are soon supplanted by one far more dangerous. An interloper arrives on the island, Samad (Bront Palarae). He claims to be researching leatherback turtles but Zahara recognizes him and doubts his intentions are so benign.

As Zahara and Samad face off, violence and mystery envelop their conflict, embroidered with elements of ghost stories and revenge, and shot through with alternative timelines that have led some critics to compare Stone Turtle to the classic Harold Ramis comedy Groundhog Day.

“In terms of Groundhog Day, I suppose it’s the seminal sort of time loops movie,” Woo says. “When we started making this, and I was discussing it with my producer, we thought it could be a day repeating itself but it could also be parallel realities, so like one version after the other.

“So time loops weren’t strictly on my mind as we were making it, but as we edited and the film became more crystallized, it became obvious it was a time loop. So, unconsciously absolutely, Groundhog Day, or I really enjoyed that Tom Cruise movie, Edge of Tomorrow. Maybe I was thinking more of that in terms of this looping element.”

Woo was a boy when he first visited the island that became his mythical Turtle Island. He spent holidays and vacations there fishing, starting when he was in high school. Then a few years ago, he spent a few months there while working on a project and got to know some of the villagers who eked a subsistence living turtle poaching. With turtle populations declining, it is a practice that could be disastrous but conservation groups in the region have become the villagers’ customers, ensuring the safety of the eggs.

“It was sort of like a symbiotic relationship,” Woo says. “I found it really fascinating. That was the catalyst for the film, and I had really wanted to make a film on the east coast. That region where we shot is really well known for that folklore, the legend of the stone turtle. It was really my desire to basically tell a contemporary version of this folklore and I was inspired by some of the people I’ve encountered in the region.”

To the folk tale and the turtle poaching, Woo added in elements highlighting the situation for migrants in a society where they have few rights or opportunities and also observes the perilous status of women in patriarchal society. At the same time, Woo didn’t want to make a heavy-handed social issues movie.

“In terms of the genre, I just wanted to have some fun with it,” he says. “Maybe it was a reaction to COVID. We were all stuck and feeling miserable and I thought, ‘This is an opportunity. I’m just going to do something fun.’ I say ‘fun’ in quotation marks as cinematic.

“I wanted to do something that’s important but also play with genres. And I’d always wanted to mix animation with live action, and then came the idea of looping time, because this place where we shot is pretty magical.”

Woo wrote Samad with Palarae—whom the director describes as a kind of Malaysian Michael Shannon—in mind. The men are friends, and Palarae appeared in Woo’s film Zombitopia (2021), as well as one Woo produced, Barbarian Invasion (2021). The actor occasionally works in Indonesia and suggested Abigail, with whom he’s appeared in several films, to Woo.

“I had seen a few films Asmara’s been, and she was really brilliant,” Woo says. “She had this sort of natural instinct about her. Even though she’s professionally trained, she has this feral sort of instinct about her that I really liked. We cast her and immediately knew she had chemistry with Bront, because that was important. Even though they were playing good/bad person, they still needed to have some sort of on-screen chemistry.

“And so, we worked together on this character, Zahara. There was a lot of input that Asmara gave that I really welcomed because, for me, I’m writing the lines but I always enjoy it if the actors take the role and sort of sort of carve it to make it their own.”

Woo Ming Jin’s San Francisco Homecoming

When it comes to Stone Turtle’s appearance at the festival, the film represents a kind of homecoming for Woo. The very first film festival Woo attended was what was then the San Francisco International Film Festival in 2005, when his first feature Monday Morning Glory screened as part of a spotlight on Malaysian cinema programmed by Roger Garcia. Four years later, another of his features, Woman on Fire Looks for Water, delighted Festival audiences. Woo can’t attend in person this year but he is thrilled that Stone Turtle will represent him at the Festival.

“I’m very happy to screen it in San Francisco,” he says, “There is something special about screening to an audience in San Francisco.”

Stone Turtle: 9 PM, Sat., April 15. CGV San Francisco. Click here for further information and tickets.

About the Author

Pam Grady is a freelance writer, whose work appears in the San Francisco Chronicle, 48 Hills, and other publications. She also has her own web site.

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SFFILM Festival Opening Night Features New Film About Local Legend Stephen Curry

Here’s why we’re excited for the West Coast and hometown premiere of Stephen Curry: Underrated, Peter Nicks’ new documentary about the four-time NBA champ.

Stephen Curry interviewing at Davidson College. Photo Courtesy of Apple Original Films.

The 66th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM Festival) will tip off with a feature-length documentary that scored some serious points from audiences at the 2023 Sundance International Film Festival: Stephen Curry: Underrated. Directed by Oakland local and Emmy Award-winner Peter Nicks, Underrated is the latest Apple Original Films and A24 movie you need to see.. The Steph Curry doc is also produced by Oaklander and Fruitvale Station and Black Panther director Ryan Coogler, who recently accepted the Irving M. Levin Award for Film Direction at SFFILM Awards Night. All of these Oakland connections are part of what makes us most excited for the SFFILM Festival Opening Night screenings of Underrated at the city’s historic Grand Lake Theatre.

What Is Stephen Curry: Underrated About?

Stephen Curry: Underrated is the remarkable coming-of-age story of one of the most influential, dynamic, and unexpected players in the history of basketball: Stephen Curry. This feature documentary—which blends intimate cinéma vérité, archival footage, and on-camera interviews—documents Curry’s rise from an undersized college player at a tiny Division I college to a four-time NBA champion, who built one of the most dominant sports dynasties in the world.

It is directed by Peter Nicks, who returns to the Festival for the fourth time. Nicks previously screened The Waiting Room (SFFILM Festival, 2012), The Force (SFFILM Festival, 2016), and Homeroom (SFFILM Festival, 2021) here at SFFILM and his latest film celebrates the iconic NBA superstar Stephen Curry. Nicks intertwines Curry’s emergence on the court at Davidson College with thrilling footage of the 2021–2022 Golden State Warriors season, when the team won its fourth championship of the Curry era. In the film, Nicks turns his lens to Curry’s feelings and thoughts about not only his sports ambitions but also his family and academic aspirations as well.

Stephen Curry: Underrated premiered at Sundance, and includes quiet moments of reflection from Steph Curry along with a wealth of behind the scenes access to the local legend. The film is produced by Peter Nicks, Ryan Coogler, Erick Peyton, Sean Havey, Ben Cotner, and Marissa Torres Ericson with Emily Osborne, Sev Ohanian, and Zinzi Coogler as executive producers.

Stephen Curry in warmup gear before a game. Photo Courtesy of Apple Original Films.

Who Is Peter Nicks?

Emmy award-winning director and producer Peter Nicks has called Oakland, California home since 1997. He has been part of the SFFILM community as a filmmaker, grantee, honoree, mentor, and valued partner for well over a decade. His Oakland Trilogy has been part of three SFFILM Festival programs respectively: The Waiting Room (SFFILM Festival, 2012), The Force (SFFILM Festival, 2017), and Homeroom (SFFILM Festival, 2021).

“SFFILM has been a supporter of mine from the beginning of my trilogy about Oakland institutions and I’m proud to partner with them on my latest project, which is about another Bay Area institution of sorts,” said Director, Peter Nicks. “Stephen Curry’s story is at once universal and personal, a thrilling expression of the power of pushing beyond expectations and fighting to be seen. These themes are not only woven deeply into Stephen’s story but also that of the town itself and I’m excited to share the film soon at Oakland’s legendary Grand Lake Theater.”

Director Peter Nicks on the red carpet of the Golden Gate Awards at the 2017 SFFILM Festival. Photo Courtesy of SFFILM.

Where Can I Watch Steph Curry: Underrated?

Stephen Curry: Underrated will open the 66th San Francisco International Film Festival with two screenings at the historic Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland. It’s exciting to welcome an Oakland-based filmmaker into a legendary local movie palace for a documentary about a person who remains near and dear to many residents of The Town. Director Peter Nicks and producer Ryan Coogler are expected to join us for both screenings.

Want to celebrate even more? A limited number of tickets will be available for public purchase to the Opening Night Party which will be held at OMCA, the Oakland Museum of California. See the film, hear from the filmmakers, and join us for our opening night party on Thursday, April 13. The two screenings of the film will happen at 6:30 pm PT and 9:30 pm PT. The SFFILM Opening Night Party will start at 9 pm PT and run until midnight.

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Will Michelle Yeoh Win An Oscar? SFFILM Thinks It’s About Time

Last spring, at the 65th SFFILM Festival, we paid tribute to cinematic icon Michelle Yeoh, who wrapped up the year by earning an Oscar nomination. Will she finally win big at the 2023 Academy Awards?

Michelle Yeoh. Photo by Pamela Gentile.

In April 2022, SFFILM welcomed Michelle Yeoh to the 65th San Francisco International Film Festival for a special tribute to the enduring icon, which was hosted by award-winning actor Sandra Oh. In a joyful and wide-ranging onstage conversation, the pair celebrated the career and gifts of this unparalleled international movie star. Yeoh carved out a now-legendary path in Hong Kong cinema in the late ‘80s and throughout the ‘90s, performing her own stunts in action films like Yes, Madam (1985), Police Story 3: Super Cop (1992), and Holy Weapon (1993).

Then came the release of director Ang Lee’s Academy Award-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Whether you saw the film when it premiered in 2000, or joined SFFILM at the Castro Theatre for your first Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon viewing in the lead-up to the tribute, it’s clear why Yeoh gained critical recognition worldwide after this starring role. A standout supporting role in a little 1997 Bond film called Tomorrow Never Dies introduced her to even more audiences.

Called “one of the great international movie stars of the past quarter-century” by New York Times chief film critic A.O. Scott, Michelle Yeoh is a singular, tenacious talent—and that’s exactly why we honored her career last year. After decades of memorable roles, Yeoh has now earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her formidable performance in The Daniels’ (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) multiversal gut-punch Everything Everywhere All at Once. Will Michelle Yeoh win an Oscar on Sunday, March 12? SFFILM believes so—and forecasted it nearly a year ago.

Michelle Yeoh in Conversation with Sandra Oh at the 65th SFFILM Festival. Photo by Pamela Gentile.

Has Michelle Yeoh Been Nominated For An Oscar Before?

Despite her impressive and enduring career in film, Michelle Yeoh has never been nominated for an Oscar before. Even her BAFTA nomination for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon didn’t push the Academy to recognize Yeoh over two decades ago. Now, with Everything Everywhere All at Once—the most-nominated film at the 2023 Oscars—Michelle Yeoh is finally being given the recognition she has long deserved on the awards circuit.

At the Golden Globes, Michelle Yeoh became the first Malaysian actor to win Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture—Musical or Comedy. This is also Yeoh’s first time being nominated for the Critics’ Choice Awards, and her second BAFTA nomination. Her role as Evelyn Wang, the laundromat owner who’s just trying to navigate an IRS audit when she’s pulled into a multiverse-spanning adventure, is a career-defining one. And that’s saying something given Yeoh’s decades’ worth of accomplishments.

The role has landed her numerous awards from critics associations, in addition to that Golden Globe, and her fellow Everything Everywhere All at Once Oscar nominees—Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Stephanie Hsu—have all earned accolades for their ensemble work in the film. Most recently, Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian woman ever to win any individual category at the Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG Awards). She won the honor for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role, of course. But does that SAG win—both as an individual and as a member of the year’s most outstanding cast—indicate a promising night at the Oscars?

Fans outside the Castro Theatre for the Tribute to Michelle Yeoh in Conversation with Sandra Oh. Photo by Pamela Gentile.

Can Michelle Yeoh Make Oscar History?

When Academy Award nominations were announced in January, Michelle Yeoh became the first Malaysian person, and the first Southeast Asian person, to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. She’s also the second woman of Asian descent to be nominated in the category, with the first being biracial actor Merle Oberon. Nominated for her role in The Dark Angel in 1936, Oberon felt the need to conceal her biracial identity due to the pervasive racism in the studio system.

If Michelle Yeoh wins, it will be a landmark moment in film history. “[Other Asian folks] come up to me and they say, ‘You’re doing it for us’,” Yeoh said in an interview with TIME, which named her an icon of the year. And as the 2023 Oscars near, Yeoh is emerging as the category frontrunner. Even so, some film critics and cinephiles are still betting on two-time Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett (The Aviator, Best Supporting Actress; Blue Jasmine, Best Actress) to nab the award again for her starring role in Tár.

SFFILM Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks, Michelle Yeoh, and Sandra Oh onstage at the 65th SFFILM Festival. Photo by Pamela Gentile.

After receiving news of her nomination, Yeoh told Deadline that the most important part of her Oscars push was that it could show others, especially other Asian actors and filmmakers, that they can do it, too. “I’m very ordinary. I just work very hard,” Yeoh said. “There are so many brilliant actresses [and] actors out there who know that they have a seat at the table. All they have to do is find an opportunity and get there.”

So, can Michelle Yeoh make history? SFFILM thinks she can! And if Yeoh wins, we’ll be dancing just like she and Sandra Oh danced on stage at the Castro Theatre last year. It was a privilege to honor you, Michelle. You’ve got this—in every universe!

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In Memoriam—Former SFFILM Executive Director Noah Cowan

Photo by Pamela Gentile.

Remembering former SFFILM Executive Director Noah Cowan

On Wednesday, January 25, former SFFILM Executive Director Noah Cowan passed away at his home in Los Angeles. Our staff and alumni are deeply saddened by his loss and we’ve been swapping many uproarious stories about Noah, a wonderful, wild, big-hearted, and complex person who did so much for this organization during his tenure. His legacy is still propelling SFFILM ever forward, with filmmaking and film appreciation at its center.

Noah stepped into the Executive Director role at SFFILM in 2014—then known as the San Francisco Film Society—and immediately got to work with his bold vision for the organization. He said at the time, “The Bay Area has a storied relationship to cinema’s century-plus history and is currently home to the technology companies that will decisively influence the medium’s future. SFFS is uniquely positioned to work with filmmakers, educators, and enthusiastic local audiences to embrace the dynamic and exciting changes taking place within the industry and continue to ensure that great cinema is made, seen and appreciated.”

Photo by Tommy Lau

Noah Cowan in the audience at an SFFILM event.

Photo by Pamela Gentile

Noah Cowan on stage with Ellen Burstyn at an SFFILM event.

Photo by Tommy Lau

Noah Cowan on the red carpet with SF Mayor London Breed and former SFFILM Director of Programming Rachel Rosen.

Photo by Tommy Lau

Noah Cowan and Ellen Burstyn sitting together at SFFILM Awards Night.

Photo by Tommy Lau

Noah Cowan in the audience at an SFFILM event.

Photo by Tommy Lau

Noah Cowan in the audience at an SFFILM event.

Photo by Pamela Gentile

Noah Cowan with Pat Cleveland and Stephen Burrows at an SFFILM event.

Photo by Tommy Lau

Noah Cowan with Marcus Hu and B. Ruby Rich at SFFILM Essential SF

Photo by Pamela Gentile

Noah Cowan with Johnnie To at an SFFILM event.

Photo by Tommy Lau

Noah Cowan and Shah Rukh Khan at the 2017 SFFILM Festival.

Photo by Pamela Gentile

Noah Cowan and Wesley Morris at the 2016 SFFILM Festival.

Photo by Tommy Lau

Noah Cowan in the audience at an SFFILM event.

Photo by Tommy Lau

Noah Cowan with Jennifer Siebel Newsom and CA Governor Gavin Newsom at the 2019 SFFILM Festival.

Photo by Tommy Lau

Noah Cowan and filmmakers of Darkest Hour at an SF Honors Award Presentation.

Launched in March of 2017, Noah delivered the rebranding of the organization, integrating all programs including year-round exhibitions, the world-renowned San Francisco International Film Festival, SFFILM Makers, and SFFILM Education under the banner of SFFILM. This new SFFILM was the foundation of who we are today—an organization that prioritizes supporting filmmakers young and old, bringing together the local film community, and inspiring film lovers throughout the Bay Area.

“Noah’s impact on SFFILM was indelible and lasting, and I was honored to carry the stewardship of the organization from Noah’s visionary work. He helped to bring us into a more modern and accessible era, starting with our name change from the San Francisco Film Society, as well as elevating our artist development and education programs to a higher visibility aligned with our legacy festival,” said SFFILM Executive Director, Anne Lai. “His energy and excitement about what we do continue to echo in the new initiatives he created during his time here. Like the movies, he was bigger than life and will be greatly missed.”

And of course, his love and knowledge of film drove his ambitions for the artform, and for SFFILM. Associate Director of Programming Rod Armstrong shared this remembrance, “Talking about cinema with Noah was a great pleasure for me during his time at SFFILM. Following his departure, we’d pick up our cinephilic chats when we saw one another, sprinkled with nifty gossip. It’s to my great dismay that I won’t be able to continue this conversation with Noah; he made me smarter, better at my job, and hearing his always-at-the-ready laugh made my day a little brighter. The ways he expanded the scope and reach of SFFILM are just one element of his impressive legacy; I’m so proud to have been a part of it.”

We will miss Noah and we know many film communities around the world will as well. We will continue to find solace in his legacy and work, and on especially hard days, we’ll look back at his musings on filmmaking to remind ourselves of the man he was and the devotion he had for filmmaking and film loving.