Mar 4, 2010
Artist Development
The San Francisco Film Society announced today the 11 finalists and one honorable mention for the SFFS/Film Arts Foundation Documentary Grant, the newest grant to be offered by its expanding Filmmaker Services program. Thanks to the generous support of Film Arts Foundation and its board, and honoring Film Arts’ support of documentary filmmakers over its 32-year history, the grant will award a total of $25,000 for documentary feature films in postproduction. This one-time grant will be awarded to filmmakers residing in the United States whose work expresses both a unique personal perspective and an artistic approach to their chosen subject. The finalists and honorable mention for the SFFS/FAF grant that follow were selected from more than 220 applications.
FINALISTS
Christian Bruno: Strand: A Natural History of Cinema
Strand: A Natural History of Cinema charts the rise and demise of moviegoing in San Francisco while revealing the transformation of postwar urban America, and examines this important aspect of collective culture by focusing on its richest period, the repertory and revival movement of the 1960s and ’70s. The film integrates contemporary 16mm film, archival images and interviews with filmmakers such as Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and Walter Murch. naturalhistoryofcinema.net
Nancy Buirski: The Loving Story: A Long Walk Home
The Loving Story: A Long Walk Home is a film about love and the struggle for dignity by an interracial couple set against the backdrop of historic anti-miscegenation sentiments in the U.S. Richard and Mildred Loving reluctantly join forces with two ambitious lawyers who are driven to pave the way for civil rights and social justice that will change the country forever. Through rare cinema verité footage the film follows their landmark 1967 Supreme Court case Loving vs Virginia. lovingfilm.com
Eugene Corr: From Ghost Town to Havana
Since the summer of 2007, Corr has followed the lives of boys growing up in Centro Havana, Cuba, playing baseball for coach Nicholas Reyes, and boys growing up in West Oakland, California, playing for coach Roscoe Bryant. This April Oakland and Centro Havana players will meet and form one Oakland/Centro Havana team that will play against other Havana municipalities. Through the prism of sports From Ghost Town to Havana portrays the human struggle to wrest life, and even joy, from hardship and death.
Steve James: The Interrupters
The interrupters are a group of reformed criminals and former gang leaders who now “interrupt” the flow of violence on the streets of Chicago. The group’s founder recognized that most street violence is caused by tit-for-tat retaliation and retribution for personal slights. The interrupters intervene in disputes before they turn violent and that violence spreads. The Interrupters is a compelling observational journey into the stubborn, persistent violence that plagues American cities. kartemquin.com
Julie Kahn: Swamp Cabbage
Swamp Cabbage is a documentary about a half-Cracker (descendent of Florida pioneers known for their ability to survive in the treacherous Florida wilderness; often confused with but unrelated to the slur meaning ignorant bigot) stuck in Brooklyn who discovers that the bizarre backwoods-meets-suburbia Florida childhood she left behind is actually the key to her survival. The film weaves her story of love, addiction, illness, death and redemption with vérité sequences of Florida Crackers as they gig, trap, hunt, fish and cook, in close partnership with their environment, in the face of out-of-control development and suburban sprawl. Her tragicomic journey offers a new take on food, conservation and community. swampcabbagemovie.com
Dara Kell: Dear Mandela
Dear Mandela chronicles events leading up to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa through the eyes of three young leaders of the shack-dwellers movement whose communities face mass eviction. Filmed over two years, Dear Mandela follows the leaders from the chaos on the streets to the highest court in the land as they resist the evictions and put Nelson Mandela’s promise of a better life for all to the test. dearmandela.com
Pete Nicks: The Waiting Room
The Waiting Room, a cinema verité documentary, uses unprecedented access to go behind the doors of an American hospital. Highland Hospital in Oakland, California, is the primary care facility for 250,000 patients of nearly every nationality, race and religion, with 250 patients crowding its emergency room every day. Following a team of hospital executives, staff and patients, the film tells the story of a diverse population battling its way through the seismic shifts in the nation’s health care system, while weathering the storm of a national recession. whatruwaitingfor.com
Göran Olsson: Black Power Mixtape
Black Power Mixtape is an archive- and music-driven documentary that examines the evolution of the Black Power movement in the African American community from 1967 to 1975 with startlingly fresh and meaningful footage recently discovered in archives in Sweden. As European interest in the U.S. civil rights and antiwar movements peaked, several Swedish filmmakers traveled across the Atlantic to explore the Black Power movement, which was being alternately ignored or portrayed in the U.S. media as a violent, nascent terrorist movement. Audio interviews with contemporary figures complement the archival interviews with movement leaders including Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale and Angela Davis. louverturefilms.com
Tristan Patterson: Dragonslayer
Set against inland California’s decaying suburban and exurban communities in the aftermath of America’s economic collapse, Dragonslayer is a documentary portrait of a homeless young man who spends his days breaking into the backyards of foreclosed homes, draining the scummy water from their abandoned swimming pools and skateboarding, as a pure form of artistic expression that he refuses to compromise. On the verge of suicide, he falls in love with a 19-year-old college student who dreams of joining the Peace Corps. When she loses her childhood home, they decide to hit the road together in search of a better way of life. thesupplycompany.net
Brian Truglio: Racing the Rez
In the rugged canyon lands of Northern Arizona, Navajo and Hopi cross-country runners from two rival high schools fight for state championships while striving to find their place among their native people and the American culture surrounding them. For the Navajo and Hopi, running is much more than just a sport; it is part of their creation stories and is woven into the cultural fabric of their families. Racing the Rezfollows the lives and challenges of boys from both teams who come from diverse backgrounds and are often caught between divergent worlds. Using the tradition and discipline of running, cross-country coaches from both teams try to help these native teenagers deal with the realities they face on and off the reservation. facebook.com/RacingtheRez
David Weissman: Heartbreak and Heroism: Stories from the Plague Years in San Francisco
Heartbreak and Heroism: Stories from the Plague Years in San Francisco is the first deep and reflective look back at the arrival and impact of AIDS in San Francisco and how the city’s inhabitants dealt with that unprecedented calamity. The relentless suffering that overwhelmed San Francisco in the 1980s and ’90s has given way to a kind of calm and, understandably, a degree of willful forgetfulness. Heartbreak and Heroism explores what was not so easy to discern in the midst of it all: parallel histories of suffering and loss, and of community coalescence and growth. Despite legitimate fears of being forced back into the closet by AIDS, the gay community was in many ways greatly empowered by the challenges that the epidemic presented.
HONORABLE MENTION
Karen Johnson: Kusama: Princess of Polka Dots
Kusama: Princess of Polka Dots is a documentary about the 80-year-old avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama, focusing on her American period, made with her participation and utilizing the resources of her personal archive and writings. Regarded as Japan’s greatest living artist, Kusama is still prolifically producing artwork in a studio near the Tokyo psychiatric institution that she has called home for 30 years. She had said that she would have killed herself long ago if not for her art. Despite her popularity in America in the 1960s, and the recent surge of interest in her work, her artistic contributions to America’s avant-garde have not been examined on film. goodmoviesentertainment.com
Founded by independent filmmakers in 1976, Film Arts Foundation was an inspirational leader in the media-arts field for more than 30 years, providing comprehensive training, equipment, information, consultations and exhibition opportunities to independent filmmakers nationwide. FAF took thousands of filmmakers from the first step (education) to the final step (distribution) and covered everything in between, contributing to a culture of creativity and garnering a national reputation as a champion of independent film.
In August 2008, the San Francisco Film Society launched a full suite of filmmaker services programs in the areas of professional education, career development, membership services, fiscal sponsorship, grant-making and information resources after signing an agreement with Film Arts Foundation, effectively assuming the stewardship of activities formerly provided by Film Arts. Since then, SFFS has expanded its filmmaker services to include new grants for filmmakers working in all forms and stages of production. The total amount of money to be given to filmmakers in the form of grants and prizes in 2010 will exceed $450,000.