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SFFILM Supported Titles Headed to Sundance

Three SFFILM-supported projects are in the 2022 Sundance lineup. Read more about the projects here!

We are thrilled that SFFILM Invest continues to fund projects that go on to Sundance and more, and beyond proud to see Reid Davenport’s project I Didn’t See You There from our inaugural SFFILM Rainin Filmmakers With Disability grant as both part of the slate and the winner of Sundance’s US Documentary Directing Award. We hope you get a chance to check out these inspiring projects at the festival this year and as they hit streaming sites in the future. Congratulations to all the films and filmmakers making their Sundance debut!

Here are our SFFILM Makers-supported films:

A Love Song
Next
(USA) Max Walker-Silverman, director; Dan Janvey, Jesse Hope, Max Walker-Silverman, producers
— SFFILM Invest

After unhitching her camper at a lakeside in the mountains, Faye finds her rhythm cooking meals, retrieving crawfish from a trap, and scanning her old box radio for a station. She looks expectantly at the approach of a car or the mailman, explaining to neighboring campers that she’s waiting for a childhood sweetheart she hasn’t seen in decades. When he does arrive, Lito and Faye, both widowed, spend an evening reminiscing about their lives, losses, and loneliness.

A whimsical romance, Max Walker-Silverman’s captivating debut feature shows an “American West” full of quietude, compassion, and introspection. It’s both naturalistic and vaguely surreal, blurring our sense of time and beauty, loss and vivacity, the grandiose natural world and intimate humanism. Career performances from Dale Dickey and Wes Studi bring an inescapable presence to people we don’t often see portrayed on film. They are gentle outliers possessed of resilience and existential spirit, seeking to process something elusive: a feeling of love for what’s no longer there. Like Faye turning her radio dial, they listen hopefully for the faint trace of a song.

Mija
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(USA) Isabel Castro, director; Tabs Breese, Isabel Castro, Yesenia Tlahuel, producers
— SFFILM Catapult Documentary Fellowship

Doris Muñoz desperately longed for better representation in the indie music she listened to as a teenager. At 23, she took matters into her own hands and began a career in music talent management, passionately advocating for rising Latinx artists. Her swift success transformed her into a pillar for a community of first- and second-generation Americans seeking collective acceptance and healing through song. When Doris receives news that forces her to reconsider working in music, she finds Jacks Haupt, an auspicious young singer eager to break out of her parent’s home in Dallas, Texas. Beyond the sweet moments of joy, glitter, and hope, Doris and Jacks share the ever-present guilt of being the first American-born members of their undocumented families. For them, the pressure of financial success is heightened because it facilitates green card processing and family reunification.

Mija is an immensely emotional and intimate portrait honoring the resilience of immigrants and their children. Director Isabel Castro’s debut feature constructs an ethereal love letter to their indomitable spirit in the face of constant instability, and heartily affirms that all humans have the right to shine and to dream.

I Didn’t See You There
US Documentary Competition
Winner of the U.S. Documentary Directing Award
(USA) Reid Davenport, director; Keith Wilson, producer
—SFFILM Rainin Filmmakers With Disability Grantee

As a visibly disabled person, filmmaker Reid Davenport is often either the subject of an unwanted gaze — gawked at by strangers — or paradoxically rendered invisible, ignored or dismissed by society. The arrival of a circus tent just outside his apartment prompts him to consider the history and legacy of the freak show, in which individuals who were deemed atypical were put on display for the amusement and shock of a paying public. Contemplating how this relates to his own filmmaking practice, which explicitly foregrounds disability, Davenport sets out to make a film about how he sees the world from his wheelchair without having to be seen himself.

Informed by his position in space, lower to the ground, Davenport captures indelible images, often abstracted into shapes and patterns separate from their meaning. But the circus tent looms in the background, and reality regularly intrudes, from unsolicited offers of help to careless blocking of access ramps. Personal and unflinching, I Didn’t See You There forces the viewer to confront the spectacle and invisibility of disability.

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A Letter from Our Executive Director: Gratitude for Film in 2021

Back together at the Castro Theatre. Photo by Pamela Gentile.

As we close out 2021 I am filled with immense optimism and much gratitude for the resiliency of the power of film. This faith comes from seeing our wonderful audiences returning to theaters; it comes in the form of filmmakers creating new work; it comes in the gathering of community to celebrate, advocate for, and champion our artists and their work. If last year was about being knocked off our feet, 2021 was a year where we got back up and leaned into the blustery crosswinds of figuring out a new normal together.

First, this meant continuing and improving the online iterations of how we gather throughout the first half of the year — our SFFILM Festival drive-in, live online events and talks, the streamed films, and a robust online Education series for students and teachers.

Photos by Pamela Gentile.

Next, it meant providing resources in the form of residencies, granting, and fellowships all from a distance. This year brought new cohorts of supported filmmakers through our SFFILM Rainin Grants and SFFILM Rainin Filmmakers with Disabilities Grants, Dolby Institute Fellowships, our New American Fellowship, Sloan Science in Cinema Fellowships and Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund recipients , and soon-to-be announced Documentary Film Fund recipients and upcoming class of FilmHouse Residents.

We also got to pilot a new initiative. Inspired by our FilmHouse residency for working filmmakers, we launched a Youth FilmHouse Residency focusing on students who identify as Black, Indigenous, or as a person of color in grades 9–12 intent on exploring a career in film.

2021 Youth FilmHouse Residency

Most recently, after 18 months of distancing, we set forth a campaign to bring people back into theaters this fall. We were thrilled to find many audience members entrusting their first back-in-theater experiences with us and embracing the community that we all missed being around. These first forays back to in-person gave us hope and a bit of confidence starting with our SF Honors event with Siân Heder’s CODA to our fall documentary showcase Doc Stories. We held our annual fundraiser Awards Night in person to celebrate the wonderfully talented directors Jane Campion, Reinaldo Marcus Green, and Maggie Gyllenhaal along with brilliant actor Oscar Isaac.

Filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal accepting the Kanbar Award for Storytelling at Awards Night. Photo by Tommy Lau.

Jane Campion and Francis Ford Coppola, photo by Pamela Gentile.

Director Siân Heder received SF Honors for her film CODA in August. Photo by Pamela Gentile.

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green, Executive Director Anne Lai, actor Jon Bernthal, and Director of Programing Jessie Fairbanks at SFFILM Awards Night.

Directors Isabel Bethencourt and Parker Hill at Doc Stories. Photo by Pamela Gentile.

Oscar Isaac accepting the SFFILM Award for Acting on Awards Night. Photo by Pamela Gentile.

Director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks at Doc Stories. Photo by Pamela Gentile.

Generous donors at SFFILM Awards Night. Photo by Drew Altizer Photography.

And just last weekend, we celebrated our Education’s 30th Anniversary with free access to families and audiences to see three special screenings at the Castro, capped by West Side Story and the irrepressible Rita Moreno.

EGOT and Icon Rita Moreno! Photos by Pamela Gentile.

Photo by Pamela Gentile.

I say all this not to prove how much we did, but to remind us that we are not alone in this year of navigating the new normal. It is through the ingenuity, passion, and tenacity of our staff, our board, and our community of filmmakers sharing new work and audiences eager to receive it, that we are able to accomplish any one of these things. We love nothing less than to roll up our sleeves and solve the unique challenges presented at every turn, and help each other stay standing in the year that 2021 has been.

If there is any silver lining to the past year, we have gotten much better at not taking anything for granted. This includes you as part of our community. We can’t wait to see you in the new year.

Warmly,
Anne

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Guest Post: Sound Design, Hip-Hop, and “A Lo-Fi Blues”

FilmHouse Resident Ed Ntiri on sounds and their connection to filmmaking

“The ear is much more creative than the eye.”
— Robert Bresson

“Back in the days when I was a teenager,
Before I had status and before I had a pager,
You could find the Abstract listening to hip-hop,
My pops used to say, it reminded him of be-bop,
I said, “Well daddy, don’t you know that things go in cycles?”
— Q-Tip (A Tribe Called Quest)

Sound as Character in “A Lo-Fi Blues”
by Ed Ntiri

When people share their favorite moments from the films they love, they’ll often talk about images. For me, it’s always been sounds. Like in The Battle of Algiers, when the intensifying sound of drumbeats heightens the tension of the three women planting their bombs. Or how Walter Murch used the shrieking sound of a subway car to amplify the infamous restaurant scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone kills the man who tried to kill his father. Or Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped, where all I remember from the film is the sound of cups clanking against a hand-rail, amplify the haunting monotony of being trapped in a prison cell.

Each of these moments resonate with me more than images themselves ever have. Films are as much a sonic experience as they are a visual one. That’s why when I began to develop my first film, I focused on sound before script, images, or casting.

Our film, A Lo-Fi Blues, is the story of an aging blues musician who believes that his late wife is trapped inside of a song. The film follows his relationship with a young lo-fi hip-hop producer whose ability to sample music becomes the only thing that can save her.

My fascination with sound started early. I grew up in New York during the golden era of hip-hop music, and its ethos informed nearly every aspect of my personal and professional life. It taught me the importance of voice, how limitations can become strengths, and the value of community. Officially, there are four elements that make up hip-hop culture: the emcee, the DJ, the graffiti artist, and the break-dancer. The one they always forgot, in my opinion, was the producer.

Producing hip-hop music seems simple, but it’s actually a science. The sample-based method involves finding old albums, carefully selecting bits and pieces of them, and creatively processing and re-arranging them into new compositions. Sampling, when done creatively, breathes new life into old songs. So, a tune like Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers’ “A Chant for Bu” becomes A Tribe Called Quest’s “Excursions.” Or, you find a record like Roy Ayers’ “Searching” only to later hear Pete Rock flip it into his bass-heavy interpretation.

Developing the story and the sound of the film began with an exploration into the ways that hip-hop evolved from jazz, which evolved from the blues, which evolved from spirituals, which were the only way slaves could keep their language when they were taken from the shores of West Africa. The frequencies within our music hold this history. As I developed a closer relationship with the records that I would sample, I became fascinated with the idea of music as a language we unconsciously carry.

The SFFILM Makers community has helped tremendously with developing a script to support our sound. As a musician, I treat each version of the script as a remix, which we continue to evolve until the tone sounds right. Embedded within the script is the music that we’ve developed with our music supervisor, Jason “Asonic” Garcia, and SmartBomb, a collective of lo-fi musicians here in Oakland.

The majority of the characters in our film are already musicians, so part of our process has been how to create a distinct sound for each of them. We started by writing music profiles for each character, including their favorite albums, mixtapes they’ve made for friends, and a list of three albums each of them would bring if they were stranded on a deserted island.

A film I thought of a lot while having these discussions is another film shot in the Bay Area, American Graffiti. What I love about this early George Lucas film is that every character is listening to the same radio station throughout the night, turning music (in his case, early Rock ‘n Roll) into a character of its own.

In A Lo-Fi Blues, we’ve taken a similar approach. We created our own fictitious podcast that everyone in our film listens to on various devices. Unlike American Graffiti, which was made when licensing songs was much cheaper, we are not licensing anything. We decided that since we’re all musicians anyway, that we’ll create our own score.

Using our connections to the music community in Oakland, we began composing all of the original jazz, soul, and blues music that you’ll hear throughout the film. For example, when we introduce Leonard, we’ll hear this record. We’re also composing the beats that the young producers make from samples of the songs made for the film. When we’re in the studio with one of the younger beatmakers, you’ll hear one of their actual beats playing. The idea is that even if you choose to watch our film with your eyes closed, you would hear sounds progress, distort, and transform, which embodies our theme of letting go and embracing new life

The camera is a tool of magnification. A wide shot establishes a scene. A close-up makes you feel closer to what a person is thinking. A handheld shot can give an impression of chaos or uncertainty. Sound achieves the same. The amplification of inaudible sounds is the magic of sound design. The creative manipulation of sound can be as impactful as a great line of dialogue, or a beautifully composed image. We should employ this magic and give our ears a treat so that they can go on adventures as rich as those designed for the eye.

Images dominate our consciousness. We intake more images today than at any other time in history. When you sit down and watch a film, the experience is made up of the juxtaposition of both images and sound. To study their craft, some cinematographers will watch a film on mute, in order to isolate the image. To study my craft, I often close my eyes when a film is on, to see how the story plays out in sound.

In an interview in Robert Bresson’s book Bresson on Bresson, he explains that if you can replace an image with a sound, always use the sound. Because the ear is more creative than the eye. As storytellers, it’s our job to invoke all of the senses in order to give viewers an emotional experience that they’ll always remember, in more ways than one.

Ed Ntiri is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker who has been based in the Bay Area since 2007. His work has been featured in Vice, WaxPoetics, the Oakland Museum, and the Berkeley Art Museum. In 2017, Ntiri wrote and directed his first short film, Snow Mountain, which won audience choice awards at the SF Urban and Liberated Lens film festivals. His first feature, A Lo-Fi Blues, was awarded a SFFILM Rainin Grant for screenwriting in 2019. He is currently completing a SFFILM FilmHouse Residency in 2020.

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Meet the 2022 SFFILM Festival Programmers!

See who’s behind the film selection process at the 65th San Francisco International Film Festival

While the new year kicks the 2022 film festival season into high gear, the SFFILM Programming team has been hard at work since last fall screening and inviting films to the 65th San Francisco International Film Festival, which takes place April 21 through May 1 in the Bay Area. SFFILM has revamped the screening process for submissions, and assembled a team of curators made up of longtime SFFILM staffers and experienced newcomers to the organization.

“I am elated to share the news about the programming collective for 2022 who will curate the line-up for the festival this year. We started the process back in May 2021, revising the pre-screening committee with an open call for participants and received nearly 300 applications. Joining long standing SFFILM screeners, we welcomed roughly 70 new individuals to the committee who bring a variety of experiences to the submission process,” shared Director of Programming, Jessie Fairbanks. “This fall we restructured the programming team, bringing together a collection of seasoned curators to partner with Rod Armstrong and myself, as we craft a festival program that celebrates the creative ambition and transformative power of cinema. This is such a dynamic group and it has been a real pleasure to work with each individual.”

The team is grounded in the longevity and community of SFFILM through veterans like Rod Armstrong and Joseph Flores and new staffers like Jordan Klein, and is growing with leadership from Jessie Fairbanks. Our Festival programmers are all experienced filmmakers, curators, educators, and organizers. Please take a look at their work and get ready for the program announcement on March 30. We can’t wait to share it with you.

Jessie Fairbanks, Director of Programming

Born and raised in California, Jessie began her career producing documentaries and clip television for national networks. She spent a decade in NYC producing large scale events, festivals, and creative projects for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Tribeca Film Festival, New York Film Festival, HBO, The Documentary Group, David Byrne, and Google.

Prior to becoming the Director of Programming for SFFILM, Jessie spent 14 years curating for DOC NYC, Tribeca Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, Hamptons International Film Festival, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, Nashville Film Festival, MountainFilm and others.

Jessie is a voting member of Cinema Eye Honors, screens for Sundance, and is a grant evaluator for Chicken & Egg Pictures. She served on the Board of Directors for the Chicago Underground Film Festival and Independent Film Alliance for several years, as well as numerous film festival juries and selection committees.

Rod Armstrong, Associate Director of Programming

Rod Armstrong was a cinephile before he could drive, highlighting all of the foreign films coming to the San Diego area and cajoling his parents to chauffeur him to local arthouses. The passion turned into a career with Reel.com, a website with a wide array of editorial content about films. Rod began as a contributing editor and wrapped up his work there as Director of Content. Having long been interested in the endeavors of SFFILM, Rod began in 2003 in the publicity department. Later that year, he joined the Programming team and has been there ever since. Though Rod’s interest in film is broad and omnivorous, his greatest passion, harking back to those teenage years without vehicular transportation, remains international narrative cinema.

Joseph Flores, Programming Manager

Joseph Flores brings a wealth of experience to SFFILM in working within the Bay Area nonprofit media arts scene. As the organization embarks on a new journey at the familiar surroundings of 9th Street, Joseph has literally come full circle as that’s where he began his career having previously worked as an Office Manager during his stint at the Center for Asian American Media (formerly NAATA). Since then, he was fortunate enough to have caught on to SFFILM as a coordinator while preparing for its 50th Anniversary and has since worked within the Programming Department in different capacities. Joseph currently oversees the departmental interoffice systems as the Programming Manager and also handles the Call for Entries submission process for the SFFILM Festival.

Jordan Klein, Programming Coordinator

A film lover and filmmaker at heart — Jordan Klein graduated from UC Berkeley and got his start as assistant to the legendary film producer Fred Roos (Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Lost in Translation), marking the beginning of his career within the film industry in Los Angeles. He served on numerous productions in mediums ranging from feature film, television, commercials, short films, and music videos. His foundational working experiences helped facilitate his transition to being a production coordinator and administrative assistant to the president of film and television at PRG (Production Resource Group), a multinational company providing lighting and audio solutions to film productions and live concerts for renowned music artists around the globe. Eventually returning to both film production and the San Francisco Bay Area, Jordan boarded both independent productions with the likes of American Zoetrope (Love is Love is Love) and major studio productions with Warner Brothers (The Matrix Resurrections) and Marvel Studios (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings). Jordan’s deep passion, love and commitment towards cinema brought his heart to a home at SFFILM as their Programming Coordinator.

Amber Love, Festival Programmer — Features & Shorts

Amber Love is a festival programmer and filmmaker based in Chicago. She has been a programmer with the New Orleans Film Festival since 2016, and alongside programming has helped run many NOFF filmmaker development programs. Amber joined the SFFILM Festival programming team for the 2021 edition of the festival. Her own work has premiered at the Camden International Film Festival, played Indie Memphis and the Milwaukee Film Festival, and has been supported by NeXt Doc, the Tribeca Film Institute, the Sundance Institute, and Union Docs.

Kristal Sotomayor, Festival Programmer — Features

Kristal Sotomayor (they/she) is a bilingual Latinx programmer, film critic, and filmmaker based in Philadelphia. They serve as the Awards Competition Manager for the IDA Documentary Awards, the world’s most prestigious event dedicated to the documentary genre. Kristal also serves as the Programming Director for the Philadelphia Latino Film Festival. They are a 2021 Film Festival Leadership Lab Fellow. In the past, they have assisted with curation for the “Spotlight on Documentaries” at IFP Week and the award-winning PBS documentary series POV | American Documentary. Kristal writes the Latinx cinema column “Cine alzando voz” for the film journal cinéSPEAK. Currently, they are working on Expanding Sanctuary, a documentary about the campaign led by the Latinx immigrant community in South Philadelphia to limit police surveillance. They are also developing a docu-animation film Alx Through the Labrinyth that takes a dive into the nonbinary Latinx Alice In Wonderland-like reality of contracting COVID-19.

Lindy Leong, Festival Programmer — Features

Lindy Leong is the Senior Film Programmer at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, presented by Visual Communications, the first non-profit organization in the nation dedicated to the honest and accurate portrayal of the Asian Pacific American peoples, communities, and heritage through the media arts. As a cultural worker, she is deeply committed to the development, inclusion, and presentation of BIPOC stories and storytelling on-screen and throughout the film and media industries. She is a proud member of A-Doc and Brown Girls Doc Mafia. In her other professional lives, she is a film and media educator, arts administrator, and audiovisual archivist. She co-chairs the annual conference for the Association of Moving Image Archivists, a nonprofit international association dedicated to the preservation and use of moving image media.

Céline Roustan, Festival Programmer — Shorts

Céline Roustan has been a curator and champion of short films for half a decade working for the popular website Short of the Week, passionately promoting directors and their respective films. Having worked in the programming departments at a host of international festivals including the Palm Springs International ShortFest, SXSW, TIFF, she also brings short films to audiences and guides filmmakers toward their paths of further success as a release strategy consultant. On the feature front, Céline has been serving as the Africa & the Middle East programmer for the Palm Springs International Film Festival since 2019.

We can’t wait to welcome you back to the movies! The 65th SFFILM Festival takes place April 21–May 1 at venues across the Bay Area including the historic and beloved Castro Theatre!

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Welcome to SFFILM, Masashi Niwano

Help us celebrate and welcome SFFILM’s new Director of Artist Development Masashi Niwano

SFFILM’s leadership roster received a special addition this fall with Masashi Niwano joining as the Director of Artist Development. Niwano will lead the team elevating and supporting filmmakers from around the world in both fiction and non-fiction realms through direct artist grants, fellowships, residencies, and tailored mentorship. Under the banner of SFFILM Makers, he will help to advance the health and diversity of the independent film arena with a focus on the vibrant community of filmmakers in the Bay Area.

“I am thrilled to welcome Masashi, who brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to SFFILM. He is a thoughtful champion for emerging voices and a passionate advocate for building connection and community with and among filmmakers,” said SFFILM Executive Director Anne Lai. “We look forward to having his invaluable perspective in our commitment to the regional and national film landscapes.”

For over a decade, Masashi Niwano was the Festival & Exhibitions Director at the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), the US’s largest media arts organization that amplifies Asian and Asian American storytelling. Prior to his time with CAAM, he was the Executive Director of the Austin Asian American Film Festival (AAAFF). He is a Bay Area native who holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Film Production from San Francisco State University.

“SFFILM is truly the gem of the San Francisco Bay Area film scene, and I’m so honored to join them,” said Niwano. “I look forward to collaborating directly with filmmakers to accomplish their visions and dreams, and have their work seen all over the world.”

Masashi has been a jury member or panelist at dozens of prestigious festivals including Sundance Institute, The Gotham (formerly IFP), International Development Association (IDA), New Orleans Film Festival (NOFF) and FRAMELINE LGBTQ+ Film Festival. He has also participated in various industry conversations with leading media entities including AT&T, XFINITY, WarnerMedia, and HBO. He is an active advisory board member for Firelight Media’s William Greaves Fund. Masashi’s life mission is to support diverse media-making communities, especially filmmakers from historically under-served communities.

He has been featured on NPR, CBS Sunday Morning, SF Chronicle, Deadline, and Colorlines. He lives in San Francisco with his partner and adorable cat, Morvey. In his spare time, he enjoys sewing bow ties, tending to his veggie garden, and cooking Japanese-inspired dishes.