cineSOURCE magazine

State of the Cartoon Report
by Karl Cohen

SF's Mark Fiore Wins Pulitzer for Polical Animated Cartoons

Mark Fiore, a political cartoonist and animator who rises above all others on the Internet, is presently on SFGate.com, Mother Jones.com, CBSNews.com and other sites.

Equal Opportunity Insulter: Fiore reserves his most searing sarcasm for bankers, Republicans, etc. Photo: courtesy M. Fiore

His submissions for the Pulitzer included "Science-gate" (12/09/09) which lampoons skeptics of global warming, "Obama Interruptus" (12/02/09) which portrays his trying to stay focused despite the distractions of the world around him, and "Credit Card Reform" (10/28/09) which takes on the fabulous mumbo-jumbo double-talk offers of the credit card industry.

In 2000, Fiore taught himself Flash, found two customers and started churning out Flash cartoons like crazy. Then the "dream job" he had always wanted appeared: the San Jose Mercury News hired him as their political cartoonist. Being on staff was great until he discovered his editor was under tremendous pressure to keep circulation and ad revenues up.

"It was awful," Fiore says. He lasted six months due to their restrictive editorial policy. (Translation: the Merc did not allow him to kick ass and say what he wanted because of editor's fear of loosing income if he really allowed his staff to speak freely.)

Fiore has been syndicating his weekly animated cartoons online since leaving the paper in 2001, earning high praise. The Wall Street Journal calls him "The undisputed guru of the form." He has received the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and other honors. Syndicated weekly to numerous Websites run by newspapers and other organizations, his work is seen regularly by millions of people.

With excellent voice work, music, and animation, Fiore's cartoons are extremely well produced. More importantly, he is free to say what he wants. He says he gets his ideas from the daily media. Whatever upsets him the most generally becomes the subject/butt of his next cartoon. Indeed, he dares to make fun of any subject that interests him.

One brilliant Fiore cartoon, "What If_" (6/25/08), suggests what might happen if a third candidate had entered the 2008 presidential race. In a faux political hit piece, Fiore has an advertisement attacking the candidate's ethics, patriotism, etc. "He has never once been seen wearing a flag pin. He has spent years studying at a religious school in the Middle East. Some call him a hero for the injuries he sustained under torture, yet he would sit down and talk with those who would harm us. His tax plan amounts to making the rich poor and poor rich - Jesus Christ, not the change we want!" See Fiore's work at http://www.markfiore.com.

Imagemovers Starts "Dark Life" for Disney

Robert Zemeckis, who was one of the "Dirty Dozen" cabal of filmmakers at USC including Walter Murch and George Lucas, is keeping his team in the game despite Imagemovers's closure by Disney last month (see CS Apr10). "Dark Life," a science fiction set in the near future, when some humans have escaped environmental disasters by living under the sea, is slated for a fall 2010 release. But it is will contain little or no performance capture work, so I suspect the actors will perform on blue or green screen sets and Imagemovers Digital will drop in computer generated backgrounds. The studio is still set to close early next year.

Oakland Museum Celebrates Pixar

To celebrate Pixar's 25 years of animating excellence in the Bay Area, the Oakland Museum of California is mounting a massive show, with over 500 works, including several not previously seen, from July 31 to January 9, 2011. The show began in 2005 at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and over the past five years it has traveled around the world.

The local exhibit will also show off the museum's new major remodeling work, which kept it closed for months. The museum updated the exhibit so it will include art from "Up," "Toy Story 3," "Wall'E" and other recent projects. Adding a sense of novelty, there will be a giant "Pixar Zoetrope" that you can enter to see the moving images, and Artscape, "an immersive, wide-screen projection of digitally processed images that gives the viewer a sensation of entering into and exploring the exquisite details of the original artwork."

The exhibit covers about 11,000 square feet of exhibit space and is adjacent to Oakland's centerpiece, Lake Merritt, a lovely place to take a walk and grab a bite at Lake Chalet.

Disney/Pixar Sign Selick Contract

Variety announced no details except that the renown animator Henry Selick will work out of Pixar (he is still commuting from Portland but plans to move back soon) and that Henry's stop-motion work could be based on either his own ideas or adaptations. They also said, "Selick hopes to benefit from the Pixar brain trust and technology, but will continue to produce 'toons using his trademark stop-motion style."

Selick directed both "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "James and the Giant Peach" for Disney. After "James" was completed, Disney decided to only produce computer-generated animation. However, after creating overly expensive CG products that were not super profitable, they suddenly see the wisdom of returning to less expensive, Selick-style stop-motion or to hand-drawn animation - a historically rare case of technological de-evolution.

Lucas Expert at Extending "Star Wars"

Variety has announced Lucasfilm Animation is working on a Star Wars animated comedy series. The Daily Show's Brendan Hay and Robot Chicken's Seth Green and Matthew Seinreich, will be among the writers.

Posted on May 10, 2010 - 05:15 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner: Jan 2020
by Karl F. Cohen

SF IndieFest promo for 2020. Image: courtesy SF IndieFest

SF IndieFest is Back

SF IndieFest has a program of 16 interesting-sounding shorts coming to the Roxie (Sat. Feb. 1 at 2:45 pm; Tues. Feb, 4 at 7pm) from the US, China, Italy, Japan, India, Argentina, UK, Denmark, Korea, Germany, Canada and Switzerland.

“There is no shortage of innovation when it comes to animation," they state, in the guide for their animated shorts program, “Shorts 2, True Colors”. "This program features the best of new animation from around the world.”

David Chai, who teaches at San Jose State, has an excellent new piece in it, which takes his work in a more sophisticated, mature direction. For more, see their nicely illustrated web page here.

Poster for the new documentary 'Animation Outlaws'. Image: courtesy Animation Outlaws

The Animation Outlaws

The excellent and fun feature-length documentary, “Animation Outlaws”, about the Spike and Mike animation shows, has been accepted by the Slam Dance Film Festival. The tentative screening date is Mon. Jan. 27 in Park City, Utah. Hopefully it will get excellent press coverage, a distributor will fall in love with it AND Kat Alioshin will get a distribution contract.

Kat lives in the Bay Area and worked for Colossal Pictures, a local animation house that once created impressive high end TV commercials and pieces for MTV. The feature is presently making the rounds of other festivals as well, see their site here

"What a loving, honest, insightful and hilarious portrait of Spike, and of that festival era,” noted Mike Johnson, director of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and “Corpse Bride”.

“[They] captured the zeitgeist. The raw intensity of pre-digital days... We will never get that feeling again. Amazing that it’s part of history now and I’m glad that [they] preserved such a clear record."

Tom Sito, drawing the Beast, from 'Beauty and the Beast'. Image: courtesy G. Meyer

Meet Tom Sito at Cartoon Museum Jan 19

Tom Sito is a former Disney animator (“The Lion King”, “Aladdin” and “Pocahontas”), the chairman of the animation department at Univ. of Southern Calif., the president-emeritus of The Animation Guild and the author of “Drawing the Line”.

But the reason he is coming to the Bay Area now is to talk about his new book “Eat, Drink, Animate – An Animator’s Cookbook”, which features recipes and techniques from animation luminaries, along with lots of photos and stories.

Sito will be at the San Francisco Cartoon Museum on Sun, Jan 19, at 2:00 PM, signing books and spinning yarns. Admission is free and open to the public. The day before (on the 18th), he will be at the Disney Family Museum at lunchtime (but not free).

Gary Meyer in his N. Berkeley office, circa 2010. Image: courtesy G. Meyer

Gary Meyer: Film Addict

Gary was a founding member of ASIFA-SF international animation association, a past director of the influential Telluride Film Festival, a founder of the Landmark theatre chain and, for many years, the owner and chief bottle washer of the UC and Balboa Theatres in Berkeley and SF, respectively .

Currently he is the founder and editor of Eat, Drink Films, which, by the way, went online four years before Sito's book. He is also a great guy.

SF Film, the association that presents the SF International Film Festival, gave him a lifetime achievement award recently. In honor of that recognition, the SF Chronicle marked the occasion with a full page article about his career, a fascinating story of a kid realizing his dream.

Films That Didn’t Gross a Billion

Eight features grossed over a billion dollars in 2019, but what about the others? Keep in mind that most features cost well over a million to make and the box office income is split between the theatre, the production company and others.

Box Office Mojo says only 264 features grossed over a million dollars at the box office, while they list over 900 feature films being released in 2019. Only 117 of them have grossed over $25 million, 86 grossed over $50 million, 63 made over 100 million, twelve over $500 million and eight over a billion.

Amazingly, six of the latter were made by Disney/Pixar, with the winner being Disney’s “Avengers: Endgame”, which grossed $2,797,800,564 as of January 5th. Once again, while a few works made enormous profits, most have failed to break even.

Nick Park, famous for his Wallace and Grommet series, who has won four Oscars. image: courtesy N. Park

The Road to Being an Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts

The Academy of Motion Pictures announced the names of the ten animated shorts films being considered for nominations, which is called the short list. Although 92 films qualified, this year's ten are: “Dcera” (Daughter), "Hair Love”, “He Can’t Live Without Cosmos”, “Hors Piste”, “Kitbull”, “Memorable”, “Physics of Sorrow” and “Uncle Thomas: Accounting for the Days”.

ASIFA-SF members, which includes me, saw two of the films, “The Physics of Sorrow” and “Uncle Thomas: Accounting for the Days”, with the directors present in October in a special program presented by the National Film Board of Canada.

Several of the short listed films can be seen online. “Hair Love” by Matthew Cherry, a former NFL player, can be seen here. Or check out “Sister”, directed by Siqi Song, which explores China’s controversial “one child” policy. Or “Hors Piste”.

Rosana Sullivan, from Pixar, has “Kitbull”, about a stray kitten, an abused pit bull and their unlikely friendship. The entire film is online.

Meanwhile, trailers for the following can be seen online: “He Can’t Live Without Cosmos”, the puppet film “Dcera” (Daughter), “The Physics of Sorrow”, from the National Film Board of Canada, directed by Theodore Ushev, and “Memorable” by Bruno Collet, a stop-motion puppet movie.

LATE BREAKING NEWS: The best animated shorts finalists are "Dcera" (Daughter), "Hair Love, "Kitbull, "Sister" and "Memorable". Also the nominations for best animated feature are "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World", "I Lost My Body", "Missing Link", "Toy Story 4" and "Klaus"; for best visual effects, "The Lion King"; and for best song, “I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away” from "Toy Story 4", “Into the Unknown” from "Frozen II".

British Academy Awards

The nominations for the BAFTA in Animation went to “Frozen 2”, “Klaus”, “A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon” and “Toy Story 4”. The awards ceremony itself will take place at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Feb. 2.

Cesar Animation Awards

See trailers for the interesting twelve animated films nominated at this well-lauded French festival here.

Characters from the new 'Playmobil' movie, produced by a company of the same name. Meyer in his N. Berkeley office, circa 2010. Image: courtesy Playmobil

Box Office Extremes

The animated “Playmobil” had the third-worst opening of all time for a title opening in 2,000 or more theaters (it opened in a whooping 2237 theaters). Essentially a feature-length ad for Playmobil Toys from Germany, The Hollywood Reporter headline read “Playmobil Bombs at $668K”.

Meanwhile “Frozen 2” crossed the billion dollar line on Dec. 15. Then on Jan 5 the film broke another record. On Jan. 5 Frozen ”2 became the highest-grossing animated film in box office history, passing a record held for six years by the original Frozen, which grossed $1.27 billion after its release in November, 2013.

As for "Plamobil”, to encourage people to see it, North American theaters offered the film for a reduced admission price of only $5. A friend of mine, panned the film after she saw its premiere at the Annecy Animation Festival last June. Although it was the supposedly prestigious opening feature, she noted that about half of the audience walked out and.

The film’s production cost is reported to be $75 million and so far it has grossed $1.5 million in the US and $15 million worldwide.

The Worst Animation

End-of-the-year news items included a lots of lists. The Hollywood Reporter put “The Emojis” on their worst-film-of-the decade list, calling it “cheesy,” “cynical” and “an offensive exercise in blatant product placement.” “Artic Fox”, which they called “simply dreadful,” made their list of the-top-ten-worst films of 2019.

Microsoft News, in turn, picked “Ugly Dolls” for their worst films list.

Disney Caught In Marketing Scam

Caught in a stealth marketing scam in Japan, Disney evidently paid “manga” artists to tweet praise of “Frozen 2” without revealing they had done so. Somebody almost as smart as Homer Simpson must have worked at the Japanese advertising agency that Disney hired given that average viewers noticed that seven artists who posted illustrations of characters from “Frozen 2” also praised the film using the same text.

Although Disney issued an apology on Dec. 5, they suggested the problem was due to a lack of communication rather than deliberate deception. But that didn’t end the problem.

One of the artists, Kosame Daizu, admitted on Dec. 11, on Twitter to his 100,000+ followers, that he had been told by the advertising agency that hired him to not disclose he was being paid to promote the film. Some of his followers pointed out that it sounded like he had been forced to send the messages.

Disney Japan finally issued a statement taking full responsibility and that it was not the artists’ fault. They also said they would take measures to prevent a recurrence of similar events. What fake publicity stunts have they pulled off that were never detected? During the first three weeks of “Frozen 2”’s run in Japan the film had earned around $250 million there, begging the question: Was a scam even needed?

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .
Posted on Jan 14, 2020 - 09:01 PM
Finally, The cineSOURCE Weed Report
by Doniphan Blair

A 30-year-old farm manager inspects one of her greenhouses in Mendocino County, California, circa 2011. photo: D. Blair

HOW MUCH WEED CAN AMERICAN'S
smoke? Will marijuana legalization, which now includes medical in 22 states and recreational in eleven—Alaska, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington—plus the District of Columbia, soon go federal? Will taxing weed bring significant revenue, or will it cripple the legal industry? Will big tobacco, big pharma or some other big—like breweries—eventually take over?

And, perhaps most importantly in a capitalist society: Are growers over-producing? In fact, this query was of such concern last spring that big, back-east media outlets started parachuting in journalists.

“California marijuana growers could produce so much weed that they crash the market,” worried the Newsweek reporter (3/20/19). “California has a massive oversupply of illicit marijuana,” fretted The NY Times (4/27/19).

To be sure, these issues are also of intense interest in the trim rooms of California’s marijuana farms and the rustic cabins and plush penthouses where alternative agriculturalists and their marketing managers—AKA dealers—meet.

Given that the answers will effect millions of consumers nation-wide and tens of thousands of weed workers in-state, many of whom are essentially overgrown adolescents with few other, equally-lucrative opportunities, cineSOURCE decided it was time to dispatch a reporter—yours truly, given my fifty years experience in the weed space.

And so it was, in late October, with a fall twang in the air and a cineSOURCE credit card in my pocket, I bombed out to the mountains to check in with a few master growers, to review some top product, to cruise a trim room or two, and to attempt to assess California's sometimes confusing “green rush."

Although California, Holland and Paraguay decriminalized small amounts of marijuana in 1975, the late-1970s and 1988, respectively, California was the first state in the world to legalize it, in November, 1996, albeit only for medical, to heal doctor-approved ailments, and with proper paper work.

56% of Californians voted for Proposition 215, also called the Compassionate Use Act. Its principles originated with activists like Brownie Mary (Mary Jane Rathbun, 1922-1999), the San Francisco nurse who helped AIDs sufferers with their insomnia, nausea or pain by providing marijuana brownies (from a recipe by another San Franciscan, Alice B. Toklas).

Author Doniphan Blair in a garden grow in San Francisco, shortly before it was raided by the neighbors, circa 1977. photo: Nicholas Blair

Exactly two decades after medical pot passed, Proposition 64 allowing recreational use was approved in California. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your perspective, it was riddled with errors, its rollout was completely mishandled and going legal is extremely expensive.

“None of the legal market is actually working,” a top grower, who has also worked in media told me, after I plunked down in his plush easy-chair and took a toke of his potent, personal-stash “ganja” (indoor Gorilla Glue, for aficionados in the audience).

“The black market is undermining it," he said. "The people who are trying to go legit, it’s just not happening. The big guys who are trying to come in, it is not working for them, either.”

“The regulation is all over the place. Growers who are getting licensed are immediately buried in fees and regulations, but the black market prices are still where they were. The legal people can’t adjust their prices to cover their overhead, so the black market is still undermining them.”

Growers generally supported medical marijuana. Indeed, Proposition 215’s allowance of six plants for personal use, with the addition of 43 more, grown to supply patients who provided copies of their doctors' authorizations, was very workable.

Properly-tended marijuana plants yield an average of three pounds, with large ones delivering up to twice that. Hence, a skilled grower could take in over two hundred pounds per harvest, generating serious scratch, if it’s good looking and hard hitting enough to fetch high-end prices (currently $1200 to $1800 a pound for outdoor).

Indeed, Grower A, let’s call him, was involved with a television comedy series which poked fun at young marijuaneros who suddenly found themselves with fantastic amounts of disposable income.

When it came to legal recreational, however, most growers voted against it. They feared corporate conquest, exorbitant taxes and the state's seed-to-sale surveillance, called the California Cannabis Track-and-Trace (CCTT), which requires onerous bookkeeping, weighing and other micro-managing minutia. Indeed, running a squeaky-clean legal farm, brokerage or dispensary is almost absurdly difficult as well as over-the-top expensive. Some growers report paying up to $100,000 in legal and state fees to get licensed.

Since everyone wanted in on the action, California has three licensing agencies: the Bureau of Cannabis Control in the Department of Consumer Affairs, the office of Manufactured Cannabis Safety in the Department of Food and Agriculture—featuring the aforementioned CCTT—and, finally, CalCannabis Cultivation Licensing in the Department of Public Health.

Two friends dressed appropriately for Oakland's first official cannabis fair, which was held in front of City Hall, in 2011. photo: D. Blair

As if that wasn’t bureaucratic overkill enough, they instituted three sets of taxes: a cultivation tax on growers, which runs almost $150 per pound, not an insignificant amount; a 15% excise tax on vendors; and a sales tax on consumers, which the state starts at 7.5%, but to which counties and cities can add up to 2.5%.

If anything could turn hippies Republican, it would be the over-regulation and -taxation of their “tea”—especially given the origins of the United States around similar issues.

To help them walk through the legal and regulatory minefield, there’s the California Cannabis Industry Association and Oaksterdam University. Founded in Oakland in 2007 to teach horticulture, the latter also offers courses in weed law, history, equipment, pest abatement and more.

“There was a huge influx of investors and hedge fund people, all dying to jump in on the supposed new green bonanza,” Grower A continued. “I have a friend in Oakland who is a financial advisor specifically for cannabis companies and investors. She makes good money but no one she represents, or that she sees, has made ANY profit.”

In fact, in British Columbia—California’s chief international competitor, especially after Canada legalized weed federally in 2018—out of almost one hundred cannabis companies ONLY one was in the black.

“I feel like anyone who invested that much money, they're not doing it anymore,” opined Grower A. “They all realized, it would all just fail. I think it will go federal before any of these state-licensed people will become successful. Maybe a tiny percentage of them will [make money] but 99% of them won’t. The dispensaries can make money, but the legal producers can’t.”

To attract venture capital, you have to go big, which requires a certain amount of land and equipment but a lot of organization and talent. Contrary to the sobriquet weed, it’s not that easy to cultivate the super-strong “skunk,” which does smell surprisingly like the animal and currently has strains with up to 32% THC (the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol).

Back in the 1980s, good ganja averaged well under 5% THC, though there was very little testing, so it's hard to say definitively. By 2010, “kind bud” was besting 10% on occasion, but THC stats can be deceiving, since weed has multiple compounds and smoking it is a multi-factorial experience. Indeed, a few years before, some cannabis had become over-hybrid, much like tomatoes in the 1980s. It looked and smelled spectacular but when you took a puff, it didn’t bang the head.

A grower tends his massive outdoor grow, somewhere in the Emerald Triangle (Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity Counties). photo: unknown

Whatever the decade, growing great “grass” requires good seeds and soil, proper water and light, protection against rats and deer (if outdoor) and regular inspection for mites and fungus (especially indoor), as well as love and juju—at least according to the hippies.

But that’s only to grow a beautiful bush, which can reach up to 18 feet tall, a magnificent sight when festooned with unfertilized female buds, glistening with resin. It still has to be properly cured and trimmed, as well as packaged and brokered and, last but NOT least, shipped somewhere.

“There was NO distribution plan," Grower A explained. "All that pot has to be sold in California.”

Interstate transport remains highly illegal. Indeed, cops in the first weed-prohibiting state—Utah, if you’re driving east on Interstate 80—are expert at profiling drivers, tearing apart cars and garnering fine, vehicle seizure and court fees for their district.

“So if you grow 5000 pounds of weed, you can’t sell it legally. But illegally, you can get rid of it.”

As if that weren’t lack of business savvy enough, there is no such thing as a Cannabis Bank: all transactions have to be in cash.

Regular banks won't accept deposits, for fear of being indicted on federal money laundering charges, let alone provide loans, which are critical to all farmers, to help them survive to the harvest payday. To do business, growers have to lug around large wads of greenbacks, including to the various state offices to pay their medical or recreational taxes, which did bring joy to one group: the armored car consortium.

California produced “at least 13.5 million pounds of marijuana last year [2017]—five times more than the 2.5 million pounds it consumed,” according to The LA Times (10/1/17). That means about eleven million pounds were shipped nationwide, a welcome boost to the FedEx, UPS and USPS package delivery services, as well as the people building concealed compartments in vehicles.

As to the question of how much weed Americans currently smoke: If 13% of Californians blow herb, as indicated by a recent CBS study—which identified Cali as the tenth-most stoner state, ironically (the leaders are, in ascending order, Colorado, Vermont and... wait for it: Alaska!)—and about a third of them are full-blown pot heads, the above figures suggest they consume about an “eighth” (of an ounce) or two a week, with the remainder doing around an eighth every month or two.

Admittedly, estimates of consumption rates, harvest amounts and street values are inevitably fuzzy. Re the latter: rarely do officials specify whether they’re measuring wet or dry weight, wholesale or retail prices, or if they included guestimates of untraceable grows by backwoodsers or Mexican cartels. For these reasons, some sources put California’s pot output a few million pounds higher than official estimates, a notable achievement but not for its price.

A hillside grow, overlooking the Pacific, Big Sur, California. photo: D. Blair

Indeed, by harvest-time 2017, as California was being inundated by “trimmigrants”—the thousands of trimmers who flock from around the US, but also Israel, Brazil and other countries on tourist visas, to earn up to $400 a day in smoke-, music- and organic-food-driven “trimathons”— the price of weed was dropping like a rock.

I recall chatting with a young grower and old friend, Grower B, who was starting to worry. Since he liked to research ancient civilizations, aliens or both together on the internet, I asked him if he'd ever googled Adam Smith, the 18th century Scottish economist who identified the market's “hidden hand.” He said no. Nevertheless, as he and his friends strategized how to survive their commodity’s collapse, they had inadvertently reinvented Smith's studies.

If there ever was a free market, it’s drugs, given both producers and consumers will break many laws, but never that of supply and demand.

By late-fall 2017, high-quality outdoor, which formerly fetched $1300 a pound or more, was down to $800 or less, with inferior “herb” earning as little as $500. Legalization had become an absolute fiasco, especially for old-time growers who could remember when a pound of “primo” garnered $4000 ($9,500 in today’s dollars, due to the "cumulative" 138% inflation from 1985).

Not surprisingly, the great price drop of ’17 was somewhat in various weed workers’ minds, which were addled by fears of change, expectations of a bumper crop, working sixteen-hour-days and smoking their own “dank,” although panic is a very real force when it comes to markets. In reality, the problem derived from a combination of very real but hard-to-discern factors.

The growers had maxed out their acreage, to make bank before the arrival of big corporations and/or the surveillance state. Meanwhile, brokers from the big cities or back east, well aware of the increased harvest and new freedoms of recreational weed, shopped around or held off buying until they had extracted steep discounts. This triggered a chain reaction typical to markets with imperfect information—indeed, rife with rumors.

In point of fact, it was a local bubble. There was little market saturation, when amortized over an entire year. Moreover, California had just emerged from its worst drought since 1895 (fall 2011-fall 2015).

When I went out to the hills in the spring of 2018, there was precious little of the previous year’s crop available on the cheap. By the 2018 harvest, the black market had largely recovered, although it was then the turn of legal weed to suffer.

The semi-covered fields of Raw Gardens, a local firm that got large, in the hills of Santa Barbara. photo: courtesy Raw Gardens

In 2018, the second year of legal recreational, as legal growers moved from temporary to regular licenses, Cali cannabis officials predicted they would take in $1 billion in taxes. They got only half that. Instead of production increasing as expected, there was only $2.5 billion worth of legal weed, down a half a billion from 2017.

If California diary, which grosses only $4.5 billion annual, had a similar shortfall of 16.5%, the legislature would be flooded with lobbyists, the nightly news with worried farmers, and we’d be seeing “Got Milk” billboards everywhere again, instead of all those advertising weed home delivery.

Although this catastrophe was largely written off, either to growers being too stoned to go legal or officials being too straight to comprehend an alternative business, what actually happened was much more interesting.

Some legal growers got head hunted to build and manage massive grows from LA to Sacramento and Oakland, which seemed like a smart career move, until those businesses went belly up. Others, after enduring a year of Track-and-Trace and high taxes, went back to being outlaws.

Meanwhile, some “legacy” growers, as illegals are sometimes called, concluded the hippie homesteader dream of earning a decent living, while living off the land, was over. They saw a collision coming with industrially-grown, agency-branded and certified-legal weed, or with the state, which would surely soon start enforcing CCTT and the cultivation tax—and we all know what finally got the Prohibition-era bootlegger Al Capone.

It is estimated that over the two-year transition period the black market harvest dipped annually by at least a billion dollars, 5 to 7% of its value (depending on estimates), although that did serve to shore up prices, which obviously enticed some legal growers to simply sell their product illegally.

One spectacular error of Prop 64 was that, while it limited legal grows to one acre per license, there was no limit on the number of licenses, leading to “stacking,” big businesses getting multiple licenses. Nevertheless, as noted, most carpetbagger cannabis capitalists went bust.

On the other hand, local growers who secured private financing and grew their businesses organically, so to speak, often did OK. Two of the largest farms in Humboldt and Santa Barbara counties are Honeydew Farms and Raw Gardens, respectively. The former, located on 600 acres in the gorgeous Mattole Valley, was Humboldt's first legal cannabis farm. The latter, known for their “live resin sauce," took home the top prize at the 2019 Bay Area Cannabis Cup.

In general, however, the effort to entice California's growers to go straight flopped. Statewide, slightly less than 3,000 recreational cultivation licenses were issued in 2018, about 60% for indoor facilities. In Nevada County, a major grow zone in the temperate foothills of the Sierras, there were only about twenty certified farms by the fall of 2019, a drop in the bucket compared to the county’s thousands of grows. In Mendocino, over 95% of grows are illegal.

A urinal at Oakland's famous Harborside dispensary, with the specials of the day. photo: D. Blair

Fortunately for growers, harvest shortfalls pushed up prices. Indeed, a top-drawer eighth at Oakland dispensaries has inched up over the last few years from $50 to $60, although once you add 33.33% in state, county and city taxes (plus or minus 1%, due to details it would be impossible to explain in less than a paragraph), that’s a rise from $66 to a whopping $80—for ten average-sized joints!

Admittedly, Oakland's taxes are the highest in California and near the top nation-wide, with only Washington State charging more. But that’s a bit odd, given Oakland is at the center of Cali’s weed business, both as a brokering and indoor-grow hub, and as home to both Harborside, the large, flagship dispensary, and Oaksterdam University.

Back in 2012, Oakland officials were so proud of their weed leadership, they put on the ballot a proposal to open their own municipal indoor grows, to supply Oaklanders with both weed and its taxes. It was rejected—that’s almost a gross as getting drugs through your parents. A year earlier, the city held its first cannabis fair, right in front of City Hall. It was a colorful affair, which combined booths with businesses attempting to appear professional with lots of strange outfits, smoking and laughing.

More recently, politicians have been talking about reducing Oakland’s weed tax, to incentivize cannibusinesses to stay in town, but no relevant votes have yet been scheduled.

For those reluctant to fork over full third of their weed budget in taxes—which are only half the 63% on tobacco but algebraically higher than beer’s 2.5 cents a pint—there are plenty of Oakland dealers offering “wheelchair weed” at up to half the dispensary rate. Nonetheless, the Blüm dispensary, a mile down the street from me, has out-the-door lines on payday Fridays, while another dispensary is about to open, a mile in the other direction.

“Taxes are not a barrier,” to California's weed market expansion,” claimed David Downs, a reporter from Leafly, a guide to all things marijuana, in an interview on San Francisco’s premier NPR radio station, KQED (12/5/19), “considering cannabis used to wholesale for $6000 a pound.” (I never heard of such extravagant earnings, but Downs may be citing the top price paid, perhaps in Hollywood, for the best "numero uno," circa 1985.)

Some dopers patronize dispensaries because they don’t know any growers or dealers; others like the variety of flowers and edibles, or the convenience; and a few are concerned about product safety. Indeed, legal cannabis is much cleaner than food, given it is tested for 62 pesticides, including heavy metals and pathogens. Black market bud is occasionally shown to have black mold, fungus and other weird stuff.

Nevertheless, an eighth of “chronic” has been holding steady at $60 since the 1980s, which means $80 is hardly progress (although it does equal $33.50 if inflation is taken into account).

In fact, it’s outright racist. It limits access to quality smoke among the Mexican- and African-American communities, marijuana's most stalwart consumer base, ever since the former sold the latter that first “nickel bag”—when it was actually five cents—in New Orleans, shortly after the turn of the 20th century, according to dopologists.

We can assume that was the price paid by trumpeter Louis Armstrong for his first stash, when he was 20 and playing with The Vipers, a term associated with users of "gage,” "maryjane," "boo" or "reefer" (early 20th century slang). Armstrong was busted in 1930, for a joint outside the Cotton Club in LA, but he only got nine days in the clink and a six-month suspended sentence, probably because the authorities were fans.

Snoop Dog, a rapper out of LA, enjoying his preferred past time. photo: Peggy Sirota courtesy Hollywood Reporter

Armstrong went on to be a life-long “viper,” even keeping in his band an inferior musician with superior connections, to whom he would send telegrams like, “Join us in Paris with lots of new scores.” (That the word for music transcriptions became their drug code is coincidental, since score entered the vernacular for “to buy drugs” from sex slang, which took it from sports.)

Some effort has been made to open up dispensary licenses and other weed work to people of color, who suffered disproportionately from the decades of draconian drug laws. Oakland reserved some sales permits for minorities convicted of weed offenses and mandated that a few pot shops be located in the ‘hood.

On the other hand, POC entrepreneurs with drug hustling experience have long been profiting from the weed business. After a generation hiatus during the crack epidemic, when many switched to that more lucrative product, “kush” has returned to popularity in their community, with some rappers hailing themselves as marijuana messiahs, most famously Snoop Dog (who is from Long Beach, California).

Although it is recommended such vendors play it cool when “driving while black” into the white hill country, the ones I met doing business there didn’t seem stressed out whatsoever. Northern California has been liberal long enough for excess fears to be more from product-induced paranoia than the racist cop-stops common in other parts of the country, including Southern California.

Meanwhile, prosecutors announced they would dismiss or diminish tens of thousands of cannabis convictions, hoping to eventually lower the number of Californians in prison for weed, the majority of whom are POC, from a high of 100,000 to approximately 5,000. Although not as many Californians as expected went through the effort to clear weed convictions from their records, an allowance stipulated by Proposition 64, some have, restoring their right to vote and hold professional licenses.

Putting aside for a moment the tragedy of arrests and lives ruined by a substance commonly-acknowledged to be less dangerous than drink, the history of America's marijuana business is a colorful confluence of hedonist, multicultural and market forces.

After the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which outlawed reefer federally, Mexican-Americans and Texans did most of the importing, white under-worlders the wholesaling and black hustlers the retailing. Indeed, that cross-cultural collaboration was still in effect when this reporter began his research at age 15, although white hippies had taken over their community’s last mile.

What I first smoked back in 1969 was mostly foul-tasting, brick-pressed Mexican. By the early ‘70s, however, my cohort was enjoying high-quality “cheeva” from Jamaica, Acapulco Gold or Michoacan Green from Mexico and, on the rare occasion, Panama Red. Around mid-decade, the high-end herb market was conquered by Colombian Gold and, a few years later, by Thai Stick. Packaged by wrapping a few buds around the proverbial stick, it was imported by Vietnam vets.

Steve DeAngelo, the founder and executive director of Oakland’s famous Harborside dispensary, tending one of its deluxe check out counters, circa 2010. photo: Eric Wolfe

Alas, that well-established weed economy ended around 1980 when into marketplace strode the Goliath that still dominates it today: California. As every woods hippie or cool grandma with a garden got their grow on, the state was soon surfeit with “sensimilla” (Spanish for "without seeds"). Although some of it was not quite as punchy as the epicurean Thai Stick, at least you didn’t have to pay for the stick's weight or ship it across eight thousand miles of ocean.

California’s “tea heads,” as William Burroughs disparaged them (“Junky”, 1953)—he also tried growing weed in Texas around 1950, but hated how tea heads would hang around his pad for hours smoking his stash—are amazingly diverse.

There’s nothing as anthropologically eye-opening as a visit to California’s, and probably the world’s, largest legal cannabis dispensary, Oakland’s Harborside. Started in 2006 by herb activist Steve DeAngelo, it developed a national reputation after appearing in "Weed Wars" (Discovery Channel documentary, 2011).

Harborside epitomizes Cali cannabis retail aesthetic with its muted colors, its up to twelve check-out counters, its extensive edible displays and its eclectic clientele: from black and white kids and older hipsters to much older, even elderly black, white and Latino folk. Only the Asians are noticeably absent, although a few youngsters are trying to make up for that.

Harborside has serious security, with a number of cameras and two guards: one on the sidewalk in front of the door, who scans your driver’s license, both to make sure you’re 18 and to get a record it. Then they walkie-talkies admittance approval to the guard just inside the front door. They’ve had very few problems over the years, according to the workers I talked to, except for the occasional smash and grab. But with every driver’s license recorded, those offenders are soon arrested.

Harborside has had other troubles, however. In 2018, it lost a two-and-a-half year court battle initiated by CEO Andrew Berman who objected to Section 280E of the California tax code, which restricts cannabis companies from deducting business expenses. This can push tax burdens up to 70% of gross.

"We feel this is a setback for the entire cannabis industry, which is simply seeking the same tax treatment by the IRS that every other industry is subjected to,” Berman said in December, 2018 (see article). Indeed, Harborside’s accumulated liability could reach $20 million and bankrupt the company, which was once a non-profit and also offers yoga and health services.

Despite this, Harborside doubled its revenue since 2012. Moreover, in 2018, its management company, FLRish, reported it was selling part-ownership to Lineage Grow for about $200 million, not bad, given the latter's listing on the Canadian Securities Exchange.

Through it all, it's anyone’s guess whether Harborside or other dispensaries are selling squeaky-clean legal weed. Indeed, it would be hard to believe there's absolutely no black market green in there.

Asian-Americans are traditionally not big pot heads, but this young graphic designer, who stopped for a toke outside City Lights, the beatnik bookstore next to Chinatown, has long been a head. Photo: D. Blair

Although Cali instituted Track-and-Trace in January, 2019, where every seed is tagged and monitored by Metric, a private company, it still isn’t fully operational. Thankfully, the authorities were either caught completely unawares by legalization’s complexity of or decided not to bring the hammer down.

In point of fact, how could rigorous enforcement possibly work? Cali's weed economy has been on an unstoppable expansion track since the early-‘80s, when Ronald Reagan's Republican Revolution and Nancy Reagan's “Just Say No” campaign did little to reduce output or consumption.

CAMP, the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, established in 1983, remains a multi-agency task force run by California’s Department of Justice (once headed by ex-presidential candidate Kamala Harris). Alas, it is as ineffective today as it was 35 years ago.

For its first few years, CAMP flew helicopters all over Big Sur, Nevada County and the Emerald Triangle (Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties, which claim to grow 70% of American weed—doubtful now that Santa Barbara County has a majority of Cali’s legal licenses). During that time, CAMP risked aircraft and personnel to lower agents into steep ravines, to chase hippies through fields of poison oak and to uproot and burn thousands of plants, leading to dozens of downwind jokes.

But the backyard garden grows, which flourished until the early ‘80s, were shifted to under the trees a few miles hike into the state or national forests, which made them almost impossible to see from the air. CAMP commanders eventually realized their efforts were expensive, ineffective or even absurd, given they were getting only a few percent of the total crop for tens of millions in costs.

Moreover, unless they arrested someone with over a dozen pounds in a completely-clean bust, almost no one went to jail, due to the cottage industry of dope defense lawyers. Not to mention some cops were selling it, while rural residents, no matter how redneck, were overjoyed with a new business to replace the lost timber, fishing and mining industries. Indeed, they generally voted out egregiously aggressive sheriffs

CAMP is still at it. So far “this year [it] seized nearly 1 million pot plants from illicit grows, a jump from last year highlighting that the black market remains a persistent problem,” according to a recent LA Times article (11/4/19).

Alas, “345 raids of illegal grow sites throughout California and the eradication of 953,459 marijuana plants, up from 254 raids last year that seized 614,267 pot plants, [according to] state Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra,” is not much considering at least 10 million starts or plants are grown annually.

A trimmigrant from Italy, back for her third season, checks out some monster plants in the Sierras. photo: unknown

CAMP’s seizure of 168 weapons thus far this year, up from 100 in 2018, does suggest a certain hoodlum element, although it’s comparatively pretty small. Indeed, most growers don’t pack. They police their own through trusted business partners, community intel and kitchen-sink cryptography: “How many CDs do you need?” “Five, two Beatles and three Stones.”

Of course, herbologists now have at their finger tips state-of-the-art cryptography like Signal, an app easily downloadable to their mobile phones. Although Signal’s dependence on actual phone numbers may prove its Achilles’ Heel, it provides fully encrypted communication, despite the fact that some superstitious growers still use their traditional codes.

Meanwhile, rumors of Mexican cartel infiltration, which were rampant some years back, have only panned out in commando grows in the national forests of Southern California.

To be sure, there have been a number of tragic murders, like of a Mendocino grower named Garrett Rodriguez, who was dug out of a shallow grave in 2013.

His story is well told in the moody documentary “Murder Mountain” (2017), from Netflix and directed by Joshua Zeman, who avoids the drug art tendency to indulge hipsterisms. The characters of “Murder Mountain” are a world apart from the bourgeoisie growers of “Weeds”, the award-winning TV series (Showtime, 2005-2012), but set in San Diego “Weeds” highlighted the cartel threat from across the border.

Humboldt County did have a record kill count in 2016—a whopping 21—over double its average of eight per year from 1986 to 2013. As severe as that might sound, it is significantly less per capita than cineSOURCE’s neighborhood of West Oakland.

Of course, those outside the law, with no recourse to courts, sometimes resort to arms, not to mention that Humboldt is an out-of-the-way place popular with drifters and runaways, as well as back-to-the-land hippies. Nevada County, meanwhile, with its many picturesque towns, has averaged only two homicides per year for decades.

Despite the ass-whupping endured by capitalist cannabiseros, the Bay Area has been inundated by dope delivery services, the herb of which is also probably not entirely seed-to-sale legit. Indeed, Grower A has a friend in San Jose with a delivery service; they tried for years to go legal but could never quite swing the ridiculous paperwork and costs.

Nevertheless, companies like Eaze or Chill are renting billboards all over the Bay, some of which run up to $40,000 a month. Having studied the market, they appear to be endorsing the American business model of services over manufacturing. Indeed, there are almost a dozen outfits duking it out for the high-end nerd, couch-potato or ridiculously-rich cannabis consumer.

One of hundreds of billboards currently up across the Bay Area, as over a dozen companies compete for the lucrative weed delivery market. photo: D. Blair

Considering there are almost 100 dispensaries in the greater Bay Area AND it is one of the biggest weed transshipment areas in the world, the fact that there is a million-dollar, public battle for delivery dominance is telling.

As if those 100 dispensaries and dozen delivery services were not enough: “A bill moving through the legislature would require those cities to permit at least one cannabis retailer for every four bars or restaurants with a liquor license or one for every 10,000 residents, whichever is fewer,” according to The LA Times (5/13/19). If it passes, that will mean: “2,200 new cannabis stores throughout the state, more than three times the 631 shops legally operating now!”

Admittedly, 631 dispensaries is low, since Colorado, with an eighth the population, has 540. As it happened, a lot of Californian cities voted against allowing dispensaries, and less then half its counties have legalized weed, making the “inland empire,” which grows over half of America’s food, a weed desert.

Meanwhile Los Angeles, after being flooded with medical vendors in the early-00s, trimmed them back so severely the city has only 180 dispensaries for four million people. Estimates suggest it could support ten times that.

So how much marijuana can Americans consume? Although the peak is not in sight, the mountain of red tape is.

Now that red state Oklahoma has gone legal recreational, some Cali growers have relocated or are planning to do so, due to that typical Republican tendency to streamline paper work. Alas, the shorter growing season and flash frosts of Oklahoma will hardly be conducive to outdoor grows, while indoor growers won’t be big fans of the tornadoes, not to mention the longer drive to Burning Man.

The Colorado weed business, which was the first to go legal recreational (in 2012, along with Washington State), giving it five years on Cali, has been getting a lot of press of late. The hit cartoon series, “South Park”, which is set there, has been highlighting it, between taking on repression in China or Trump’s America. Although Coloradans have created some great branding and edibles, grown in the cold at 5,000 feet, their weed is quite not as robust and headbanger as that from tropical Cali.

As you might imagine, I had a fabulous, fun few-day tour of some of Cali's prime weed country. Although I uncovered quite a few problems, the rocky transition seems to have stabilized. After visiting a few farms and toking some great ganja—notably Poison Mimosa, the great-granddaughter of the Durban Poison I had in Crete, Greece, in 1972, and was the best I ever smoked in my life—I can testify: the 2019 season has produced a bumper crop of excellent green.

The Oakland Museum's show 'Altered States', in 2016, featured actual marijuana, its history and its enormous influence in California. photo: D. Blair

“California is on track to post a record $3.1 billion in licensed cannabis sales this year,” according to The LA Times (8/15/19), “solidifying its status as the largest legal marijuana market in the world… But California’s black market for marijuana continues to flourish as high taxes and a refusal by most cities to allow licensed shops makes it cheaper and easier for people to buy from illicit dealers... An estimated $8.7 billion is expected to be spent in the illegal [California] cannabis market in 2019.”

Although this year’s harvest of $11.9 billion is still 12% lower than 2017’s $13.5 billion estimate, it may actually be almost back to, or even beating, the unofficial estimate of $18 billion a year in 2016. Moreover, au contraire the sky-is-falling analysis of Newsweek and The NY Times, I found no glut. It all sells, almost as fast as it can be grown, cured, trimmed and bagged—85% out of state.

There is also a huge market for CBD, which stands for Cannabidiol, one of 113 cannabinoids in weed. First identified in 1940, it is the major medicinal ingredient and it makes up about 40% of an average plant’s extract. Some growers have started freeze-drying inferior wet weed, putting it through a “bucking machine,” which roughly replaces hand trimming, and selling it to distillers for as little as $75 a pound.

“Price of cannabis overall is falling,” according to Leafly’s David Downs, in his KQED interview. “The average eighth of an ounce is $32 to $40, before tax. The price will keep coming down. A lot of big farms are opening up, and an good ounce is on its way to $150.”

“50-dollar half ounces at the low end and 80-dollar eighths at the high end. There will be a lot of losers and some winners, but craft”—ie small growers—“is here to stay,” Downs insisted. Moreover, “demand is going up,” he added.

As far as the rollout of legal, “We just had the ‘terrible twos’," Downs claimed, "and a three year old will be more capable.”

Alas, that contradicts what my best informant, Grower A, told me. Indeed, my recent visit to Harborside indicated that $35 bucks won't go that far towards an excellent eighth. Actually prices are almost up to where they were before the collapse two years ago, according to my observations and my ad hoc survey ten growers and brokers.

Given the controlling factor in price is demand, the big question remains: “Is there any limit to the amount weed Americans can smoke?” When I asked my contacts, no one ventured a guess. Indeed, they noted new markets opening or expanding, the elderly, Trumpers, women and Asians, as well as a host of products, cookies, candy, skin cream and more infused with CBDs.

Moreover, not only many states but many countries are following California’s legalization lead. While Mexico, which is planning to go legit in 2021, won’t be importing much from its sometimes-abusive neighbor to the north (indeed, it will be scheming how to recapture its once-lucrative export business), Germany, which is also legalizing that year, might.

Sunset up on the ridge above Nevada City glances off some glistening buds. photo: unknown

But Germany has the renown weed center of Amsterdam right next door, while Cali exports there would be small beer compared to Japan and Korea, if they make the leap to legalization. The biggest bonanza would be China, although that is unlikely, as the grower from “South Park” learned when he got busted with a suitcase full of Colorado cannabis and jailed in a gulag with Uighur Muslims.

Admittedly, there are legitimate concerns about excessive consumption. Certainly, some weed taxes should be earmarked for education and remediating overuse. If one’s family has history of schizophrenia, you're well-advised to lay off until your mid-20s. Meanwhile, abstinence until 18 is a good idea, in most cases.

Of course vaping, which injects into the lungs up to ten times the normal toke, is dangerous—as the recent spate of 2000 hospitalizations and 40 deaths amply indicate. Vitamin E, while great for your skin, evidently doesn't work well with vaped THC. Nonetheless, marijuana has also been shown to help children with seizures and to ease a number of aches and pains.

Indeed, CBDs have been proven—or have shown the potential—to help a host of ailments: Alzheimer's, appetite loss, cancer, Crohn's disease, eating disorders (such as anorexia), epilepsy, glaucoma, insomnia, mental health conditions like schizophrenia and post traumatic stress disorder, multiple sclerosis, muscle spasms, nausea, pain, wasting syndrome (cachexia) and, last but not least, writer’s block—as this author can testify.

All very well and good, especially for garnering the good Samaritan vote, “But when will it go federal?” I inquired of my weed worker contacts.

“Probably not for at least five years, especially given who we have in the White House,” Grower C replied, laughing. Indeed, Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a lot of anti-weed remarks but he's gone, recreational marijuana is here to stay and the new AG William Barr appears occupied with other crimes.

Motley Fools, the stock advisor web site, predicts an 80-billion-dollar-a-year international pot market by 2030. Given that is three presidential cycles away, national legalization is entirely possible by then. But, considering California's recent problems with ending prohibition, I wouldn't be too bullish on massive monetary killings, only the slow expansion of the colossus that has been Cali cannabis since 1980.

Indeed, the take over, over-taxation or otherwise demise of the state's boutique growers is a ways off—if ever—especially if consumers remain dedicated to searching out, smoking or ingesting the highest-quality, handcrafted herb available, which is even more important if we believe in the spirits suggested in “The Secret Life of Plants” (Tompkins/Bird, 1973).

Sadly, most people don't see the value of spectacular smoke, which can cost up to 175 to 250% of average bud. Although it's pricier, you smoke less, which is better for your lungs. Almost always grown indoors, which does make a bigger carbon footprint, it has a dank, cheesy smell; it is so thick with oil, the buds stay compressed when squeezed; and it has that tell-tale smell of skunk, which derives from one of its terpenes, myrcene, also in thyme and mangoes.

Marketing material from a brand of cannabis chocolates, circa 2011, shows how much more design-oriented is the packaging today. photo: unknown

If we can educate consumers to appreciate hand-crafted herb, we will help insure the survival of Cali’s forty-year-old, immensely productive, somewhat outlaw, but rarely violent artisanal weed community. If we're willing to pay $5 a pound for heirloom tomatoes, surely we can spring $80 an eighth for some of the finest smoke to emerge from the storied, stoney and ancient history of cannabis, which was first mentioned in India around 1000 BCE.

As I bombed back from the marijuana mountains down Interstate 80, doing 80 mph, as is now standard off rush, I considered all the compleing laws, economic pressures and public tastes of this almost $20 billion a year industry. "Californians are both practical and stoner enough," I concluded, "to strike a functional balance between corporate dominance, state control and your friendly neighborhood weed worker."

In this way, my grower buds, as it were, will be supplying the state, the nation and even the world with plenty of pot for the rest of my lifetime and probably well into my next.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached
Posted on Dec 09, 2019 - 12:41 AM
Burns’s ‘Country Music’ and the New Civil War
by Doniphan Blair

Johnny 'The Man in Black' Cash meets with President Nixon in 1969, shortly before the former played the White House and eviscerated the latter. photo: courtesy The White House

DOCMASTER BURNS HAS DONE IT AGAIN.
I only wish my fellow progressives had bothered to tune in to his latest investigation of American culture, which showed in September on PBS (but can be streamed any time here).

While Ken Burns’s first long-form documentary, “Civil War” (1990), fought to a just conclusion the last battle—that of the historians—of that grotesque, fratricidal tragedy, his latest, the eight-episode, sixteen-hour “Country Music”, sheds light on America’s current conflict. Indeed, it was released just in the time for the impeachment proceedings.

Trump may be Middle American’s false idol and Jesus their eternal lord, but the actual stars in their firmament go by names like Cash, Parton, Cline, Nelson, Haggard, Kristofferson, Pride and the monumental early saints: Hank Williams, Jimmy Rodgers and the Carter Family.

And what gods they were.

Growing up in New York City, I didn’t hear a lick of country except Woody Guthrie, who enraptured me at age ten.

Mentioned only a couple of times in “Country Music”, Guthrie was the indefatigable Oklahoma troubadour, who criss-crossed the nation and composed thousands of songs on top of his greatest hit, “This Land Is Your Land”. As it happened, that song was based on a tune he “borrowed” from the Carter Family’s “Little Darling Pal of Mine”, which, in turn, they borrowed from a song by a black preacher.

Among his thousands of songs, Woody Guthrie played a few Yiddish ones to entertain his wife Marjorie's Brooklyn family (shown here circa 1946). photo: courtesy W. Guthrie
Guthrie didn’t crossover to country royalty, perhaps because he settled in Brooklyn, with his Jewish wife, Marjorie, and he was a serious lefty. For years his guitar bore the sticker: "This machine kills fascists."

Even as a teenager, the only country name I learned was Merle Haggard, due to the conflict between his patriotic “Okie from Muskogee” and The Youngblood’s “Hippie from Olema”, a town near San Francisco. Never in a million years would I have imagined that Haggard, who was actually from Bakersfield, California, was inspired to write his song while rolling a joint on a tour bus rolling through Oklahoma. Or that he also authored:

I turned twenty-one in prison,
doin' life without parole,
No one could steer me right
but Mama tried, Mama tried,

which I first heard played by The Grateful Dead, at the first concert of theirs I attended, also in Brooklyn, 1971.

“Country music is telling stories based on what all of us have experienced—like the joy of birth, the sadness of death, falling in love, trying to stay in love, losing love, being lonely, missing somebody, seeking redemption,” explained Burns, pedal-to-the-metalling his mouth, as if some snooty media exec might suddenly cut him off, in a video interview by the music magazine Pitchfork (6/18/2018).

“We can’t deal with the four-letter words that country music is about: pain, hurt and love,” Burns raced on. “So we say ‘Oh, it’s about pickup trucks, hound dogs and six packs of beer’—and it’s not.”

To prove his point, the New York City-born, Harvard-educated filmmaker commenced quoting the idiom’s greatest bards.

“Hank Williams said, ‘You hear that lonesome whippoorwill, he sounds too blue to fly, the midnight train is moving on, I’m so lonesome I could cry.’ Johnny Cash has a song, ‘I Still Miss Someone’—second verse, so simple, it’s like a haiku. ‘I go out to a party, to have a little fun, but I find a darkened corner, because I still miss someone.’”

It took me decades to finally search out and listen to those tunes, but, by the time I was attending that Dead concert in 1971, Cash was already close friends with Bob Dylan, the great counterculture prophet as well as poet and musician.

Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, one of America's most famous radicals and Republicans, respectively, as well as close friends, Nashville, 1969. photo: courtesy B. Dylan
Guthrie’s premier disciple, Dylan was so enamored of country that, after he wrote the album “Blonde on Blonde” (1966), with The Band in Woodstock, New York, he bombed down to Tennessee and recorded it with Nashville session players.

That sparked still more hippie-hillbilly rancor, while producing some scintillating Dylan tunes: “Just Like a Woman”, “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”. His following albums, “John Wesley Harding” (1967), which includes the masterpiece "All Along the Watchtower", and “Nashville Skyline” (1969), were also quite country.

The Band must’ve been stunned by Dylan’s departure, even though he brought along their lead guitarist/songwriter, the half-Jewish, half-First People Robbie Robertson. Not covered in Burns's “Country Music”, The Band responded by recording as well as writing a few brilliant country songs of their own: “Rag Mama Rag”, “Cripple Creek” and one of the genre’s great epics, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, later covered by Cash and other country artists.

Jerry Garcia, lead guitarist and leader of The Grateful Dead, as well as of the LSD Generation, actually came up as a banjo player in the early ‘60s. Although he continued to jam spectacularly psychedelic in the middle of songs for the rest of his life, he brought The Dead back to his blue grass roots. In fact, in 1970, The Dead released not one but TWO masterful but also very country albums, “Workingman’s Dead” and “American Beauty”, which finally earned them mainstream accolades.

Garcia realized, as did Dylan, that the best way to conquer America was to become America.

Three years later, Garcia started a side project, Old & In the Way, a bluegrass band, which introduced a lot of Dead heads, as his fans are called, to country music. Although Burns doesn’t mention Garcia by name, he inserts a closeup of the beaming and bearded hippie guitar god, holds it for a few seconds and zooms in, in keeping with his now-famous “Ken Burns Effect”.

Moreover, “Country Music” is narrated by another famous old hippie, ‎Peter Coyote, who had already done eight Burns’s docs, including “Vietnam War” (2017), “Prohibition” (2011) and “Baseball” (1994-2010).

Jerry Garcia, when he was banjoing for the Hart Valley Drifters in 1962, shortly before he dropped his first hit of LSD. photo: courtesy J. Garcia
The Dead were preceded in going country by The Byrds, who were from LA but had songs like "Nashville West", and followed by The Rolling Stones. Their “Exile on Main Street” (1972) consisted of authentic-sounding country oldies of their own invention, albeit recorded in a studio in Southern France. With an album cover featuring dozens of Robert Frank’s photos, from his “America” series, “Exile” remains one of The Stones most artistic and critically-acclaimed albums.

Decades before the hippies, the poets and renegades of poor white America were often country musicians. I lost count of how many of them grew up so strapped they barely had shoes, let alone a guitar—Dolly Parton in a “holler” in Appalachia, Johnny Cash in an Arkansas farm house with no glass in its windows—but began penciling poems on scraps of paper. I also lost count of how many did drugs.

Living in the south, side by side with African-Americans, from whom they learned and borrowed a lot of musical material—notably the blues and the banjo—they would eventually repay their even more impoverished, mistreated neighbors with interest.

Black country music is famous for its three Charleses: rhythm and blues superstar Ray Charles, who suddenly came out with a country album in 1962 and had a number one hit with his rendition of "I Can’t Stop Loving You"; Charlie Pride, a singer/guitarist, who came to Nashville from Montana in 1966 and became RCA’s biggest star since Elvis; and jazz saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, who grew up with country in Kansas and remained an avid fan, to the amazement of his friends, “because of the stories,” he said.

Burns loads “Country Music”, his ninth episodic doc and 33rd overall, with astute observations from African-Americans. In addition to Pride, who has a great story about becoming friends with one of Nashville's notoriously-rascist musicians, there’s Rhiannon Giddens. The female banjo player and lead singer of the old-timey Carolina Chocolate Drops, Giddens also appears in “Country Music”’s masterful teaser, which quick cuts between various, very different banjoists racing the same riff.

Naturally, Winton Marsalis, the elite jazz trumpeter, composer and New York City impresario, appears in force. He's been a friend of Burns ever since he became central to Burns’s other, highly-influential, music doc, “Jazz” (2001).

“If you listen to Willie Nelson’s phrasing, there is nothing about country in his phrasing—it’s all Django Reinhardt, it is all jazz,” elaborated Burns to Pitchfork (see full interview here). “And Chester—Chet—Atkins, one of the great session guitarists and later one of the great [Nashville] producers—all jazz-influenced stuff.”

Rhiannon Giddens, co-founder, lead singer and banjo player of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. photo: courtesy R. Giddens
“If, at the end of Johnny Cash’s life, he’s working with a Trent Reznor tune [“Hurt”, originally recorded by the very hard rock band Nine Inch Nails], then you know that country music is sort of omnivorous… They are one of the parents of rock and roll!”

While the blues, hard-bop jazz and rhythm and blues are obvious precursors to rock, the closest forbear is rockabilly—rock plus hillbilly—which spawned Elvis as well as the word "rock."

The simple facts of country music—rising out of nothing, telling such passionate stories, capturing the zeitgeist and producing not only masterful male writers and musicians but so many feminist poet/singers I also lost count: Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Emmylou Harris and even Taylor Swift—proves it was an egalitarian cultural revolution warranting serious research as well as recognition.

Burns lovingly details its entire, intricate history. Indeed, he was obliged to leave out The Band, The Byrds and The Dead because 16 hours was simply NOT enough time to cover the hundreds of under-acknowledged country greats.

“The big bang of country music,” Burns continued to Pitchfork, stepping all over his syntax as he attempted to summarize, “is a time when a guy named Ralph Peer, the summer of 1927, in Bristol, Tennessee-Virginia—that is to say, the main street of it, one side is Tennessee, one side is Virginia, he’s on the Tennessee side—he records, within a week, the Carter Family AND Jimmy Rodgers.”

“The Carter Family, they’re like Sunday morning,” Burns explained. “They’re the home, family, church values. Mother Maybelle is one of the greatest guitarists of all time. Sarah Carter has this keening voice. A.P. [the husband] wanders around Appalachia collecting songs with a black man.”

“Jimmy Rodgers is a scamp, a rogue. He brings the blues, also training from African-Americans in the railroad yards. He brings another kind of music—they’re so night and day. He’s Saturday night, they’re Sunday morning—[country] has never been one thing—to which they then appended every other musical form, in one way or another.”

In addition to Giddens and Marsalis, Burns includes scores of insightful interviews, from Dolly Parton and Willy Nelson to the offspring of Williams and Cash, Hank Jr. and Roseanne, stars in their own rights. But the man with the most screen time is Marty Stewart.

Connie Smith, country music star since 1964, and her child prodigy, guitarist and singer husband Marty Stewart, circa 2016. photo: courtesy M. Stewart
A self-taught, child-prodigy mandolinist and guitarist, the young Stewart was taken by his mom to see Connie Smith, an influential country goddess after her "Once a Day" reached number one in 1964. He fell madly in love, in more ways than one.

Stewart soon entered country music's stratosphere: joining Lester Flatt's band at age 12; playing with them the final season of the country music TV show “Hee Haw” (original: 1969-71, other iterations 'til 1997); then moving to Cash's band; marrying his daughter Cindy; finally busting out on his own, which led to a string of hit singles, albums, awards and “The Marty Stuart Show” (2008-16).

A warm, open-minded raconteur, Stewart is also a very romantic country character, given that, after splitting with Cindy, he ended up marrying “the prettiest woman he ever saw,” none other than the star of his first concert, Connie Smith, despite her being 17 years his senior.

Cash was also an insanely-important romantic and moral figure, despite being a dyed-in-the-wool Republican and sometimes tough and troubled in person. Indeed, Cash devoted himself to “the forgotten man,” in his song's lyrics, in his honoring of them by wearing black (country musicians were famous for their fantastic get-ups, especially when appearing at the Grand Ole Opry theater in Nashville) and in his free concerts at prisons. In California’s Folsom Prison, he inspired a devotion to country music in a long-incarcerated kid from Bakersfield—Merle Haggard.

Cash was also a human jukebox who inhaled music and championed musicians very different from him. In fact, Joni Mitchell appeared on the first episode of Cash’s television show, in 1969, along with Dylan and a couple of “regular” country musicians.

In addition to being one of the top country artists, who would eventually sell over 90 million albums, Cash exercised political influence, reaching the height of his power during a command performance at the White House, also in 1969.

“The president’s staff had requested Cash to play two songs—Guy Drake’s ‘Welfare Cadillac’ and Merle Haggard’s ‘Okie from Muskogee’,” according to the White House Historical Association (see article). But they were, “politically-charged anthems that vilified citizens on government assistance and mischaracterized anti-war protesters as rampant drug users.”

“While Cash was actually a vocal supporter of President Nixon and his policies, he informed the White House beforehand that he neither knew those songs nor had the time to learn them. He did, however, oblige the president’s request for ‘A Boy Named Sue,’ [written by Shel Silverstein] opening the night with [it,] his biggest hit of 1969.” He also may have been honoring his own father, Ray Cash, who was in the select audience of only 200 (the song pokes fun at tough fathers).

Dolly Parton, singer, songwriter, entrepreneur and humanitarian, around her 70th birthday. photo: Martin Schoeller/AUGUST
But “Cash received the loudest applause for his song ‘What Is Truth’. This tune touched on some of the major issues facing America at that time such as war, drug use, generational and cultural differences, and the mistreatment of people because of appearance or political perspective.” As Cash played “What Is Truth”, Nixon squirmed in his seat and, during the thunderous ovation, hung his head.

Instrumental in arranging that evening was the top Nixon aid but also music aficionado J.R. Haldeman, later indicted in connection with the Watergate break-in and cover-up. When Haldeman was brought into the court for the first time, he turned to Cash, who took time out of his relentless touring schedule to attend the entire trial, and said, loudly, for all to hear, “I am sorry.”

So powerful had become the gods of country music.

Country music centers around love affairs and broken hearts, so it’s no surprise that so do the lives of many of its stars. One romantic epic entails how Cash broke with the mother of three of his children, the Italian-descendant Vivian Liberto, who couldn’t handle his months on the road, and got together with June Carter, daughter of Mother Maybelle, who had had been touring with him.

June, who provided a gorgeous, nightingale-voiced but also joke-cracking presence, in turn had trouble with Cash’s affairs and addictions. But she stuck by him, he eventually cleaned up and they married and had a son, John Carter Cash (President Jimmy Carter is a distant relative).

Dolly Parton, meanwhile, is Cash’s opposite, romantically. She remains married to her first husband, Carl Thomas Dean, whom she wed at twenty in 1966. Interestingly, he has only seen her play only once, perhaps because some of her songs can feel VERY personal, for example when Parton plaintively pleads:

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene,
I'm begging of you, please don't take my man.
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
Please don't take him, just because you can.

With the best-endowed figure in country, Parton goes under the knife quite a bit, as she openly jokes, and still looks unbelievable at 73. Currently promoting “Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings,” an eight-episode show from Netflix based on her songs, she is making the rounds of, and obviously enjoying her appearances on, the coastal-elite shows of Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert.

And so it goes, in the middle of America’s biggest civil crisis since the 1960s, a visionary artist, working in long-form documentary, shows us that, in point fact, we are all cut from the same cloth: red, white and blue.

As if “Country Music” didn’t imply that subtext forcefully enough, it debuted just after country music fans crowned as their new king a young, black and queer kid.

Twenty-year-old Lil Nas X recorded his country cross over hit 'Old Town Road' for $50 but it stayed at number one for 19 weeks, beating Mariah Carey's record. photo: courtesy L. Nas X
Only 20 and out of Georgia, Lil Nas X (AKA Montero Lamar Hill), blew up both the pop and country charts (the latter kicking him off ‘til he was brought back by popular acclaim) with his laconic, very country but also rap "Old Town Road". It became the only song EVER in the Billboard Hot 100’s history to stay at number one for NINETEEN weeks—despite the fact that he came out of the closet around week ten!

Winning Lil Nas X innumerable awards—the most for any male musician this year—“Old Town Road” starts with the innocent plinking of a banjo, retaking the African instrument expropriated by country music, until it expands into a solid but slow drawl about the life of a black cowboy, with its super-individualistic refrain, "Ain't nobody tell me nothing”

‘[“Old Town Road”] it is so underrated. I feel happy, I feel joyous,” Burns enthused to Pitchfork. “I feel the cavalry has come over the hill to help us deal with the current trouble."

"I have spent the last eight years working on a history of country music and people everywhere—even people I love—want to in-silo country music into its own narrow thing.”

“EVERYONE listens to other music,” he exclaimed. “The idea that we create musical borders is just commerce’s super imposition, or maybe our desire to categorize something so we don't have to know it.”

Indeed, lieu of ridiculing and reviling Trumpers, who are largely country music listeners, Burns is constantly implying, suggesting and, every once in while, openly demanding that we take a gander at their deepest dreams and desires, their avatars and their poetry, to get a better understanding of what life might be like in their shoes.

A majority of country musicians might not support Trump. Certainly, Willie Nelson, who has become the country’s most prominent spokesperson for marijuana, and The Dixie Chicks, who stood up to President Bush and suffered immensely for it, don’t.

But many do. Perhaps it is time for one of them to pull a Johnny Cash, to rise up in his monumental moral fashion and school a president who, like Nixon, has fallen prey not just to corruption and dirty dealing but betraying the American people.

Regardless of whether some country prophet does that, one thing is for certain: We will not defeat racism, hate and demagoguery with loathing, ridicule and rejection. As any one knows, who has driven more then fifty miles from the coast and had their car break down: the people stopping to help almost all have Trump not NPR bumper stickers.

Accepting your allies is easy. Alas, we progressives are obliged to show an even greater dedication to tolerating our opponents, simply to prove the validity of our values.

Ken Burns discusses his 33rd doc, 'Country Music', which he considers one of his best, in Nashville. photo: Andrew Nelles, courtesy The Tennessean
As it happens, cineSOURCE's hometown of Oakland doesn’t have much of a country scene, aside from perhaps the greatest super hero of hippie country: Creedence Clearwater Revival (from two towns north, admittedly). Also not covered in "Country Music", Creedence were often mistaken for Southerners, blacks or BOTH!

But Oakland does have Family Radio, a Christian network famous for Harold Camping’s Judgment Day announcements, the most recent being the end of the world which was supposed to transpire on October 21, 2011, and many listeners did believe.

What Oakland also does have, like America in general, is an increasingly frayed relationship between its wealthy, white hill dwellers, its people-of-color power brokers, many of whom also live in the hills, and its average folk of all sizes, shapes and colors.

Unfortunately, when I walked around my West Oakland neighborhood at 8 pm on that unseasonably-warm night of September 15th, I didn’t hear Rhianna Giddens's banjo heralding the start of “Country Music”. Indeed, when I mentioned the unbelievable Lil Naz X phenomena, even to black musician friends, few were aware of latest embracing of new sounds and singers by country fans.

Burns’s “Civil War” changed America. As much as the Gettysburg Address can be considered the coda to the Declaration of Independence, “Civil War” is kind of a closing statement to that killer of more Americans than any other war in our history. As explained by the southern historians Burns featured prominently, “Civil War” laid to rest "the war was not about slavery," “the noble South” and “Lincoln is the American Hitler” fantasies of some Southerns, at least those who bothered to watch.

Once the killing was concluded and a majority of Southerners admitted their system had no future, despite carpetbagger abuses, Northerners were comparatively generous victors. Indeed, keeping the South in an undivided house allowed the US to become the super power able to defeat the Nazis, Imperial Japan and the Soviets, which would’ve been hard without all those southern sharpshooters.

Now America has to pull off a similar shape-shifting stunt, to save the world from climate change, the new fascism and the riots from Hong Kong to Iraq wracking democracies. Through the brilliance of Burns's “Country Music” and the poetry, romance and innovation it reveals, perhaps at least some of us can learn that trick fast enough.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Dec 02, 2019 - 07:43 PM
‘Collisions’ Shows Trauma of Deportation
by Jerry McDaniel

Itan, played by Izabela Alvarez, in the new film about the difficulties of being an illegal immigrant, 'Collisions'. photo: R. Levien
THIS PAST SUMMER I PUT TOGETHER
and presented an evening of short films by local filmmakers. They included myself, Tom E. Brown (“Pushing Dead”, 2016, see cS article), Jim Granato and Gibbs Chapman as well as few others. It was held at the basement screening room of the famed Shelton Theater on Post Street, in San Francisco.

Richard Levien, a cool local director I know, also offered his short piece, “Immersion” , that took a look at what a kid who speaks no English might go through in an American school.

I knew that Richard’s feature, “Collisions”, starring Jesse Garcia, Izabela Alvarez, Ana de la Reguera and the young Jason Garcia Jr. similarly tackled immigration and ICE. “Collisions” was shot and produced by my friend and next-door neighbor Frazier Bradshaw.

When part of the International Latino Film Festival came to Oakland earlier this year, I was finally able to catch the movie. I was not sorry.

Levien, who holds a PhD. in theoretical physics, told me that the story was inspired by accounts he'd hear from his wife about her work as an elementary school teacher in San Francisco. Although it was written before the current orange flavor took over Washington D.C., infinitely exacerbating the immigrant’s difficulties, it is even more relevant now and a must see.

The main characters are two children, a brother and sister, who arrive home after school to find their mother gone and the apartment trashed. She has been taken by force to an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detention center.

'Ana de la Reguera plays the mom in ‘Collisions'. photo: R. Levien
The elder of the two, the girl Itan, played by Izabela Alvarez, knocks it out of the park with her performance as a smartly-driven immigrant daughter, making her twelve-year-old way in this American “culture.”

The director, in turn, hits a home run as well by capturing some very tender moments between her younger brother Neto (Jason Garcia) and their macho, truck driving uncle, Evencio (Jason’s father, Jesse Garcia), who lives across the Bay (they appear to live in the Mission District of San Francisco).

Evencio reluctantly takes the two kids into his home after hearing that they might be separated through the foster system. Eventually, Itan, who programs her computer to examine all of the ICE detention center rosters, locates her mother and persuades her uncle to drive them to see her. The movie then takes on a bit of an exposé of Evencio’s “trucker life,” which I also found fascinating.

One moment that blew my mind was when the kids finally found their mother. She had been transferred to a detention center somewhere in Southern California that was actually in the basement of a parking garage, no markings, nothing to indicate that there was even a jail there—crazy!

Itan and Neto are taken by their truck driver uncle, Evencio (Jesse Garcia, the father of Jason, who plays Neto), to search for their mother. photo: R. Levien
All of the performances in this poignant gem are worthy of mention. Each one of them deserves the accolades they have already garnered and awards they will get. Ana de la Reguera is quite good as the detained mother trying to let her kids know what has become of her. Jason Garcia is excellent as little Neto. The cinematography by Bradshaw is also excellent.

The movie ends with some nice vignettes over the credits, which kind of tie everything up and give us an idea of what might happen from then on.

Big congrats to cast and crew for a job well done! Can’t wait for the next one, which I hear is in the works!

Jerry McDaniel is an actor, musician and filmmaker, who starred in the breakout Oakland film ‘Everything Strange and New’ (2009) and can be reached . Posted on Dec 02, 2019 - 10:20 AM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner: Dec 2019
by Karl F. Cohen

Jim Goldner, director of the SF State Film Department, demonstrates a Bolex in 2008. photo Gino De Grandis
Celebrate Jim Goldner’s Life on Dec 6

Professor Emeritus Jameson “Jim” Goldner, a founder of the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University and a strong supporter of the animation program, died September 30th. He was 81. He retired in 2014 after 52 years of teaching.

The School of Cinema will host a memorial in Goldner’s honor Friday, December 6th, at 7 pm, in the Coppola Theatre (Fine Arts 101), with the reception starting at 6 pm. The school invites all former students and friends to join us as we remember this wonderful, delightful and beloved man.

Goldner was born and raised in Los Angeles. As a kid, he knew several of the animators at UPA (United Productions of America). He went on to study film at UCLA alongside Francis Ford Coppola and work on both low-budget films and at major studio productions. In 1963, he accepted a tenure-track position at SF State.

Although film was originally part of the Television, Film and Radio Department, the faculty established the Department of Film in 1967. Eventually known as the School of Cinema, it became one of SF State’s most prestigious programs. In fact, The Hollywood Reporter calls it one of the best film schools in the U.S. (in each of the last five years). Earlier this year, Variety listed SF State as one of the best film schools in the world.

For this achievement, we owe Jim Goldner a serious debt. For more on Goldner, see cineSOURCE article.

Scene from 'To Your Last Death', an animated horror feature by Jason Axinn at Another Hole In The Head. image: courtesy J. Axinn
The 16th Annual Another Hole In The Head Film Festival

On Sunday, December 15th, at 9 pm, Another Hole In The Head showcases its closing night feature “To Your Last Death”. The 91-minute animated horror feature by Jason Axinn (2019) opens with Miriam DeKalb (voiced by Dani Lennon) covered in blood, bursting out of a building, clutching an axe, while two mysterious figures look on. “Lock the bets,” one tells the other.

“He killed them!” Miriam exclaims. “He killed my family!” As the sole survivor in a deadly revenge game set up by her father to punish his children, she receives an offer from a supernatural entity to go back in time and try again. Now, Miriam must survive both her father's blood lust and the Gamemaster's ever-changing rules to save her siblings as she relives the worst night of her life.

Anon Bitel writes, “Jason Axinn’s hyperviolent anime ‘To Your Last Death’ offers an alien-eye view on our capacity for self-destruction at a familial and corporate level.”

A week earlier, on Sunday, December 8th, at 1 pm, “Stranger with Eye Candy” is a program of 11 animated shorts: “Cemetery Song”, “Dong Kae (“My Little Bum”), “Hell Hath No Furie” (a short thriller starring angry women), “Into the Flame” (Floyd goes over the edge contemplating the disappearance of his cult obsessed wife), “Kaeru, La Noria”, “Monarcade”, “Odd Dog”, “Skeleton in the Closet”, “The Spotlight Effect” AND “Stuck” (based on “Tales of Mere Existence). There will be a Q&A after the screening.

Both programs are at the New People Cinema, 1746 Post, SF.

Paul Naas’s ‘How To Cheat In Maya', the English version. image: courtesy P. Naas
The Bay Area International Children's Film Festival (BAICFF)

The upcoming 12th annual Bay Area International Children's Film Festival will be February 22-23, 2020 (Sat-Sun) at the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland. There will be presentations by award-winning Pixar filmmakers, a hands-on stop-motion animation workshops for kids, new animated films and more!

Japanese ‘How To Cheat In Maya 2017’

Paul Naas’s book, "How To Cheat In Maya 2017", has been translated into Japanese.

“According to my friends who can read Japanese, the title has changed to ‘Maya Character Animation’,” I was told by Paul, a former Disney animator who now heads the animation program at Cañada College. “I had no idea the publisher was doing this, and I only found out about it when the author copies showed up in my office.”

“It's exciting to think that there's enough interest in this subject to warrant a translation of this book, the latest edition in a long line for this title.”

An Aged Mickey Has to Wear a Plastic Head in Public

Mickey Mouse turned 91 in November, given his “Steamboat Willie” premiered in 1928. This birthday card parody was created by Gene Deitch in 1992 for his wife. In case you can’t read Czech, the translation is “Excuse me. I’ve just removed my makeup!” Those are his false teeth in his hand.

Animator Gene Deitch loved to poke fun at everything. image: courtesy G. Deitch
Tragic Magic Short

Geoffrey Clark’s new stop-motion short “Tragic Magic” is being shown by the BASH-Fest, at the Albany Twin Theater in Albany, CA, on Sat. Dec. 7th, AND on the same day at the Los Angeles Animation Festival (LAAF), at the Mayflower Club in North Hollywood.

Bay Area Light Shows

For an excellent history of Bay Area liquid light shows go here.

Protests Effect Hong Kong Disney

The Disney’s Park in Hong Kong is not the happiest place on earth due to the protests. If they continue, the park could see a $275 million decline for the year, according to Disney CFO Christine McCarthy. The company was expecting the park’s income to fall by $80 million in its next quarterly report.

On the bright side for the company, Disney+, their new streaming business, started off with about 10 million subscribers before its first week had ended. Chairman and CEO Bob Iger was projecting they would have between 60 million and 90 million streaming subscribers world wide by 2024. It currently costs $7 a month to subscribe to Disney+.

The future of Disney+ should be impressive. Within five years it will contain 620 movies and 10,000 television episodes. By then, Disney will also be adding to the platform 60 original pieces of content annually.

What greets you at Disney Hong Kong—when there are no riots. image: courtesy Disney
Verizon is offering Disney+ free to its customers for a year. Now Iger has announced other distribution deals with Amazon Fire, Samsung and LG. He also announced that next March, Hulu, which presently has 28.5 million subscribers, will become the official streaming home for FX Networks, a strategy that became possible when Disney closed its $71 billion purchase of assets of 21st Century Fox, including FX and additional equity in Hulu.

As for Disney’s other video services, ESPN+ has been losing subscribers each quarter, but they still have more than 3.5 million paid members. Disney reported 20 percent year-over-year revenue growth in its cable networks unit and 26 percent growth in broadcasting.

Disney said that its quarterly earnings and revenue exceeded the expectations of analysts largely on the strength of its film business, with titles like “Toy Story 4”, “Aladdin” and “The Lion King” doing land office business. That resulted in studio entertainment revenue surging 52 percent.

Although theme parks, experiences and products showed 8 percent growth, with the costs associated with the creation of Disney+ mounting, the conglomerate saw a net income fall to $1.1 billion in the quarter from $2.3 billion a year earlier. For the entire fiscal year, net income fell to $11.1 billion from $12.6 billion a year ago.

The cool crows from 'Dumbo' (1941). image: courtesy Disney
Disney+ Adds Cultural Disclaimers

Given that the crows in the Disney film “Dumbo” (1941) speak like poorly-educated black hicks, the execs at Disney+ felt it propitious to warn viewers of “Outdated Cultural Depictions” in their classic films.

Indeed, the new streaming service has added disclaimers to “Dumbo”, “Lady and the Tramp”, “Peter Pan” and other films. Rather than cut or banning them from distribution they now carry warning notices.

Over the years members of the public have complained about depictions of black Americans in several Disney shorts and in “Song of the South”, along with Muslims in “Aladdin”, Native Americans in “Pocahontas” and “Peter Pan”, and politically incorrect moments in a few other films. One that I wasn’t aware of was the Siamese cats in “Lady and the Tramp” having exaggerated oriental accents.

Podcast About the Corrector of ‘Song of the South’

Karina Longworth has created a well-researched podcast on Maurice Rapf (see here), whom Walt Disney hired to rewrite “Song of the South”. Since Walt knew it was written from a Southerner’s point of view (hence racist), he hired Rapf, a liberal whom Walt probably knew was a Communist, to rewrite the script. Walt supposedly didn’t want the film to have problems with the black community when it was released in 1946.

When I wrote my book “Forbidden Animation” (1997, see cineSOURCE article) I had the pleasure to interview Rapf. My chapter on the blacklist goes into more detail about the changes he suggested that Walt could make to avoid trouble. Unfortunately, Walt eventually put back some of the cuts and changes, Rapf told me, resulting in the controversy that greeted the film.

Those issues resulted in the studio, years later, withdrawing the film from distribution. It is still withdrawn, but an “unauthorized” copy is on the internet and bootleg DVDs are available from MediaOutlet.com.

Scene from 'Frozen 2', probably Disney's next billion dollar film. image: courtesy Disney
‘Frozen 2’ Should Be Another Billion Dollar Hit

“Frozen 2” has everything fans expect, although there are fewer fancy dress musical sequences. They also didn’t include dorky airhead villains, and there are no princes that are supposed to sweep princesses off their feet and to promise that they will live happily ever after.

Instead the film is a strong adventure quest with Olaf the snowman going along to provide comic relief. Some of his zany moments actually made me laugh out loud.

What I disliked the most in the sequel are the operetta sequences where characters burst into second rate songs. I assume young kids will like the music as it is by the same composer that created the music for the original feature.

On the other hand, the film’s attention to the artwork, both the backgrounds and the animation, is exquisite. I also felt the empowerment of the two females was developed in a natural way and that giving the males secondary roles not only worked, it was welcomed. Elsa can be viewed as a serious role model for girls/women.

I was also comfortable accepting the story as an over-the-top fantasy, so I had no problem in accepting the unexpected.

Although the film is got mixed reviews in Variety and Hollywood Reporter, the Guardian says “Disney/Pixar remain undefeated in the kids’ film industry.” I saw it at a preview for kids and it seemed the several hundred young kids in the hall loved it. A few of the young girls were even dressed as princesses.

Since the original film became the second highest grossing animated movie of all time ($1.27 billion world) and since the franchise had made billions from a stage version and merchandising, I assume this sequel will easily cross the billion-dollar mark.

Does Hollywood Really Need A Lifelike James Dean?

Producers of “Finding Jack” say they have permission from James Dean’s estate/family to create a digital James Dean for a role in the proposed project. The Hollywood Reporter suggests the producer will run into technical and monetary problems, so it probably will not be completed.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .
Posted on Dec 02, 2019 - 12:22 AM
Napa Valley Film Fest Rocks Again!
by Jay Randy Gordon

Napa's premier Uptown Theater, in all its NVFF glory. photo: J.R. Gordon
AS MY GIRLFRIEND AND I RACED OUT TO
the Napa Valley Film Festival on November 13th, my eighth time in the festival’s nine-year history, I reminisced a bit.

I told Teresa of the fantastic films, the celebrity tributes, the rising stars, the culinary extravaganzas and delectable wines as well as the great gala parties at the Lincoln Theater in Yountville or the Culinary Institute of America's Copia venue (to continue reminiscing, see our 2016 article).

NVFF delivers the goods: the weekend in wine country, the fine dining and drinking and, of course, the films.

High on my list this year was “Just Mercy”. From an important book by Bryan Stevenson about the Equal Justice Initiative, it was well-directed by Destin Daniel Cretton and excellently-acted by Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx. There was also “The Pollinators”, which covers the importance of bees to our environment, and a few of that delicious NVFF specialty—the culinary adventure film.

Indeed, there was the excellently-shot “Funke”, about Evan Funke, an obsessive chef who travels to Italy to learn the art of hand-made pasta and returns to LA to resurrect his culinary career by building the now-famous Felix Trattoria restaurant. There was also “A Taste of Sky”, about developing a haute native cuisine in Bolivia, which fascinated my photographer/editor, Doniphan Blair (he lived in Bolivia for six months).

But the film that blew my mind the most covers two incredible Daves, Browne and Rooney, who in turn covered NVFF like a blanket, playing Irish music and rock covers everywhere from the Lincoln Theater's Saturday night bash to the three showings of the documentary about them, “This Is My Home”, directed by Karl Nickoley (see trailer here).

Dave Browne (left) and Dave Rooney, of The Black Donnellys, who provided NVFF with great Irish music as well as the beautiful documentary 'This Is My Home'. photo: D. Blair
Going by the name The Black Donnellys, they have made it their mission not just to share their songs and Irish heritage but to break records. Indeed, they currently hold the Guinness World Record for marathon guitar-playing and for the longest concert with multiple artists, 114 hours and 372 hours, respectively.

“We were trying to break another Guinness World Record, while touring the US,” Dave Rooney told me, specifically to do 60 gigs, across 50 states, in 40 days.

“It is pending as of now," Rooney continued, because they might not have done it quite fast enough. "We ended up meeting a lot of people who were compelled to tell us about their Irish heritage.”

Nickoley captures the joy of The Black Donnellys' joie de vivre and the audience’s heartfelt connection to them. Irish heritage and music—along with the wine, beer, whiskey and camaraderie—are the great equalizers. "Music, especially Irish music, travels much farther than any other genre, I think," Rooney added.

The 90-minute documentary features great performances and insightful interviews, ranging from friends, like the world-class humanitarian, chef Jose Andres, to acclaimed musicians, like The Tenors Of Rock, but also policemen, motorcycle enthusiasts, bar owners and their family members and road crew.

An 80s theme party attended by (lft) Erin Ratliff and Katie Hamilton-Shaffer, founders of the Feast-It-Forward VIP venue for NVFF. photo: J.R. Gordon
“This Is My Home” also covers many road adventures: flights delayed by a Hawaiian volcano and Florida hurricane and some very strange gigs, from a Colorado youth prison to Nashville carpet cleaners or a marina's clubhouse in Texas. One venue burned down before they could get there; others cancelled—forcing creative solutions by their dedicated tour manager Simon Skjøde Knudsen and RV driver Chad George.

Of course, there were inevitable ego clashes, last-minute cancellations, empty debit cards, a GoFundMe page that saved them, RV mechanical problems and endless paperwork for the Guinness Book of World Records in their attempt to get the above-mentioned gigging world record (which may never be affirmed, but screw Guinness).

An Anchorage venue will rue the day they cancelled The Black Donnellys, given they still made the local news for their world record quest.

Along with song, The Black Donnellys had plenty of wine—provided by the award-winning Folktale Winery from Carmel, which started supporting the film early—but no women, as the super-supportive wives stayed home with the kids, although they appeared periodically on cell phone screens.

The Daves, who met in 2004, on the Canary Islands, oddly enough, actually completed their tour in 35 days. They finished up at New York’s notorious McSorley’s Ale House—their perennial fall-back venue, the Irish pub—before flying back to Las Vegas, where their families live and they have a five-year contract at the Ri Ra Irish Pub in Mandalay Bay.

Browne and Rooney—the former a bad-ass, Thin Lizzy-inspired guitarist and mandolinist, the latter a gifted song writer and singer and the party-animal front-man—are two quintessential Irishmen. Indeed, their personalities are larger than life, as I learned after meeting them my first day at the NVFF: they were headed out of the Lincoln Theater as Teresa and I were going in. I was immediately engaged by their gallows humor, which epitomizes the Irish dedication to overcoming adversity.

Poster for Michael Yuchen Lei's 'A Taste of Sky', a great look at a food revolution in Bolivia. image: courtesy M.Y. Lei
Beaming with earthy charisma, they are magical musical partners with a chemistry as contagious as Robert Carlyle and Mark Ian Addy from “The Full Monty” (1997), another great, British-Isles indie that “This Is My Home” reminded me of. Together they explode off whatever stage they occupy—and occupy the NVFF they did, playing the Saturday night gala, all three "This Is My Home" shows and a couple of impromptu gigs in between.

Although Irish films generally tend towards sad, violent and disruptive, “This is My Home” is as funny as any film you will ever see—an uplifting Irish-American movie about discovering that the American Dream still exists. Indeed, Dave Rooney got his green card on the tour's final day!

The project started when Browne got Rooney to approach Nickoley, who had done some award-winning shorts and one episode of the TV comedy 'Becoming Famous" (2011). Convincing him to cover their hopefully-record-breaking tour, they started on Mothers' Day, May 11, 2018, at Mandalay Bay, and went to their final gig in New York City, 35 days later. At the American Film Market, they teamed up with Jeff Dowd, the original “Dude,” who did distribution for the Cohen Brothers, and will hopefully pick up “This is My Home”.

“In addition to incorporating performances by The Black Donnellys,” concludes Nickoley, the film was designed to “capture the essence of immigration—given all the uncertainty going on in our country right now.”

“We wanted to talk to Americans in every single state and get the real pulse on where the country is right now—to see if the American dream is still alive. And, if so, what it’s like from an immigrant’s perspective.”

My take-away? The dream is alive and cooking and sounds fantastic, especially from a pair of Irish-Americans with a gift of gab and a knack for songs that can connect with so many audiences.

Author Jay Randy Gordon meets his heroes, as he pulled into his first festival show, The Black Donnellys' Daves, Browne (left) and Rooney. photo: Taylor Nickoley
So, this coming St. Patrick’s Day (2020), pound some green beers, take a shot o’ Jameson Irish whiskey and look for the release of the Irish yet very-American documentary “This Is My Home” at a theater near you.

To find out more, follow them on Facebook or Twitter.

Others great NVFF films to watch for include: “It All Begins With A Song: The Story of the Nashville Songwriter”, “Code & Response”, “Gay Chorus Deep South” and “The Land of High Mountains”. As usual, the NVFF programming was on target and the events were spot-on, but my big discovery was The Black Donnellys.

Jay Randy Gordon is The MARINsider and the author of 'BusiBUZZ', who can be reached .

Posted on Nov 25, 2019 - 05:59 PM
Will Borat Lead the Protest Against Facebook Fascism?
by Doniphan Blair

Sasha Baron Cohen, in a 'mankini,' shows off his ripped six-pack for all his fawning female fans—joke, JOKE!—in 'Borat' (2006), his big-grossing, in both meanings of the word, world-wide hit. photo: Courtesy S. B. Cohen
COMEDIANS ARE TAKING OVER INTER-
national politics—and not just by default, as in the US.

Unfortunately, their funny has been bombing for a while. Comedian Jimmy Morales was elected president of Guatemala in 2016, but few people are still laughing, according to my Guatemalan friends.

Comedian Giuseppe Piero Grillo was blocked from running for office, due to an involuntary manslaughter conviction from a car accident that killed three of his friends—hardly a laughing matter—but he headed Italy’s dominant Five Star Movement Party from 2009 to 2017.

Meanwhile, the best-trained of them all is Volodymyr Zelensky. As it happens, the Ukrainian comedian, actor and filmmaker is not only a trained lawyer, but his production company created “Servant of the People”. In that TV show, which ran from 2015 to 2019, he played for laughs the Ukrainian president, a post he tragically came to occupy in April, 2019, considering the ongoing war with Russia as well as his involvement in the American impeachment scandal.

And now, the obnoxious, always-in-character comedian known for Ali G, Borat, Bruno and, most recently, Israeli army colonel Erran Morad is shifting from silly to dead serious in an attempt to save us—across the globe but especially in the Bay Area—from standing around, drinking cappuccinos and arguing which electric car is better for the environment while Rome, or more precisely, the Reichstag, burns.

“Hate crimes are surging, as are murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities,” Sasha Baron Cohen said in a recent speech to the Anti-Defamation League in New York City (11/21/19, see it in full here). “Conspiracy theories once confined to the fringe are going mainstream.”

It’s a strange day when the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College quotes a comedian as Arendt’s freshest, most insightful new spokesperson. Nevertheless, Cohen amplified on her brilliant analysis of propaganda by eviscerating social media, notably Facebook, for failing to monitor hate speech and misinformation—essentially for becoming the new media for the new Goebbels.

“It’s as if the Age of Reason—the era of evidential argument—is ending,” Cohen explained, in his mellifluous baritone, with only two or three joking asides, undoubtedly exercising the greatest restraint of his career.

“[N]ow knowledge is delegitimized and scientific consensus is dismissed. Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march.”

“In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility,” Hitler noted, in the garbled syntax that makes his “Mien Kampf” almost unreadable, “because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie.”

“I’m just a comedian and an actor, not a scholar,” Cohen openly admitted. In point of fact, however, Cohen’s use of highly-realistic fabrication in his movies and his Cambridge University thesis on civil rights, written in part using the Anti-Defamation League’s archives, does make him uniquely qualified to tear through our current culture's tissue of lies.

Cohen addresses the Anti-Defamation League's 'Never Again/Never Is Now' conference in New York, on Nov 21st, 2019. photo: Jennifer Liseo/ADL
Interestingly, a lot of my “hippest” friends didn’t get “Borat”, the 2006 film that brought Cohen international recognition, awards and box office success, through a deep spoof on a Kazakhstani journalist’s journey through America.

“Anti-Semitic,” “Sexist,” “Stupid” and “Not funny” were among the remarks I heard, but when I finally saw the film, with my mother, a Holocaust survivor, we were both soon in stitches.

I was on the edge of my seat from the opening credits, which were such a perfect parody of Soviet cinema, I knew I was in the hands of master craftsperson.

Then as the first scenes unspooled—Cohen’s Borat with a driving instructor, Borat with a massage therapist, whom he tries to hump—I was caught in the twilight zone between scripted and documentary. Since I was unfamiliar with "The Ali G Show” and hadn’t read about how Cohen and his crew were experts at setting up dramatic situations and then improvising the living shit out of them, I was confused.

My 81-year-old mother was even more at a loss, especially since she was unable to understand all the cutting remarks and contemporary jokes. But when Borat spent the night with the elderly Jewish couple, she got all the anti-Semitic references as well as that Cohen was joking, and laughed until she cried.

“But one thing is pretty clear to me,” Cohen continued at the ADL, in all seriousness. “All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.”

The greatest propaganda machine in history—right down the peninsula in Menlo Park, where so many nice people, even some friends of mine, work?

It should be noted that Facebook workers protested the company’s acceptance of unfiltered political advertising as “a threat to what FB stands for,” in their late-October open letter (see it here) to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who claims he is simply an outspoken advocate of free speech.

Unfortunately, its unlikely anything will change at Facebook until there are protest marches of at least fifty thousand people at least two or three times.

“Think about it,” Cohen went on. “Facebook, YouTube and Google, Twitter and others” all headquartered in and around San Francisco, “they reach billions of people. The algorithms these platforms depend on deliberately amplify the type of content that keeps users engaged—stories that appeal to our baser instincts and that trigger outrage and fear.”

“It’s why YouTube recommended videos by the conspiracist Alex Jones billions of times!” My god, is Facebook going to get schooled by Borat?

For those unfamiliar, Jones popularized the “Sandy Hook” conspiracy, which claims the December 14th, 2012, massacre, which killed twenty children and six adults in the Connecticut town of that name, was actually a fictional film run as news by media moguls—by whom Jones means of course “The Jews.”

Jones is also an outspoken advocate of the “No Men on the Moon” and “US Government Did 9/11” conspiracies, which did as much for the Trump presidency—by making fake news real—as did the 78,000 Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania voters who handed Trump the electoral college.

“It’s why fake news outperforms real news,” according to Cohen, the actual reality-faker, albeit in pursuit of comic effect not ending civilization. “[S]tudies show that lies spread faster than truth. And it’s no surprise that the greatest propaganda machine in history has spread the oldest conspiracy theory in history—the lie that Jews are somehow dangerous. As one headline put it, ‘Just Think What Goebbels Could Have Done with Facebook.’”

Did I just hear super-Jew Cohen correctly? Did he just call self-hating-Jew Zuckerberg a proponent of the "Jews Run the World" conspiracy?

No, not exactly, but Cohen implied it. Indeed, the "Jews Did It" conspiracy is the big daddy of them all and obligatory for little conspiracies to work, which is why the "9/11" conspiracy was immediately amended to include the "No Jews Went to Work on 9/11" conspiracy (for more on this see cineSOURCE's expose, "Soros, Jewish Bankers and Interest Explained").

Of course, becoming "the greatest propaganda machine in history" was a predictable by-product of social media’s “disruption” of regular media. Indeed, America has lost an estimated 30,000 journalists in the last two decades, which almost destroyed the “real news” industry. Nevertheless, Google and Facebook, which are worth 852 and 630 billion respectively and control 60% of all digital advertising in the US, have made no effort to replace that all-important fact checking service with a modest facsimile of their own.

Which is why “when, thanks to social media, conspiracies take hold, it’s easier for hate groups to recruit, easier for foreign intelligence agencies to interfere in our elections, and easier for a country like Myanmar to commit genocide against the Rohingya.”

Whoa, Borat baby! Unless I miss my guess, that was an accusation of aiding and abetting mass murder.

Here’s another piece of PhD-comedy advice: If America’s greatest comics don’t soon switch to self-effacement, which is essential for all true, heart-felt humor (see Borat's anti-Semitism), they're going to create an immense sympathy for, and thereby lead to the re-election of, Trump.

It takes a visionary comic to understand the tragic complexity of the human identity, which is why Cohen is dead on and quite qualified to lead the charge.

“[I]f you pay them, Facebook will run any ‘political’ ad you want, even if it’s a lie,” Cohen patiently explained, in his new roll as propaganda analyst-in-chief.

“[T]hey’ll even help you micro-target those lies to their users for maximum effect. Under this twisted logic, if Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Hitler to post 30-second ads on his ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem.’”

Holy shit!

In other words, we in the Bay Area are sitting around, smoking legalized weed and jerking each other off—intellectually, by nodding affirmatively at each others’ politically-correct virtue signaling (c’mon, we’re not actually jerking each other off. Indeed, even our most famous comedians have to jerk themselves off, while forcing others to watch, for which they get banned from the airwaves by the likes of Facebook to make even more time for Jones’s conspiracies)—while twenty miles down the road is the headquarters for the Third Reich of cyberspace!

“[I]f we prioritize truth over lies, tolerance over prejudice, empathy over indifference and experts over ignoramuses,” concludes the now totally-serious, world-famous comedian, “then maybe, just maybe, we can stop the greatest propaganda machine in history, we can save democracy, we can still have a place for free speech and free expression, and, most importantly, my jokes will still work.”

To which I can only respond: Borat for President, or at least to lead the first "End the Lies" march on Facebook (contact me if you think cineSOURCE should attempt to organize this).

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Nov 25, 2019 - 02:45 PM
Reclaiming the Ethnographic Film
by Jennifer Crystal Chien

A film screening at Re-Take Oakland, with guest speaker Robin Lung (2nd from left), in June, 2019. photo: Robyn Bykofsky

IN LAK'ECH ALA K'IN IS A TRADITIONAL
Mayan greeting, which means, “I am you, and you are me.” Recognizing that “you” and “I” are fundamentally the same is an antithesis to the Western anthropological approach of creating a distinction between the civilized “I” and the savage “you,” also commonly known as “the Other.”

Coincidentally, the invention of photography in the 1840s and its subsequent popularization coincided with the rise of this othering. From the 1870s to the 1930s, ethnological exhibitions featuring displays of live black and indigenous human beings were held from the British Museum to the Bronx Zoo and elsewhere across the West.

Photography and, later, film played critical roles in the transmission of these dehumanizing concepts of the lives of the “you” versus “I” from the white perspective.

The legacy of this othering in documenting and observing the lives of the Other continues to reverberate in the modern documentary industry. In the last two years, at industry gatherings such as the Getting Real Conference, hosted by International Documentary Association, a critical inquiry under scrutiny was: Who is making documentary media is as important as the content of the film itself.

Given this, we are asked to question what it means to not only transform representations of people in documentary media but also its means of production, in order to undo historic patterns of dehumanization.

A Human Zoo Photo: businessman Maurice Maitre with a group of Selk’nam people from Chile, the Universal Exhibition in Paris, 1889. photo: Rare Historical Photos
In June 2018, a grassroots, community-based organization in Oakland, which I co-founded, Re-Present Media, took a small step towards addressing this issue. We created a mentoring program designed to impact two factors within the documentary industry, to increase the numbers of established filmmakers of color and to value the perspectives of stories focused on personal storytelling.

We decided to focus on personal storytelling because we wanted to expand the range of portrayals, perspectives and lived experiences shown in documentary films outside of the often-proscribed tropes of “social issue” films, which are often defined from the perspective of the othering legacy.

What would happen if we began to define our own stories, in our own neighborhoods, of people like ourselves, from the perspective of “In Lak’ech Ala K’in”?

The mentoring program, Re-Take Oakland, is currently supporting twelve filmmakers of color who have all made one or more films but have not gained national prominence. Over the span of two years, they will make and distribute short films focused on Oakland personal stories.

Thus far, the filmmakers—A.K. Sandhu, Corinne Manabat Cueva, Jay Gash, Jennifer Huang, Jenn Lee Smith, Jeremy Redford, Jessica Jones, Kirthi Nath, Lucy Saephan, Nat Ruiz Tofano, Pallavi Somusetty and teo octavia—are engaged in pre-production on a wide range of stories, from the spiritual work of a transgender Buddhist spiritual leader to the adventures of a women’s motorcycle club.

Jennifer Crystal Chien, founder and director of Re-Take Oakland. photo: J. C. Chien
We have the support of six filmmaker mentors and three advisors, including Rita Baghdadi, Nausheen Dadabhoy, Kenneth Eng, Selina Lewis-Davidson, Dawn Valadez, Chihiro Wimbush, Donald Young, Soumyaa Kapil Behrens and Anamik Saha, some of whom are Sundance- and Emmy-award-winning producers, directors and distributors.

While it is early in the production cycle, I anticipate that given their encouragement and support and the spirit of the Mayan greeting, “In Lak’ech Ala K’in,” these films will help us to see ourselves in others in ways that are both new to documentary media yet deeply familiar to ourselves as human beings.

Jennifer Crystal Chien is an independent documentary filmmaker, producer and co-founder of Re-Present Media, who can be reached

Posted on Nov 24, 2019 - 08:18 PM
‘Rollbacks’ Dramatizes the Assault On Earth
by Doniphan Blair

A shot of the Paradise Fire, which shocked California in 2018, from the new film 'Rollbacks'. photo: unknown
AS CALIFORNIA IS BEING RAVISHED BY
yet another year of out-of-control fires, how well we communicate the issues confronting us has become a question of life or death.

While all news organizations are doing general surveys, what is needed are dramatic pieces that punch all the buttons: facts, feeling, intense imagery and heroic humans, essentially a compelling update of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006).

“Rollbacks: Assault Against Life On Earth” does exactly that. Recently released by Old Dog Documentaries on a pro bono basis, it features a taut and frightening but ultimately hopeful thirty minutes, which can be viewed here.

“Our greatest challenge today is shifting from the incremental efforts—which are no longer enough—to a massive mobilization,” I was told by John Ankele, who created “Rollbacks” with his Old Dog Documentaries partner, Anne Macksoud, also on our conference call. They were inspired by Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist, he said.

“The tipping point is fast approaching,” Ankele added. “Our scope and speed are now mission critical.”

“Rollbacks”, as the title suggests, focuses on the Trump administration’s efforts to reverse Obama-era policies, from the Paris Agreement, which was signed by 195 nations and proffered the possibility of timely action, to coal and car regulations. Indeed, rollback is one campaign promise Trump has not failed to deliver.

“Rollbacks” reveals through scenes of drought, wildfires, hurricanes and floods how successful Trump and his minions, inside government and world-wide, have been. Not only are they denying scientific projections as “fake news,” they’re dismantling agencies, promoting fossil fuels and undermining any attempt to protect the planet.

Immigrants at the Texas border, forced out of their livelihoods in Central America by the climate crisis. photo: John Carlos Frey
Macksoud and Ankele teamed up almost 35 years ago based on their shared interest in films that inspire both dialogue and action. Based in New York City and Vermont, they have done 22 major projects, often dealing with spirituality, ecology and alternative sexual identities, most shown on PBS.

Before transitioning to film/video, Macksoud spent 17 years as a nun and educator, teaching literature, photography and music. Once she discovered the “eye-opening” power of documentaries, she started showing them to her students and helping them make their own, often about civil rights or the Vietnam War.

Also with a background in theology, Ankele started in radio and TV in the ‘60s with a similar focus on social consciousness. Moving to southern Africa, he worked for various independence struggles and helped provide media training to political activists. He went on to make radio and TV documentaries about Africa’s “prophet healers,” underground churches in China and women’s empowerment in India, among other subjects.

Their recent film, “The Wisdom to Survive”, covers thinkers and activists in the science, economics and spirituality space, who address how we can evolve fast enough to take effective action against climate disruption.

One of their favorites among their earlier films is “Grow Old Along with Me”, from 1993. A one-hour piece, it was originally a PBS special which looked at the power of poetry and aging with dignity, featuring James Earl Jones, Hume Cronyn and a number of other notables.

Another powerful piece in their portfolio is “The Global Banquet: The Politics of Food” (2000), which critiques how the corporate control of food threatens small farmers in the US and is fueling starvation world-wide, despite a food glut.

“We are two ‘old dogs’ who are saddened by the suffering we see all around us and are moved to take action,” Macksoud said in our discussion. “Since 1985, we have produced and directed documentary films about the complexities of our collective challenges.”

Bonobo chimp, one of the innumerable species whose habitat are threatened by the climate crisis. photo: unknown
“Well, the climate crisis is the ultimate example of that.”

“Our political leaders cannot solve the problems of our time alone,” she continued. “They are too beholden to privileged, powerful constituencies, who want to preserve the status quo. Change must start with ordinary people. We have the will, the resourcefulness AND the compassion to come up with new solutions!”

“From the fires of California to the flooding in Venice, we are seeing the impact of Trump’s denial and policy terminations," Ankele said. "It is causing other countries to slacken their commitments to renewables and restricting fossil fuel use.”

“If the world’s richest country and greatest polluter sees no need to save its coastal cities, forests or croplands, why should they?”

The film can be streamed from the Old Dog homepage, by clicking on the Rollbacks image. They also provide an excellent “Take Action” plan, which details how to get involved in local groups, national organizations and global movements, and a downloadable “Discussion Guide” for getting the most out of a viewings.

Even as we see our situation getting more desperate, “Rollbacks” shows signs of hope: the growing global environmental movement, populated by people standing up against big business and the politicians who support them.

“Rollbacks” is the first piece Old Dog has done on a donation basis. They decided to make it available free to better reach their intended audience of students, parents, academics, nonprofit organizations, faith leaders and climate activists but also non-activists—anyone who wants a clear, concise view of the forces we’re up against.

The animated burning earth by Leo Murray makes 'Rollbacks' easier to understand by younger viewers. illustration: L. Murray
“We offer our films as catalysts for this kind of solution—as tools for education and activism,” Ankele said. “We invite you to watch and share them.”

“We are also happy to answer questions and provide additional resource materials,” Macksoud added. “We would also love to hear suggestions of ways of using our films that will support other people’s efforts to protect this world we share.”

Macksoud and Ankele can be reached at .

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Nov 18, 2019 - 05:29 PM
Feras Fayyad: Fighting the Syrian Regime Thru Film
by Doniphan Blair

Syrian filmmaker Feras Fayyad and colleague grab a sunset shot of bombed-out Damascus. photo: courtesy F. Fayyad

IF YOU HAPPENED TO MEET FERAS
Fayyad in the street, you might take him for a hipster bartender or a rave DJ—given his extreme bangs, single earring and designer pants—until he opens his mouth. As the words pour out, tumbling one on top of the other, phrasing and rephrasing what he's desperately trying to articulate in Arabic-inflected syntax, you soon grock Fayyad is an intellectual, an artist—a filmmaker, no less—with a lot on his mind.

“We never try to learn from this history,” he told me, sitting in a windowless room at San Francisco’s deluxe Fairmont Hotel, where his publicist was hosting interviews. “We never try to save each other. We just keep taking a position that we are scared of each other. Maybe we will kill off us on this earth. Very scary, all that I’m stuck thinking about.”

A lot is resting on Fayyad’s barely-30-year-old shoulders.

Not only has he been sneaking in and out of Syria for seven years to shoot docs like “Last Men in Aleppo”, which took Sundance’s World Doc Prize and an Oscar nomination in 2017, and concerns good Samaritans helping war victims in his home town, Fayyad is telling those stories as tragedies, not dispatches from the front, with all the artistry that requires.

Hence, he's become one of the most visible Syrians in the world, not an easy position after being imprisoned and tortured by the very repressive regime, replete with "electricity on my ears and my sexual parts" and removal of his fingernails.

“Because [‘Last Men in Aleppo’] captures the sickening results of Russian airstrikes, Russia is waging a disinformation campaign to discredit the film, its subjects and me,” Fayyad told The Guardian (2/28/2018).

A similar antagonism will surely apply after Putin’s trolls catch “The Cave” (95 min), which opened November 1st in a wide-art-film release from National Geographic (see their page for the film here).

“'When I was showing [‘Last Men’] at the Palm Springs Film Festival,’” Fayyad elaborated in The Guardian article, “'a woman accused me of spying for the FBI or CIA and faking news. Another time, I was in Dallas and a Russian man started talking to me. When he realized I was the director of the film, he became hostile and said ‘I can’t believe your story… anyone could have staged this.’”

Admittedly, the whole situation is unbelievable: from people for whom everything is faked to the fact that such a bloody civil war could rage in Syria for seven years with so little media coverage or humanitarian intervention.

Fayyad's 'The Cave' centers on pediatrician and hospital head Dr. Amani, a quiet but unstoppable force at the center of a war zone. photo: courtesy F. Fayyad

Fayyad's new film "The Cave" would be hard to fake, given it covers a medical center in the basement of a bombed-out hospital in a neighborhood which, as far as the eye can see, is rubble.

Nevertheless, Fayyad doesn’t indulge narcissistic nihilism, as is the fad from radical Islamists to conspiracy theorists, or abject pessimism, which would be understandable for someone who has spent almost a quarter of their life watching their country self-destruct.

He simply takes every opportunity to ask, implore, demand, we step up and become more human. In fact, he retains his optimism. Hence his decision to go for art, to raise his reportage with aesthetics, to bet on civilization.

At the start of “The Cave” we are greeted by a long shot of a serene cityscape, with a castle on a mountain in the distance. Then the explosions start, far away, like fireworks, shooting dust plumes high in the air. Then the camera drops, plummeting down, down, down, past pockmarked walls of bombed-out buildings, into a dark basement—the eponymous cave—where a team of doctors, nurses and helpers, led by Dr. Amani Ballour, are frantically trying to patch back together the victims of those bombs.

Instead of anesthesia—of which there’s none—the head physician, Dr. Alaa, pulls out his phone and carefully selects a ballet performance from YouTube. “Listen to the music,” he repeats softly, as he stitches the young man bleeding on an improvised operating table. “Listen to the music.”

Beauty and death in a perpetual pas de deux: beauty and death, death and beauty.

After watching “The Cave” twice, once on computer (ridiculous), then on the big screen (a revelation), and talking to Fayyad (see interview below), I realized: Fayyad is fighting not only for the right of Syrians to live, but to live like artists, mystics and dreamers—specifically, to dream of peace in a deeply-disturbed land.

He’s also hoping that we might finally find the guts to tackle “the problem from hell,” as Samantha Powers, Obama’s Ambassador to the UN, and author of a book by the same name about genocide, called it.

The Middle East is cursed—or so many people assume. In point of fact, it is simply the site of our oldest civilizations. And those societies have had that much longer to decay, divide and develop the all-to-common feature of humans under pressure: a deep, abiding loathing of their opponents.

The preeminent place of Middle Eastern accursedness is currently Syria, given its domination by the Assads. From 1971 to 2000, the dictator was the father Hafez (an insult to the great Sufi poet of the same name) and now it is the son Bashar (a perfect onamonapia for his personality). Moreover, it is a Middle Eastern world war, with fighters from an endless array of opposing factions: Islamic State, al-Nusra Front, Syrian Liberation Front, Free Syrian Army, Russians, Shi’a Alawis, Iranian Shi’a, Sunnis and the Kurds.

Filmmaker Fayyad in front of a poster for 'The Cave' featuring Dr. Amani, at a screening in San Francisco. photo: D. Blair

As it happens, Fayyad’s mother is Kurdish and his non-religious father is a descendant of a Jewish family (although they converted to Islam in the 16th century, such roots are rarely forgotten). Hence, his family is a multi-ethnic mix, as was his crew, as are the people appearing in “The Cave”.

371,222 to 570,000 people of all ethnicities have been killed in the Syrian Civil War, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Another seven and half million have been displaced, and over five million turned into refugees. That also cost thousands of lives, when their leaky rubber boats and sham life preservers failed in the middle of the Mediterranean, a tragedy Fayyad references in his film's last, also achingly beautiful, shot.

The politics are so complicated, Fayyad doesn’t even bother putting up a summary or statistic title card.

“This film is not about setting up the war, it is about telling the story of the women,” he explained at the screening I attended. “The people living in the cave—the cave is not just a hospital but a place for refugees.”

Fayyad's film fully captures that—the cooking, the sleeping in the halls, the kids crying, the doctors crying—as well as the relentless action.

Indeed, his crew shot like crazy (over 200 hours), sometimes while running backward in front of the gurneys, going down, down, down into the labyrinth beneath what was once a hospital. Sometimes Fayyad directed remotely, when he couldn’t get into Syria. One cinematographer, Ammar Sulaiman, lost his legs in an explosion—a horrific price to pay for a film but hopefully this one was worth it. .

“Dr. Amani’s parents were teachers," Fayyad explained about his protagonist at the screening. "They say from her childhood she didn’t want to be pushed around by any one. As a [film] subject she is very, very extraordinary. She criticizes the religion, she criticizes the society. She wonders why people would bring children [to life] in the middle of a war.”

“But she was open-minded,” he concluded, “and very easy to film, and very respected in the society. She is the only female doctor, the only woman, to head a hospital in the history of Syria.”

While Fayyad doesn't want his film to focus on politics, he expressed some to me in our interview—which was on October 8th, two days after Trump destroyed America's alliance with the Syrian Kurds, the most progressive and powerful fighters in the Middle East.

For one, he blames President Obama for not enforcing his gas attack redline (although Obama did get the Russians to supervise the disposal of tons of chemical weapon materiel). He also feels that members of multicultural, progressive societies deserve to have weapons to stand up to fascist dictators, and that war crime committers—of ALL sides—must face justice, preferably in The Hague.

Dr. Amani making her rounds through the long, reinforced halls, that radiate like mine shafts out from the hospital's basement. photo: courtesy F. Fayyad

Nevertheless, the central theme resonating through "The Cave" is that Syria can be saved only by love, by healing, by kindness.

As it happens, Damascus is home to 200 different orders of Sufis, Islam’s alternative peace-and-poetry-professing faith. Indeed, the castle in the opening shot, which belongs to Assad, is not far from the mausoleum for Sufism’s greatest philosopher, Muhyidden ibn Arabi. In fact, Dr. Amani is a Sufi.

Although she appears to eschew religion, especially when aggressive fundamentalist men question her capacity to provide them medical services, her dedication to doctoring reflects a fairly standard Sufi selflessness. Trained as a pediatrician, her handling of injured and freaked-out children is a wonder.

Ironically, Syria's dynastic dictator, Bashar Assad, is also a doctor. Although trained in England as an optometrist, he's obviously unable to see what his bombing and gassing is doing to his own neighbors in Damascus' east side. Indeed, al-Ghouta, where the film’s hospital is located, was once a multi-ethnic neighborhood where no one ever asked: “What sect are you?”

Even though the Syrian Civil War is winding down to a disastrous defeat of civil society and Arab ecumenicalism, now with Trump turning tail, Turkey’s invasion and ISIS’ rebirth, it could start all over again.

We can only imagine the hope among the young, internet-informed demonstrators in 2011, after the Arab Spring started in Tunisia and crossed to Egypt. They naively thought they could inspire Dr. Assad to start the long-awaited reform of Syria, one of the most artistic, intellectual and multi-ethnic, as well as Sufi, societies in the Middle East.

But as the protestors increasingly insisted he step down, Assad reverted to his family’s traditional iron fist and fears for their minority sect, the Alawis. They started shooting unarmed civilians on March, 15, 2011.

Deciding that fire could only be fought with fire, the demonstrators took up arms. By 2012, however, radical Islamists were flooding in from Iraq. This explains the reluctance of the West to intervene: weapons shipments could be seized by Sunni Islamists and, if they took over, there was a good chance they would slaughter Syria’s Shi’a AND Sufi minorities—the problem from hell.

But some intervention was also essential, given Russia was sending in bombers and soldiers since September, 2015, and Iran and Hezbollah were supplying battalions of fighters. Obama led an international coalition to start airstrikes, special forces and artillery, mostly against the Islamic State but sometimes also Assad’s forces.

Meanwhile, all sides have been accused of human rights violations. Although a number of peace conferences been been attempted, staring in Geneva in 2017, they were fiascos.

No wonder Fayyad felt obliged to go back to Syria, even while getting his degree at the International School for Film and Television in Paris. Soon he was shooting what became the short, “Between the Fighter in Syria” (2016), and then the feature “Last Men in Aleppo (2017), while gathering footage for “The Cave” (2019).

“Now more than ever, it’s important for artists to stand together,” Fayyad noted in The Guardian piece, “to support one another, to fight for the truth.”

Considering Fayyad also had to secure funding, assisted by his hard-working Danish producers, Segrid Dyekjer and Kristine Barfod, and pro bono work from studios in England and San Francisco (Skywalker Ranch)—even as he was denied visas to those two nations (he wasn’t even allowed to attend the 2018 Oscars)—“The Cave” is a astounding achievement.

Naturally, I leapt at the opportunity to chat with him.

Fayyad engages his difficult subject. photo: D. Blair

cineSOURCE: Are there any subjects you are reluctant to talk about, like religion?

Feras Fayyad: No, I am open to talk about everything.

I don’t know where to start, perhaps with the beauty of the film. You put in a lot of beauty shots, including at the very end, the submerged boat. Were there bodies in there?

No, there were no bodies, just life vests. They were using fake life vests, selling to refugees, and the refugees just drowned in the Mediterranean. This is happening on their way to Europe, and this is very shocking.

I am one of those refugees, who used the same way. I knew that under this water there was a plane and a ship from the First and Second World Wars, and there were a lot people of Syrians who were drown from [the new] war. It stuck in my mind all the way and when I manage to make this film, I try to go back to the place I [was in] when I was a refugee, and film it.

I want to make the people understand what it is like to be a refugee, moving in a boat on the top of the sea and, under you, there is a different war.

We never try to learn from this history. We never learn. We never try to save each other. We just keep taking a position that we are scared of each other. Maybe we will kill off us on this earth. Very scary, all that I’m stuck thinking about. Why are we doing [this] to each other?

What, as a human, should we do when there are a group of humans that need real help, that are running from a barbaric war—a barbaric war that used chemical attacks, bombs from Russia, bombs from the Syrian regime?

[There are] people who fight to stay in their home, [who] use everything they can to stay and survive. But they couldn’t, because it is more than any human can handle.

It is barbaric. There is nothing more barbaric then chemical attacks. There is one night in 2013, 1,500 were killed using the nerve gas by the Syrian regime. It is those people who need the real help.

Understand their drama. They are being controlled for 50 years from two people: Assad father and Assad son. Both of them, they use the most barbaric weapon and killed enough Syrians. They didn’t have any moral responsibility.

This is what I tried to [film] when I managed to come back and have papers to move around. As a refugee [in Europe], you have to stay for six months, sometimes more, to get your asylum accepted. I suffered. I was staying in a refugee camp for around six months. [Then] my asylum was accepted [and] I started to come back again, doing this story and shooting [the movie].

So you crossed from Turkey to Greece near that sunken boat?

Exactly. Yes, I was one of around a million refugees who crossed this Mediterranean to Europe. I did the same thing.

Did you get refugee status in Denmark?

With a little prompting, Fayyad can digress into an in-depth unburdening of his soul. photo: D. Blair

I live in Denmark, but I get refugee status in Germany.

Did you go to film school or something?

Yes, I studied at film school in France [International Film and Television School, Paris].

Why did you feel to put so many beauty shots in there? The first shot is a beautiful shot. Then there is a fantastic shot of the tunnels that transforms into a woman’s eye. And, of course, in the middle of [an operation,] the doctors and patients watch a ballet.

I think because I study film and I am coming from a cinema background, real cinema that you put on the big screen. I came from this background, to tell stories through the cinema. The cinema for me is something about basic need. I use it in my life and this is the language that I [use to] communicate with the people.

I was a shy boy and I had a problem with the talking. Then I decided to be a cinema person. I decide this is another way I can get out of myself and express myself. Also, I was born in a dictatorship country where, if you speak out, that will cost you your life.

[Given] the situation that surrounded me in Syria, I want to use all the injustice, and try to put it in a clear picture, bring it to the eyes of the people. And use all what I can to bring it to the people, respecting for the audience, respecting for my career and for how I look at the cinema.

I grew up looking at the cinema, watching Bergman, watching for movies of Mizoguchi, of Ozu, of Kurasawa.

Right in Damascus, in theaters?

In Aleppo, on videotape.

And you had friends who were cine aficionados?

My father actually, my father was bringing tapes.

What did your father do?

My father was political researcher, he did research in Syria, writing journalism. He worked writing and analyzing the political situation.

It seemed me to the beauty was to help accentuate the tragedy.

Yes, the beauty in the film was to express the situation. For example, you see the candle [a closeup of a candle shaking in the wind to the sound of jet fighters]. We shoot it in 70mm camera. I try to recall my cinephile feeling [for] the role of cinema.

In Syria, I couldn’t use the big camera, because the freedom of expression is controlled by the authorities. When I managed to shoot with a good camera, I tried to show the contrast. When you have freedom of expression, you can use whatever you want to tell the story. When you don't have access then you have to use the small tools to tell the story as [best] you can.

Fayyad executes a Q&A at a press screening in San Francisco's Embarcadero Theater. photo: D. Blair

So it is like a contrast: How I can tell the people the meaning of freedom of expression. We have a privilege to tell the story. If you don’t have this privilege, then you [have to do] as you can.

Was the candle was shot in Denmark?

No, the candle was shot in England.

You had to sneak back into Syria to make the movie?

Yes, I have to sneak in. In England, I also couldn’t travel to shoot this shot. I couldn’t get a visa. There are a lot of things [like that] in this movie. I know my situation and I am trying to accept [it] and work through my situation as a refugee. [I] did’t have the privilege of movement as another filmmaker.

But I try to go around this situation. For example, when I shoot this [candle] footage, they send me the footage in Denmark, where I was staying and I send them my feed back and they shoot again. The same thing with the sound. We worked the sound here in San Francisco with Skywalker [Ranch, George Lucas’s studio], the same thing. I couldn’t travel to the US, because they wouldn't give the visa at the time. So they send me sound and I send them my feedback.

I can say making this movie is kind of work of artists without borders. Everyone knows how hard it is for me, and everyone wants to help. Everyone in the movie [brought] what they can and managed to face the border situation, and this is what I appreciate from the team.

For example, the American sound designer or the British company who helped me on the opening shot. They didn’t do the job as they wanted because of the immigration situation affected them.

I managed to make this movie within the circumstances. Maybe this movie won’t be done in the way I want, if I have the [freedom of] movement. Maybe I am telling [story] to face the sadness and the disappointment I faced. But maybe [without these difficulties], it is not the same involvement from the [film] people.

You snuck into Syria in 2017?

The footage is from 2013 [on]. I shoot after I have been jailed by the Syrian regime, for one year. I get out of the prison. I survived because torture system in Syria is very difficult, it is criminal.

You were tortured?

I was tortured. I was about to lose my life. They take my nails, under the torture; they use the electricity on my ears and my sexual parts, to get information. So when I get out, I filmed some footage. When I went out of Syria, I go back again and film some other footage, and I brought a cinematographer.

I love in my films to work with a team from Syria because of the Syrian regime—what he did to silence the whole [community] artists and journalists in Syria. I try to [show] the power and [get] the [great] job from them. He try to silence them.

The many children under Assad's hail of death did an admirable job holding up. photo: D. Blair

Bashar?

Bashar Ashad, yes. Then what I try to do in my movie is I try to involve everyone from Syria working with me. You can’t imagine that if you end without any job, that someone take from you your relation to your job. With this, I manage to involve a Syrian cinematographer and give him the space to work with me. Also other people, sound people.

How much there is control of the people. There is only one picture—of the dictator—and all the talented people [of Syria] are hidden behind this picture.

It is like an angry dictator who wants to be central to all the conversation and the people have to sneak, and there will be a conversation about it, and [the people] get angry and upset, and [the regime] try to kill them.

This is what the film bring, not just the story—a strong subject—but also the story [behind the film]. It managed to relieve these people [of being excluded from society]. And it managed to say, ‘If there is cooperation, if we are in solidarity, we can speak out and not allow the Syrian regime to silence us.’

You shot a lot of the film yourself?

Yes.

And when you came in the last time, you came with a crew of how many?

Three.

How did you find the main doctor?

Doctor Amani is one of the few doctors who stay behind in Syrian because of the size of the destruction and the bombing. I find her in 2013 [when] she was one of the few doctors saving life from the chemical attack in 2013. When there was 1500 people killed by the nerve gas in one night.

I managed to communicate with her and shoot this footage. It wasn’t the right time for telling the story, but I kept in communication with her. Later, I managed to know that she is the first woman in the history of Syria to lead a hospital.

This is surprising. It is very sad. In a way, it tells you how much inequality there is in the system. This is where we were surprising with them [with] a doctor like Amani.

The dictator Bashar Ashad is himself is a doctor and eye doctor. So just imagine a doctor killing the people. This is the contrast of our work, so that is like trying to tell the invisible stories. That is why you see in the opening shot: his castle in the distance, on the top of the mountain. And the bombs falling down where Dr Amani is staying underground.

So he is in his castle and she is underground. He is killing the people, she is saving the people. This is the power of the first shot to show where we are.

Displaying an unrelenting dedication to the arts, Fayyad shows the 17th century painting by Georges de La Tour which inspired his candle scene in 'The Cave'. photo: D. Blair

The candle shot recalls the idea of using the specific feeling of being survivor but also being sensitive, and to try to continue what you can do. In the same way, it also is to recall all the cinema and the art that used candles. There is George de La Tour, the painter, he used the candle to show you the naked picture of the crimes. He is a French painter and did a beautiful painting.

I try to recall the artistic level. You see the candle, the man here in picture and women showing him a picture a tough reality. [He shows the painting ‘Job Mocked by his Wife’, by Georges de La Tour, 1650, on his phone.]

Was Dr. Amani reluctant to be in the movie.

Actually we shoot in many areas a lot of footage. I wasn’t sure exactly if I keep shooting with Amani, and I wasn’t sure if Amani would survive, because of the bombs. I was shooting with a few doctors until I decide to move forward with certain footage. I feel like this is an extraordinary subject. It shows the balance with a lot of doctors I film.

Amani had one condition if you want to film… She wasn’t taking seriously the shooting because she known the media was not taking care of what was going on—not a lot of coverage of the Syrian situation. She wasn’t feeling this would make anything for her, [and] it wasn’t helping we were shooting a long time.

She was telling me, ‘Why do you need all this footage? What you think you are going to do?’ She didn’t think it was going to help.

During the shooting she told me, ‘Don't make your camera or crew to stop me from doing what I do. Be careful about this, and if some victims say you don’t film you have to stop.’ She wasn’t sure this story will be told.

She was skeptical?

Yes, she was going with the story, ‘OK, someone is filming, so what?’

I noticed only one woman with a burka—only one the whole movie.

Yes, this was like a small village on the side of the city.

Part of Damascus? Was everyone in movie all Sunni?

I think… I never ask them about their religion.

It’s pretty much a civil war between Sunni and Shi’a, no?

I don’t see this way, because there are a lot of Sunnis in the army of Assad and killing people.

But there is no one in the movie you know to be a Shia?

For example the writer of the movie, she is a Shi’a, she is Ismaili.

Ismaili? And how about Sufis?

Fayyad makes one of many salient points. photo: D. Blair

Amani, I think is a Sufi. I think so. They didn’t talk about religion it much but she criticized the religion control around her. She criticized it so much in the [raw] footage. We picked the out the best. I find a balance.

I don't want to make a movie about just criticize the religion. I wanted to make a movie about trying to find a balance, to understand who this women is, understand how she can face this society, and also the size of the crime she has to go through. But I think Amani is a Sufi.

In Syria we never talk so much about religion, directly, like are ou Sunni, are you Alawis? Are you Shi’a, Ismaili?

The writer is a very good friend with Amani, very, very good and they know each other a long time, she is Ismaili, one of the cinematographer is Alawis [the Assad’s sect]. So it is like, not in this way. There is the big picture the Syrian regime tried to show it is a conflict of small group and big group, which is not true.

For me I am from Kurdish mother my father is Syrian Arabic but he was not a religious person.

He is agnostic or atheist?

He doesn’t take a position of fighting religious. He is a person of non-religious who says ‘OK, this religion it’s fine but I don’t believe in this religion to lead my life.’

Is his family Shi’a or Sunni?

The oldest root of my family is Jewish and they turned to Islam in the time of the Ottoman occupation (16th century). My grandfather and my father is non religion people my mom is Kurdish she coming from that region.

When you were growing up, I just a little curious about the Sufis because I read there were 200 Sufi groups in Damascus, ten twelve years.

Yeah, there are lot of Sufis in Syria, there are not just 200 people in Damascus.

There were 200 groups, tariqas.

Ah. Amani is from this group of people in Damascus, more than likely. Mostly the people of Damascus is Sufi. Damascus stand on the Sufism normally if you read the history of Damascus and the relationship of the Sufism and Damascus of how the society there.

The extreme religion or extreme Islam is coming when the father of Osama bin Laden start to put his finger inside Syriania so much. In the beginning of when Assad turned to be the head of the army, in that time. That time start a little bit the extreme religion was coming to Syrian it is growing up more with the control of the petrol. Syrian was under economic siege for a long time and they go to work in the petrols and they back with a different traditions.

Salafism?

Exactly, they come back with the Salafist, the Wahhabi mentality to the countries and they start the Salafist and Wahhabis to an economist level. So if you are rich, you are Salafist and you are Wahhabis. They have tradition plus a look for them. So they have a kind of personal life and they managed push it in an economic situations in Syrian and unfortunately they managed to have a lot of followers.

While our conversation was limited to 30 minutes, Fayyad had only begun to broach a number of topics of interest. photo: D. Blair

Unfortunately we are coming to the end of my time and I have a lot of questions. Do you think Obama made a big mistake not enforcing the rule against the chemical warfare and not putting in more soldiers?

I think he did made a big mistake. What Obama did damage for Syria is very big, because he never responded what’s happening.

You think America should have actually started a third war in Middle East?

Yes, I think not a third war. I think Obama power at the time of that, if there is one response about the chemical attack of 2013, they would not will use again. Because after 2013 the Syrian regime feel they the ability to use the chemical attack again and he use it again and again he use 112 times around Syria, unfortunately.

If they have a response in the time and a serious response, not like a show off response and serious response about this it is going to be different.

Umm, I just read in al-Jazeera that the government and the opposition are going to sit down is this true? Is this hopeful?

As a Syrian, I wish it is helpful. I wish it is going to bring the Syrian war to the end. But I can’t tell you. I am person who normally I tries to think about helpful—hopeful situations but we are a little bit disappointed about the many negotiation that are happening through the history of the war in Syria and never one any of the is conversation bringing any peace for the Syria.

I try actually. I feel myself in kind of mission, in my movie. I want make people educated more to bring a kind of peace. I don’t want to make this movie to make people educate about the war in Syria. I want them to have a reaction and support the peaceful movement and peaceful communication in Syria. If this is movement is happening and serious one.

There is Geneva one, two and three, Sochi one, two, there are many of this negotiation. People in Syria are tired of this negotiation because it never come to be serious one to change situation on the ground.

What I wish I wish to be a serious one and but what I wish from them my movie is to bring a support from the public in the US, and from around the world to support and to bring a serious negotiation about stopping the war in Syria and start to think about we can build a Syria about we can put the war criminals under justice, coming for all the sides—not just about the Syrian regime—from all the side everyone who did the crime in Syria should go to the court to the justice

The Hague?

Yes. All of them in La Hague. From the all sides, this is very important. If we just say from the Syria regime side, there is no communication what is happening. The Syria regime is the main criminal in this war, with the Russians, but also there are other criminals around Syria who need to go to La Hague. Then the communication will happen in serious way for solving this war.

This a problem from hell. Would there be one two tricks or your sort of secret suggestion that would help solve this? Let’s say you were talking to some negotiators.

Hmmm.

And you were going to say. What do you think will solve this? Is it a political solution, a solution of more love?

[Sigh] You know all the civil war start with Syria the idea of the description of the civil war. Now are those its going to go and first rejection in the conversation. In the future, if there is a serious negotiation, it should come with accepting the people from all the different side. That means there is a people from Syria that will be rejected because the regime doesn’t like them. Or any other side because they don’t like them.

Including people who worked in regime, if they don’t have blood on their hands.

Of course, if they’re are not involved in crime, and not supporting crime, and not motivating people to crimes. This is very important because a lot of Syrian regime people were motivating people to crimes as well there is opposition, also [those] that motivate [through] the hate speech and the killing of the people, from the all sides.

Yes, there is a lot of good people but they didn’t have a voice, like Sabouni, who was like the minister of communication in Syria [Emad Abdul-Ghani Sabouni is the current Minister of Communications and Technology]. He sat in his house and was not allowed to communicate. [There] are a lot of good people.

I hear you saying what is needed is that strong multiculturalism—

Yes, of course.

And forgiveness?

What Fayyad would in fact look like, if you met him in the street, in a photo signed by the filmmaker. photo: courtesy F. Fayyad

Yes, there is no Syria without forgiveness. There is no Syria without justice. Justice is just a step for forgiveness. If the criminal didn’t come to the court and say, ‘I did the crimes and I need to apologize to you,’ and if the victim didn't say, ‘I accept,’ there is no process.

But you need a people [who] are involved, who have a serious and honest way of putting the people into communication. Put the responsibility about the criminal who did crimes and he admits about his crimes. If he didn’t, there is not communication.

Do you think it is possible to move forward with out trails, with just truth and reconciliation commissions?

I think there is a way to move forward with out trail but the trail should be about the movement in the near future.

For example, for myself, I have been tortured and I am now suing the person who tortured me.

Your suing?

Yes, in Germany.

That is incredible. I think my time is up, and I think you have told me an incredible amount. What is your next project?

About lawyers who are trying to collect evidence about war crimes, trying to move the process in new Syria.

That is fantastic, man, I congratulate you for your good work. If my little magazine can be of any assistance—

It’s important. I believe in journalism work, that we fight so much in Syria for the freedom of information. The work is very important. Anyone who can be educated from this interview, who can understand how we are trying to change something for the peace in Syria and the movie is made for that.

I love the way you combine great filmmaking with—like that one drone shot, how did you get a drone up in such a terrible situation?

It is a long story. We have a drone shots of about one hour there is so much bombing

You only put in ten seconds. The beauty shots accentuate the tragedy, I think, it is a good decision people may criticize. They may want it to be hand held.

It is beautiful work for me. It means so much. I try hard to make the story we risk so much there, the crew risk their lives.

Where you ever almost killed?

Me two times, and my cinematographer [Ammar Sulaiman, a Damascus native] lost his legs.

Terrible. My solidarity goes out to you. I wish you luck.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .

Posted on Nov 07, 2019 - 01:58 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner: Nov 2019
by Karl F. Cohen

Happy Birthday Felix the Cat

All of us at cineSOURCE would like to wish a happy 100th birthday to the beloved, crazy feline

Felix The Cat

Animation’s first star, Felix came into being on November 9, 1919, a creation of Otto Messmer and Pat Sullivan for Paramount Studios.

New Pixar Cartoon

Is the world ready for a cartoon character missing his upper body? See the first trailer here for “Onward”, Pixar’s next feature and decide for yourself. Disney and Pixar’s “Onward” will open March 6, 2020.

Disney's new 'Onward', stars a headless character—pretty crazy! image: courtesy Disney

“Onward” introduces two teenage elf brothers, Ian and Barley, voiced by Tom Holland and Chris Pratt, who embark on an extraordinary quest to discover if there is still a little magic left in the world. The cast also includes Julia Louis-Dreyfus as their mom, and Octavia Spencer as the voice of the Manticore. The film’s director is Dan Scanlon and the producer is Kori Rae, the team behind “Monsters University.”

The story has the brothers seeking an ancient map from the Manticore, a creature who is part lion, part bat and part scorpion. The Manticore was once a fearless warrior whose tavern served as a way station for travelers embarking on epic quests.

Bollywood at the Castro

The Castro will present the animated Indian film ‘Bombay Rose” on Saturday, November 9th at 8:00 pm. Indian animation has it hard, despite India's massive film industry. Indeed, Gitanjali Rao is one of the few women and one of a handful of artistic animators making a go of it.

Scene from Bombay Rose' premiering at the Castro, November 9. image: courtesy Gitanjali Rao

Her 2006 "Printed Rainbow" took three awards at Cannes, including best short. She returned to Cannes with her short "True Love Story" in 2014, which she then expanded into "Bombay Rose". All of her films have a spectacular look, given they are painted frame by frame.

“In this gorgeous and evocative hand-painted animated feature, a single red rose weaves together three fantastical tales of unsung heroes and impossible loves," the promotion for this screening reads. "In the sensual animation, there is an ethereal brightness to the chaotic Mumbai streetscapes where Bollywood cinema is both satirized and romanticized. Fresh from rave reviews at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals, this captivating jewel will entrance you and should not be missed.”

Martin Scorsese frets about the future of film. image: courtesy French TV

Scorcese Slams Theme Park Films

Martin Scorsese says cinemas are being "invaded by theme park films.” Expressing this opinion in two speeches in London, it appears he considers Marvel films essentially theme park attractions.

“It's not cinema, it’s something else,” Scorsese stated. “We shouldn’t be invaded by it."

"Theaters have become amusement parks. That is fine and good for those who enjoy that type of film but don’t invade everything else," he continued. "By the way, knowing what goes into them, I admire what they do. It’s not my kind of thing, it simply is not. It’s creating another kind of audience that thinks cinema is that."

Media Giants Kowtowing to China

Vietnam recently pulled the new film “Abominable” from cinemas over a territorial dispute with China. A scene in the DreamWorks film shows a map that includes the disputed islands in the South China Sea as belonging to China. Since part of the feature was created by DreamWorks’ Shanghai Pearl Studio, the showing of that map was probably deliberate as the Chinese government has a financial interest in the studio.

ESPN has also upset many countries recently when it showed a map, in their coverage of the controversy between the NBA and China, with both the disputed islands and the nation of Taiwan as belonging to China. Taiwan is an independent and democratically governed nation. It is not under the control of the Chinese Communist Party.

When I was a kid my mother told me that a map in her high school classroom left the world’s largest nation, the USSR, unnamed. At the time the US government refused to recognize the USSR as a sovereign nation. Was that a more tactful solution?

Disney Opposes Me Too

Although Disney the man did show up, hire and defend women to a large extent for the day, the corporation tried to stop female workers from joining together to create a class action pay bias lawsuit. Disney claims its corporation is simply too big to sue in a class action suit, which would make it impossible to resolve it in court.

I am guessing they claim that not all of their departments have the same standards in the way they discriminate against their female workforce. It is demanding that women suing them for allegedly violating California Fair Pay Act do so on an individual basis, which means more money for lawyers.

The Hollywood Reporter, however, says, “The California Fair Pay Act dates back to 1949, but it has been largely toothless thanks to loopholes that allowed companies to justify a gender wage gap.”

Exploiting women remains a hot topic. Women in Animation, an industry organization, and other groups have been quite vocal about the disparity of pay between men and women in the animation industry.

Scene from 'What Makes Neon Glow' short by local Lippy. image: courtesy Lippy

How Does Neon Work

“What Makes Neon Glow” is a virtual reality short by the single-named Lippy, who lives in Mill Valley. “The making of this piece is a gripping tale of irrational expectations,” he said, “massive black holes of failure, and finally, bright beacons of success!” He cobbled together a team, “which was a difficult process, by the way,” as the team had no previous VR experience, and created his successful Ted Talk cartoon.

You can see it of your desktop or cell phone, but for optimized viewing view on a high tech headset like an Oculus Go. If you use the fancy equipment you can turn your head to the left or right and explore, see the work space here.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Nov 06, 2019 - 04:42 PM
The Price of Film Popcorn
by Karl F. Cohen

A popcorn popper not unlike what was invented by Charles Cretors in 1885. photo: unknown

IN 2012, JUSTIN THOMPSON OF LIVONIA,
Michigan realized that his local AMC theatre had marked up the price of popcorn 800% so he sued the chain. The lawsuit was dismissed, but it raised a valid question. Why are movie theatre concessions so overpriced when you compare their prices to what your local grocery store charges for the same items.

Popcorn hasn't been part of the cinema experience from the beginning. Although it was popular at fairs, where it was popped by street vendors, movies started silent and noisy eating was frowned upon. With the arrival of the talkies in 1927, however, the popcorn vendors set up outside the theater until the owners realized it was a lucrative business they could monopolize.

While prices vary from theatre to theatre, the movie concessions stands are what keeps theatre tickets for first run films at a somewhat reasonable price. If popcorn and soft drinks were cheaper admission prices would go up, and that would cut attendance numbers. You may already feel ticket prices are too high so you see fewer films in theaters and see more recent releases at home.

The author of a recent article on the subject of concession stand prices interviewed an old friend of mine on this subject. Allen Michaan, who runs the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland and has operated over 20 other theaters at one time or another in the last four decades (see cineSOURCE article), says the concession stand is the lifeblood of his business as he rarely makes much money off ticket sales.

Michaan told me that in order to show first-run product he averages paying distributors 61% of the ticket income, so he has to charge more for concessions. He also has a staff to pay, plus taxes, advertising costs, utility bills, insurance, etc.

Running theaters today is a risky business. The last single screen movie theatre in NYC closed this year. You have to have a multiscreen complex to compensate for first run shows that are not profitable. As I pointed out in a recent article I wrote, “What Is Going On? A Study about Greed and Flops in the Film Industry”, most features released today do not break even from ticket sales.

Sure, Disney is running an impressive, profitable business, but the majority of studios are not. That is why you end up paying absurd prices at concession stands.

So enjoy that popcorn, knowing that it helps support the variety of shows you can see at your local theater.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .
Posted on Oct 18, 2019 - 12:18 AM
China Bans American Cartoon
by Karl F. Cohen

Randy, 'South Park' father and weed entrepreneur getting hauled away by Chinese customs police for bringing in a suitcase of product. image: courtesy Trey Parker/Matt Stone

A FEW MONTHS AGO, CHINESE CENSORS
banned the cuddly character Winnie the Pooh, created by A. A. Milne in 1921, after some internet users compared it to Chinese president-for-life Xi Jinping. The censors were concerned people might adopt Winnie the Pooh as a nickname for Xi.

Now Beijing decided they can no longer tolerate “South Park”, Comedy Central's long-running cartoon about four fourth graders living in Colorado. Although it has periodically poked fun at China, after “Band in China”, the second episode of its 23rd season and 299th show, which aired in early October, the Chinese response was not only to remove the episode but scrub the internet of all references to the show!

Now, if you search for “South Park” in China, you get a notice that reads, “According to the relevant law and regulation, this section is temporarily not open.”

Why is there an international controversy over an animated cartoon comedy show? The episode calls attention to issues that will probably embarrass China, including their prejudicial treatment of Muslims.

The show, created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, is also critical of Hollywood’s practice of shaping films to please Chinese censors, since there are enormous profits to be made having a hit feature shown in that country. Indeed, Disney’s “Avengers: Endgame” (2019) grossed about $614 million in China.

Trey Parker (left) and Matt Stone creators of 'South Park' press conferencing about the controversy generated by their new episodes. photo: courtesy Trey Parker/Matt Stone

In “Band in China”, Randy, the father of Stan, one of the four boys, gets busted at Chinese customs trying to bring in a suitcase full of his own weed.

As it happens, “South Park” is wildly irreverent about almost everything, including Colorado’s legalization of marijuana in 2014. Indeed, Randy, who used to be a fairly typical, if cartoon character, father, has evolved into a spaced-out stoner entrepreneur, who has dragged his unhappy family out to live in a big house on a weed farm. Called Tegridy Farms, as in “integrity,” an ad for Randy's weed business is now the show’s opening credits, albeit with their standard, crazed-country opening-credits music still playing in the background.

Space-case Randy is so eager to cash in on the booming Chinese market, he didn’t even stop to think weed might not be legal there. Hence, he’s busted and interred in a work camp similar to those Beijing setup in Xinjiang Province to house an estimated one million Chinese Muslims, supposedly for political indoctrination and reeducation. At the work camp, Randy runs into another prisoner, none other than Winnie the Pooh.

At another point in the episode Stan, Kenny, Jimmy and Butters (Stan and Kenny being principals, the other two being secondary characters) form a metal band.When it suddenly becomes popular, it attracts the attention of a manager interested in making a film about them. Unfortunately, the script keeps changing so that the film can be distributed in China without censorship problems.

Mickey Mouse even does a cameo to remind everybody to be nice to Chinese authorities.

After Parker and Stone, the show’s creators, heard about the controversy that their new episode was generating, they issued a mock apology, which also happened to be a plug for their next episode, their 300th.

Mr. Mouse, the CEO of Disney, wants to know who screwed up the deal with China (hint: he's standing behind Mickey). image: courtesy Trey Parker/Matt Stone

It reads, “Like the NBA, we welcome Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts. We too love money more than freedom and democracy. Xi doesn’t look just like Winnie the Pooh at all. Tune into our 300th episode this Wednesday. Long live the Great Communist Party of China! May this autumn’s sorghum harvest be bountiful. We good now China?”

At one point in “Band in China”, Randy says, “You gotta lower your ideals of freedom if you wanna suck on the warm teat of China.”

Those guys are masters at promoting their show, so it came as no surprise that show #300 was well planned. They must have expected China to react in some negative way to show #299, so it features Randy saying, after he gets back together with his weed-farm partner who actually has integrity, “Fuck the Chinese government!”

In this episode Randy, who had done time for pot in the previous episode, tells his former business partner Towelie, how he now feels about doing business in China. First he mumbles something that can’t be clearly understood. Then to make sure there is no misunderstanding, he yells, “Fuck the Chinese government.”

That episode is titled “SHOT!!!” although that refers to a completely different plot line, this time poking fun at the anti-vaxers, mostly middle class white people obesessed with possible side-effects from vaccinations.

Parker and Stone thrive on controversy. But on a basic level their “Band in China” and “SHOT!!!” episodes have succeed in making more of the world aware of China’s deplorable history of human rights violations, along with Hollywood’s pandering to Chinese censorship. Disney and DreamWorks have tailored several projects so they will not include anything that Chinese censors consider questionable.

Butters rocks a very hard metal guitar in 'South Park''s suddenly rather radical episode 'Band in China'. image: courtesy Trey Parker/Matt Stone

The media coverage that this controversy has gotten—The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, etc.—is impressive. It proves that film, television, even a “lowly” cartoon can go beyond being just popular entertainment. The topics “South Park” explores raise moral and ethical questions about the values and beliefs of different societies.

China’s reaction “South Park” suggest to me that artistic freedom and free speech are precious values in our democracy, values which are so powerful even cartoon characters can strike the fear into the Chinese government—values we must work to maintain, even at the expense of sometimes offending people.

cineSOURCE magazine welcomes your comments on this and other topics.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .

Posted on Oct 12, 2019 - 10:57 PM
With 1000 Channels, Why Not Show Quest?
by Doniphan Blair

The incredible young actor, Gregory Kasyan, stars as Santiago Rizzo's character in his powerful autobiographical film 'Quest'. photo: courtesy The Truth Always Rises

I LOVED 'QUEST: THE TRUTH ALWAYS
Rises', when I viewed it at the Napa Valley Film Festival, in November, 2017. About an abused boy, who takes to the streets and graffiti art until his middle school football coach challenges him to open his heart, I was not surprised when it swept Napa, taking home the audience AND juried first prize as well as best actor for its star Greg Kasyan.

Mick LaSalle, the wellknown Bay Area critic, compared “Quest”, co-written/directed by Berkeley-born Santiago Rizzo, to Truffaut's "400 Blows" (1959). LaSalle also wrote a glowing feature on it for the magazine put out by Stanford University, Rizzo’s alma mater, as did I for cineSOURCE (see article).

I was surprised, however, when I contacted Rizzo a year and a half later, and found out that “Quest”, which co-stars Lakeith Stanfield (star of indie hit “Sorry to Bother You”, 2018, and the acclaimed TV show “Atlanta“, 2016-current), and features Lou Diamond Phillips (“La Bamba”, 1987) and Betsy Brandt (“Breaking Bad”, 2008-13), had not been picked up by a distributor.

According to Rizzo, when we sat down in late July, over massive bowls of Vietnamese pho on Telegraph Avenue, "Quest" falls between the cracks of being too heartfelt and intense but not big and Hollywood enough—even though it has consistently won accolades from critics and awards from festivals.

More importantly perhaps, “Quest” has been hailed by folks from all walks of life, as Rizzo learned screening it across the country and the globe to a wide variety of groups. While a representative of the Vatican complained of the cursing (Rizzo got that screening because his Argentine grandfather knew the pope from their home country), at the dozens of correctional facilities Rizzo has visited, “Quest” routinely earns tears and standing ovations, from officers and inmates alike.

So powerful is the film to such viewers, it helped bring radical change to an Arkansas juvenile detention center.

In fact, that institution’s profound shift would have provided a Hollywood-esque climax to a "showing-of"—instead of a "making-of"—documentary about “Quest”, although the making-of doc would have been equally fascinating and dramatic (see cineSOURCE article).

Another champion of Rizzo's 'Quest' is Jonathan Pickering, the director of an Arkansas juvenile hall. photo: courtesy J. Pickering

“A year ago, we showed the movie ‘Quest’,” wrote Jonathan Pickering, the current administrator of the White River Regional Juvenile Detention Center (WRRJDC), in Batesville, Arkansas, in an email to Rizzo (5/14/19). “[A]nd it has completely transformed the lives of everyone who saw it. So much so, I want to share its powerful message of hope, redemption, and compassion with you.”

A private institution, which got sold back to the county in 2012, WRRJDC “entered a scary, dark patch when a new administrator was hired who decided to make the facility her own island of control,” continued Pickering. “She re-wrote policies, fired most of the veteran staff… cut off communication with other facilities and [used] excessive force.”

After that administrator was ousted by a whistle blower, who reported her to a county judge, Pickering, who had 14 years of experience in the adult incarceration system, joined WRRJDC as an officer and then as its administrator determined to change it.

“We phased out punitive practices. We revised training around better ways of communicating with the kids.” But, “[m]any staff quit, believing that the new approach was not hard enough on the kids. For those who stayed, they cooperated but the tension between them and [my] new administration was high.”

Gradually, Pickering began achieving break-throughs, notably the peaceful resolution of a violent standoff with a 17-year-old, who had been institutionalized since he was seven.

In addition, “I started to publicly speak out and educate the public and those in positions of power, but it wasn’t enough. Then one day, I noticed that a film director/producer was coming to Bentonville, Arkansas, to present his movie at a film festival.”

After pulling some strings, “[w]e finally arranged a time for the kids and staff to see [‘Quest’], which entailed [Santiago Rizzo] changing his flight back to California, renting a car, and driving several hours from Bentonville. He did not ask for any money.”

“After we all watched it together, Santiago revealed that film was about him. Then he did something that many of the kids and staff were not expecting. He confronted the kids with the truth and power of love and empathy. Kids who are in our care for offenses such as murder and other violent crimes opened up to him.”

“They wondered how their lives might be different if they had someone like Coach Tim [Moellering, of Berkeley’s Willard Middle School] to just show them love and compassion, to take a chance on them. [And] Santi did not let the conversation end there.”

“Santi reached out to show them it’s not too late. Their lives can still change through the power of love, dedication, empathy, and forgiveness. He pointed out several parts in ‘Quest’ that illustrate his points.”

Rizzo presenting his film 'Quest' at the White River Juvenile Center in Arkansas, where it helped foster fantastic institutional change. photo: courtesy The Truth Always Rises

“The impact was phenomenal. Many of the kids cried and opened up… They spoke about how they could help each other, help themselves, and most importantly help their communities when they return home.”

“One of the kids had refused to participate, going back to his room instead of talking about the movie. After Santi finished speaking with the group, he attempted to reach out to him. I could not allow Santi to speak with him face-to-face because the young man was visibly upset,” and had a history of violence with the attendants.

“Despite explaining that, Santi still tried, refusing to give up on him. He went to his cell and told him to scream into a pillow until he cried. The young man stared him down with hate. I watched Santi, fearlessly feed him back love, gently shifting his energy and judgment. A week later, [Santi] reached out again to see how he was doing.”

“I could not believe the impact that the film ‘Quest’ had on the youth. They were opening up and speaking about their trauma, often for the first time… The youth who walked away, after witnessing what was happening around him, even started opening up. He started to participate more in school… It was a spectacular change.”

“The change did not end there—I’ve noticed that the staff had changed, too. They started volunteering their free time to speak to the kids and do projects with them, painting murals and helping kids build gardens… It was beautiful.”

“Since that date in May, this facility has undergone so many changes… We are leaving the prison of juvenile detention behind. The locks are coming off the doors as we make the facility into a home-away-from-home for those kids who need help.”

"Juvenile detention does not work. All children deserve to experience, despite their current situation, people who show them love and compassion… They need to experience that—when we challenge our fears, and tell the truth, with love and empathy—we can have a wonderful life. It is not about success and money but about living.”

Rizzo with some of the staff at the San Francisco city jail. photo: courtesy The Truth Always Rises

““The film ‘Quest’ reignited a flame in the youth and ignited a flame in the staff that have made real change possible at this facility. As of May 8, 2019 [when Santi showed ‘Quest’], White River Regional Center is now in the news not for its dark past but for what we’re pioneering.”

“On May 10, 2019, we received a phone call from a judge, who is part of the Judge's Panel for Juvenile Justice Reform. [She] informed me that they are in full support of our transition… of what we are becoming.”

“I know this would not have been possible without ‘Quest’. It would not have been possible without Santi opening up, personally reaching out to the kids, and staying in touch about their progress after [the screening]. His film reached everyone here in a profound and unexpected way.”

In our times of extremely injured young people, particularly men, when they are acting out much more than historically, including inflicting the tragic plague of mass shootings, perhaps it is time for distributors to listen to social workers like Jonathan Pickering or film critics like Claudia Puig, the president of the LA Film Critic Association, who said:

“Exactly the kind of timely and important film that needs to be seen all over the country.”

Alas, even though we now have thousands of media channels and dozens of production conglomerates, like Netflix, Amazon, Youtube and Apple, throwing billions of dollars at untested content, there remains a fear of powerful and empowering art, as if opening the Pandora's Box of heartfelt, empathic and visionary media might rupture their business model.

"I think I scare everyone because I’m too honest," is the reaction of Rizzo, who spent two decades working his way up as a stock analyst, never attended film school and only recently immersed himself in the life of the artist.

But this is pretty understandable given the extremely personal nature of "Quest" and how he had to put everything on the line to make it. Indeed, he financed the almost-million-dollar film by liquidating not only his bank and retirement accounts but the Berkeley house he bought and lived in with Coach Tim Moellering.

In fact, he swore to Moellering, on his death bed from cancer, he would never sell their house to make their movie (Moellering worked on early script drafts). But that was before Rizzo became an artist and learned that artists are obliged to bet the house, literally, in the attempt to manifest their vision.

"We are honoring those with money above the artist," Rizzo has found, in his many meetings with and rejections by our mass media's gatekeepers. "And those with money get to determine what is commercial art. Those who are rejecting ['Quest'] are from safest backgrounds. Changing their mind requires feelings they don’t want, sacrifices they don’t want to have to make."

As a new comer to the artist's life and the art-commerce interface, Rizzo is both unaccustomed to criticism and untrained in leaving one's moral ascendency on the screen to become more down-to-earth at meetings.

'Quest' director Rizzo enjoys a bowl of pho at his favorite Vietnamese restaurant, next door to the Jack in the Box he frequented as street kid recycling bottles. photo: D. Blair

On the other hand, his untutored attitude has served him well at places like the White River Regional Juvenile Detention Center. Moreover, it has provided him the satisfaction of not only creating a very powerful and extremely personal film, his first time out, as well as affecting so many troubled youth, very similar to him as a kid, but inventing a new form of feature filmmaking.

While documentary filmmakers routinely make modest careers out hand-delivering their films to special-interest groups, it is rare among features, which are expected to stand or fall on the screen, solely on the basis of drama, aesthetics and insight.

In addition to the White River Regional Juvenile Detention Center and three other facilities in Arkansas, Rizzo has shown "Quest" in correctional institutions from California (San Francisco, San Leandro, Santa Cruz and Santa Rita) to New York City, Chicago and Cleveland, as well as overseas in Germany.

In those places, the simple fact that the film is autobiographical—which Rizzo reveals to his audiences right after the lights come on—and that he co-wrote, directed and produced it, despite not having attended film school, instantly proves his proposition that forgiveness, self-expression and immense achievement are possible if you give it your all.

In this way, it would be no exaggeration to say that Rizzo has invented a new branch of the cinematic art form: narrative film as a visionary, highly personal form of group therapy.

Now if only a distributor would take a chance and expand that group to include the rest of us.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Sep 09, 2019 - 01:29 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corners: Sept 2019
by Karl F. Cohen

Scene from Canadian Regina Pessoa's autobiographical new film 'Uncle Thomas: Accounting for the Days. image: courtesy R. Pessoa

New Canadian Animation

Dear Cartoon Corner Readers:

You are invited to see some great, new animation from the National Film Board of Canada and to meet two of their star animators, Regina Pessoa and Theodore Ushev, at a free event on Tuesday, October 1st, 7pm at San Francisco State's Coppola Theatre.

Pessoa’s new film, “Uncle Thomas: Accounting for the Days” (Portugal/Canada/France), won awards from the Special Jury and for Best Music (by Normand Roger) when it premiered this June at France’s famous Annecy International Animation Festival.

Combining Pessoa’s patented engraving style with digital 2D animation and stop-motion, the 13-minute film is “a testament to [Pessoa's] love for an eccentric relative, who was an artistic inspiration and played a key role in her becoming a filmmaker,” according to its promo material, which also noted it was “a moving tribute to a poet of the everyday.”

Theodore Ushev sneak previews his “The Physics of Sorrow” (Bulgaria/Canada), which will be released in September after premiering at the upcoming Toronto International. The director of the Oscar-nominated animated short “Blind Vaysha”, Ushev will also show a short doc about his use of ancient Egyptian encaustic painting to create his new film, and an older film, “Towher Bawher”. An award-winning, visually-exciting work, the latter has been called “a whirlwind tour of Russian constructivist art.”

Also in the show is Pessoa’s “Tragic Story with a Happy Ending”, said to be the most awarded Portuguese film ever. It features her drawings transferred to glossy paper, brushed with India ink, and scratched to look like an engraving. Also scheduled is “The Procession” (Canada, 2019) by Pascal Blanchet & Rodolphe Saint-Gelais. The graphic designer for last year’s Annecy poster, this is Blanchet's much anticipated first film.

Screenings will be followed by a Q&A with the directors and some technical presentations.

The provocative image that the 9th annual SF Green Film Fest is using as its promo. image: courtesy SF Green Fest

San Francsico Green Film Festival

The 9th Annual San Francisco Green Film Festival runs from September 24th to the 29th at the Castro, Roxie and other theaters and includes the following animated shorts:

“Airport” directed by Michaela Muller, appears on the "Swissmix Program" (9/26). At an airport, the flow of passengers is suddenly broken by irregularities, which the security forces try to identify, as tragedy lingers one step away (see trailer).

“In a Nutshell” by Fabio Fridley attempts to bring us “From meat to love, and indifference to apocalypse,” according to its blurb, while capturing “the world in a nutshell” (see trailer).

Sophie Wietlisbach brings us “Swiss Made” (also "Swissmix Program"), which makes us think again when we picture the glorious mountains and meadows of Switzerland, while “The Flood is Coming”, from Gabriel Böhmer, covers a forest hermit preparing for a flood, while exploring our anxiety about about nature and our place in it, (see trailer)

“Chiripajas” ("Nature Short's", The Exploratorium, 9/26) by Jaume Quilas and Olgie Poliektova is an ecological film about the big adventure of a small turtle trying to find his family in a polluted ocean (see trailer).

A moment from 'Airport' by Michaela Muller at the upcoming SF Green Film Fest. image: courtesy SF Green Film Fest

“God Has Already Gone Ahead” by Peter Böving is presented from an Egyptian goose’s perspective. While the water level in a pond falls, the inhabitants still have water up the kazoo, leading the goose to suspect nothing bad (see trailer).

“The Trash Task” by Alison Saunders, a middle school student, is an excellent hand-drawn stop-motion short about a family of bears doing their part to clean up our trash-littered shorelines. Saunders said she made it to inspire her fellow planetary citizens to finally do something. It will be shown with “The Woman Who Loves Giraffes” on September 28th (see trailer).

SF Indie Short Fest

The perennially popular San Francisco Indie Short Film Festival—which runs from September 13-15th at the New People Cinema, on 1746 Post St— is showing three animated works in its animated shorts program. They are “Into the Flame” by Sean McClintok, “Okami” by “Motomichi Nakamure” by Annie Maley, and “Tell Tale” by Fu Yang.

All Hail Jeff Hale

"The Unexpurgated, Magnificent, Spectacular Book of Hale" is a fascinating selection of images by the animation director and illustrator Jeffrey Hale. Jeff’s mind was brilliant whether he was creating work for “Sesame Street,” the National Film Board of Canada or the controversial Lenny Bruce film “Thank You Masked Man.” Jeff also co-founded of ASIFA-SF.

His daughter Margot has assembled a handsome selection of his drawings and paintings (about 150 in all) in a 124-page book in color and B/W, available from the book’s FaceBook Page.

Although the book costs $28.00 (including shipping in the US), cineSOURCE readers can get it for for $24.00 (including shipping) by going to this PayPal Account and mentioning you saw it in Cohen’s Cartoon Corner.

Pixar appears to be returning to its hippie roots in 'Soul', directed by the company's creative director Pete Docter. image: courtesy Pixar

Shorts and Trailers from Pixar

“Soul,” being produced by Dana Murray of the “Lou” short, and directed by Pete Docter, will be “a journey from the streets of New York City to the cosmic realms to discover the answers to life’s most important questions.” Other then that, the press release is rather coy about what to expect, although it does add, “Ever wonder where your passion, your dreams and your interests come from? What it is that makes you ... YOU?” Pretty spacey for a billion dollar company, although we have to bear in mind many were once hippies, "Soul" is set to open June 19, 2020.

A trailer for Pixar’s new feature, “Onward,” scheduled to be released on March 6, 2020, is here. Featuring the voices of Chris Pratt, Tom Holland, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Octavia Spencer, the film has been described as an urban fantasy, “set in an alternate world populated with elves, trolls, mermaids, centaurs, fauns, satyrs, gnomes, sprites, goblins and other mystical creatures such as unicorns and dragons."

"It is a world where fairy tales were once the reality, but are losing their sense of magic. The characters use machines such as mobile phones and cars instead of magic. Two teenage elf brothers, Ian and Barley Lightfoot, embark on a quest to discover if there is still magic in the world in order to spend one day with their father, who died when they were too young to remember him.”

Given "Onward" fantastical qualities, it appears as if Pete Docter, the current creative head of Pixar, is trying to break from the admittedly exceedingly profitable business model of making sequels. Evidently he is excited about making more challenging original features including another that may deal with human emotions, possibly in the tradition of his “Inside Out”.

While sequels to films like “Spider Man” are a lot of fun and they can make obscene amounts of money, it is wonderful that Docter has the freedom, at least for now, to branch out and create original content. I understand Pixar has two more unique features planned for 2022.

Paul Krassner (rt) was once the young hipster on the block, looking on as poet Ed Saunders (lft) and activist Abbie Hoffman debate it out, circa 1968. image: courtesy NY Times

Last But Not Least, Paul Krassner, In Memoriam

I got to know Paul (1932-2019) when he was living in the Bay Area and developing an act as a stand-up comic about 1978. He tried out material as part of the Sunday night shows I used to produce in North Beach. More a storyteller than a comic, Krassner would share odd tales of the counter-culture which would, often upon relfection, turn out to be absurd, bizarre and very funny.

Hard as it is to believe, Krassner contributed to Mad Magazine, was a member of Ken Kesey's acid evolutionaries, The Merry Pranksters, and a cofounder of the Yippies with Abbie Hoffman, with whom he became the ninth member of the so-called Chicago Seven (which officially became eight with the addition of Black Panther Bobby Seale).

Nevertheless, my favorite memory of him was not his many acerbic anecdotes about his colorful antics but when my subscription to his ground-breaking magazine The Realist, arrived in my mailbox in 1967.

I still crackup today when I see that issue’s centerfold, the “Disneyland Memorial Orgy”. Thanks to our progressive parody laws Paul dared to publish Wally Wood’s incredible satirical drawing and Walt’s lawyers didn’t even take a crack at trying to ruin him. To see the details of the centerfold click to enlarge the below image or enjoy a color version published by Paul a few years later on his fascinating website .

According to Wikipedia, The Realist was a pioneering magazine of social-political-religious criticism and satire, intended as a hybrid of a grown-up version of “Mad” and Lyle Stuart's anti-censorship monthly, The Independent, both of which Krassner contributed to, along with Playboy, the Huffington Post and many more. After starting it in 1958, and publishing out of his parents basement for many years, he continued The Realist to 2001, at which point reality overtook humor, he claimed.

Krassner published 'Disneyland Memorial Orgy', which he came up with and Wally Wood illustratied in 1967 (NOTE: Click to view full image). image: courtesy NY Times

“Trying to save the world is a banker’s mentality,” Krassner once told Mr. Fish, AKA Dwayne Booth, the versatile cartoonist behind Truthdig.com, “which is why I like to spend my time paying attention.” This comment shows Krassner's astute awareness that self-criticism and expanding your own mentality outweighs attacking the enemy.

Born in Brooklyn, he moved to the Bay Area in the late-'60s and by 1971 was a well-known radio personality and DJ at SF's KSFX (later KGO-FM). Krasser went on to do stand-up all over town as well as speaking engagements and collaborations with counter-culture figures like Wavy Gravy.

Ultimately passing in Desert Hot Springs, California, on July 21, 2019, at the age of 87, Paul Krassner will be sorely missed.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Sep 05, 2019 - 12:40 PM
Roy Cohn Doc Shows Trump as Devil’s Disciple
by Karl F. Cohen

Cutthroat lawyer Roy Cohn (rt) and developer Donald Trump, at a press conference concerning the civil rights suit against Trump, circa 1978. image: courtesy NY Times

FEW PEOPLE WILL DISAGREE THAT ROY
Cohn was an evil SOB. Esquire Magazine once called him “the toughest, meanest, vilest lawyer in America,” while The New Yorker identified him as “the original Donald Trump.”

He was the lawyer who helped execute the Rosenbergs in 1953 and was seen on national TV, the following year, advising Senator Joseph McCarthy as he browbeat witnesses in his search for alleged communists in the US Army. Later dubious accomplishments include defending some of the Mafia’s biggest godfathers and mentoring Donald Trump, as noted in the stellar new documentary “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” by Matt Tyrnauer.

Tyrnauer is a writer/director and award-winning journalist whose notable previous documentaries include "Valentino: The Last Emperor" (2008), short-listed for an Academy Award, "Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood" (2017), covering sex in tinsel town, and "Citizen Jane: Battle for the City" (2016), on Jane Jacobs's heroic defense of historic New York against urban developer Robert Moses.

“Where’s My Roy Cohn?”, which opens in October, does an admiral job of moving quickly through his life and exposing in full detail who he was, starting with his privileged childhood and the “values” instilled by his parents.

His father was a shyster lawyer who not only married his mother for her money but stipulated that one of her prominent relatives arrange for him to be appointed a judge.

Nevertheless, his mother was extremely domineering and Roy was very close to her. A Cohn cousin shares a story about how she, a proper upper class society woman, chose to not upset her guests one year at a Passover Seder dinner. When her maid failed to serve dinner, given she had suddenly keeled over dead, Mother Cohn had the corpse shoved under the kitchen table. No need to spoil a good party.

After Roy graduated from Columbia University’s Law School, he used his family connections to get hired as a prosecutor. One of his cases was the 1951 trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were accused of passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union.

Cohn’s direct examination of Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, produced the testimony needed to convict her, even though she was only a secondary player and probably could have gotten off. Roy’s “friends” recall how pleased he was when she was electrocuted in Sing Sing in 1953.

The aggressive unruly Cohn believed no publicity was bad publicity, especially when attempting to intimidate enemies. image: courtesy Daily Beast

The film omits that the defense asked Greenglass to modify his testimony to include more evidence against his sister, to insure a conviction. Although he did that, he withheld testifying that his own wife was also involved.

He said his sister Ethel was at a meeting where she took notes and later typed them up. Normally that isn’t enough to electrocute someone, but Cohn is said to have given his personal recommendation that she receive the death penalty.

Impressed with Roy’s work in the Rosenberg case, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover recommended him for a job with Senator Joseph McCarthy. Roy worked for the senator in several investigations, including the so-called “Lavender Scare.”

In 1953, Eisenhower banned homosexuals from being government employees, especially those working abroad for the State Department, where they might be entrapped into a blackmail situation and become security risks. The film goes on to expose the irony of this policy as Hoover was a crossdresser and Cohn a homosexual living in the closet but being a Judas, prosecuting men whose lifestyle was similar to his.

Roy went on to play a major role in the Army-McCarthy Hearings in 1954, after McCarthy accused the Army of being soft on communism. During 36 days of televised hearings, Roy, in his capacity of chief council, was constantly seen advising McCarthy, who was seated next to him. Although TV viewers could not hear their private discussions, they must have assumed the two men shared common beliefs and attitudes.

To complicate matters, one reason for the hearings was that McCarthy was outraged that one of his former aides, G. David Shine, didn’t receive preferential treatment when he was drafted into the Army. During the hearings, the Army accused Cohn, who also happened to be a close friend of Shine, of supporting the request for his special treatment, such as making him an officer.

As the hearings progressed the Army’s chief council, Joseph Welch, discredited McCarthy over submitting doctored photographs as evidence. The public was also surprised to see what an unpleasant and aggressive bully McCarthy was, especially after Welch responded to one of his cross-examinations with:

Cohn assisting the redbaiting Senator Joseph McCarthy (1954). image: courtesy NY Post

"Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness... Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”

That resulted in McCarthy’s public approval rating dropping. He was also censured by the Senate. As for Cohn, he was criticized for "unduly persistent or aggressive efforts" on behalf of Shine. He turned in his resignation and many Americans considered Cohn a disgrace; nonetheless, he managed to reinvent his career.

He eventually reappeared as a controversial celebrity who dressed fashionably, drove a Rolls Royce, hung out with the “right people” at New York’s coolest night clubs and restaurants, and tossed impressive parties where the guests included well-known celebrities, including the mayor of New York, Ed Koch, and avant-garde artist Andy Warhol.

As an attorney he created a reputation for being a cutthroat trial lawyer who went all out to win for his clients.

Although Cohn can be seen as a disgusting and easy-to-hate character from the past, given his influence on Donald Trump—the film's title is a quote from Trump—re-examining Cohn provides an important understanding of the techniques both used to manipulate society. That knowledge explains Trump’s unusual behavior and it may influence your vote in 2020

The two men met in a bar in 1973. At that time, Trump needed an aggressive lawyer because he was being sued by the US government for not renting apartments to blacks in a large complex he and his father owned in Coney Island. Donald wanted to fight the charges rather than take the advice of his lawyers, which was to admit guilt and settle the matter quickly.

Their meeting in the club was the beginning of a close friendship that would last until Cohn died in 1986.

Trump not only took Cohn’s advice and fought the case in court, he countersued for $100 million. Roy convinced Donald that any publicity was good publicity, even if it was negative, especially if your identity is one of an aggressive street fighter. Donald loved this advice and the publicity it created, even though a judge tossed out his countersuit.

Cohn and Trump enjoy some good times, undoubtedly meaning someone other than them got screwed. image: courtesy unknown

As for the original civil rights discrimination case, it was settled in 1975 with the Trumps agreeing to make a certain number of apartments available to minority renters. Donald was pleased that he didn’t have to admit guilt. Predictably, Trump was back in court in 1978 for not living up to the terms of the agreement.

One reason the film is important today is that it discusses some of Cohn’s tricks of the trade, skills he passed on to Trump. Cohn showed him how to exploit power and instill fear. He taught ways to intimidate and manipulate opponents. Trump learned the value of making threats to gain media attention and to bully with lots of bluster when reporters were present.

Although Cohn was known for being quick to threaten people weaker than himself with lawsuits, Trump became the ultimate bully. Trump now has enough bravado to threaten North Korea with nuclear bombs and to take on China with a trade war, all the while claiming he is close friends with the leaders of those countries.

Cohn is credited with teaching Donald several other nasty ways to go after perceived enemies. They include vindictive attacks, questioning a person’s loyalty or smearing them with nasty rumors. Cohn stressed that if they attack you, hit back even harder.

Cohn was adamant about never apologizing, admitting mistakes and the need to be convincing when citing unfounded facts or making accusations. Indeed, Cohn was a master at bluffing and inventing fake facts.

Trump, in turn, has become well-known for fake news and bluffing people in business deals, when he ran for president and now as our commander-in-chief. One propaganda trick that Trump learned directly from Roy, and which delights his supporters to no end, is to insult and attack verbally your opponents, starting with unflattering nicknames.

Trump called people on his TV show “pathetic and losers.” As a candidate he became more creative in his name-calling and as president he continues to expand his insulting language, key words and dog whistles.

The film goes on to reveal lots more about Cohn, his so-called friends and a few of his detractors. There are film clips and photographs of him with the rich and famous as well as infamous individuals.

Barbara Walters was a loyal friend ever since Roy got her father out of a legal jam. Ronald and Nancy Reagan were pals after he helped Reagan win the state of New York in his 1980 run for president.

Filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer, who has also done the docs 'Valentino: The Last Emperor' (2008) and 'Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood' (2017), as well as award-winning journalism. image: courtesy M. Tyrnauer

Less A-list were Tony Salerno, Carmine Galante and John Gotti, among the top Mafia dons that trusted Roy to fight for them in court.

Matt Tyrnauer’s masterful film amazes right until the end. Cohn’s fall from grace in the early 1980s is full of surprises, topped with the story of his final blow. Although Cohn always insisted he was heterosexual, including in a national TV appearance right before his death, he contracted AIDS early in the epidemic, at a time when there was no effective treatment for it.

Most of his “friends” abandoned him after they got the news. Trump dropped him at first but ended up providing hotel accommodations and other support. The Reagans, also in denial about AIDS, arranged for him to get preferential treatment at the National Institute of Health near Washington, DC. When he died in 1986, his obituaries noted his final deception: the cause of death was not listed as AIDS.

“Where’s My Roy Cohn?” is a crucial documentary for understanding current affairs. It opens on October 18th at Landmark’s Clay Theatre in San Francisco, at Landmark’s Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley and at Cinemark’s Century Regency in San Rafael. In Sacramento, it opens October 25th at the Tower Theatre in Sacramento and in Santa Cruz at Landmark’s Nickelodeon Theatre on November 1st.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Sep 04, 2019 - 09:06 AM
Student Debt Scandal Continues
by Karl F. Cohen

President Donald Trump and his secretary of education, Betsy DeVos. image: courtesy ABC news

EDUCATION SECRETARY BETSY DEVOS
made it official on June 28th. She repealed Obama regulations that helped crack down on for-profit schools that accepted anyone who could pay, regardless of their qualifications. Many of those students have a poor chance of finding meaningful employment in their field so they end up with mountains of student debt and little hope of repaying it.

DeVos killed the so-called “gainful employment rule,” passed in 2014, that was designed to help protect against students getting worthless degrees. Now the government will request all schools provide information about ones chances of succeeding, but how that information is presented on the governments website isn’t very useful, I have found.

Unveiled in May, College Scorecard, with its database of 2,100 certificate granting programs, should provide the information that people “need to make the best choices for themselves” about student debt and earnings prospects.

But does it?

One problem is that, as a teacher, I’ve met lots of bright, talented students and also some with big egos and not much talent or drive. Hence, I fear for students who get involved with schools who accept them based on their ability to pay, not on their prospects of success.

“Most incoming animators have no idea what kind of education is needed,” I was told by Ed Hooks, author of “Acting for Animators”. “Particularly in India and China, I have noticed students orienting to advanced degrees when they might make more progress in a simple internship position. They think animation works like electrical engineering—you get a PhD, and you get a better animation job.”

Bay Area Assemblyman David Chiu had a bill that would have blocked financial aid for career-training programs at for-profit colleges that turn out graduates who do not make enough money to pay off their loans. Chiu’s bill was gutted after DeVos announced her new rules because the California Assembly decided enforcing it would have been too complicated.

A second bill, AB1343 by Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Stockton, was intended to lower the financial aid cap. It was tabled until next year. That means the amount of debt accumulated by people who get state financial aid, graduate and then find they do not make enough money to pay off their loans, will continue to get more loans than it is wise for them to accumulate.

I suspect DeVos will keep school administrators happy by letting them continue to accept questionable students so they can get government loans. If the student doesn’t find employment that provides him or her enough income to pay off their student debt the school is not financially responsible, the taxpayer is!

Former students have already defaulted on billions while for-profit schools have no financial responsibility. If you own such a school, isn’t it nice to know the current government is looking out for your best interests?

I perused the College Scorecard site to find out how useful it is in determining what a student might learn about their future and ability to pay off their loans. The website supposedly gives you an opportunity to compare the cost of an education to the income that you might make.

I looked up information on several kinds of local schools with film/animation programs including, two-year colleges, four-year state universities, and the privately run Academy of Art University and The San Francisco Art Institute (The Art Institute offers film students a chance to explore computer animation). The information posted is not about animation programs but general information that includes every course of study at the school.

What the site tells us about two-year programs is:

At De Anza in Cupertino the tuition is $4,675 a year; 62% of students graduate; graduates earn $41,700 and 34% get federal loans. 41% of their graduates are paying off their debt. I assume 59% are not.

At Canada College in Redwood City, tuition is $2,368 a year; the graduation rate is 26%; students make $31,500 after graduating; 1% get federal loans; and 38% are paying off their loans. The typical debt and monthly payments at Canada, Berkeley City College and DeAnza are not shown.

At Berkeley City College tuition is listed as $8,796 a year; 24% of students graduate; graduates earn $32,600; 2% get federal loans; and 38% are paying them back.

At Laney College in Oakland the tuition is $6,153 a year; 26% graduate; graduates earn $27,700; 2% get federal loans; 25% are paying off their debt; the average debt is $12,000, and payments are $138 a month.

At City College of San Francisco there is no tuition for residents of our city—isn’t that incredible! However, the website says the tuition is $3373 (for people living outside of SF); 33% graduate; the student might make $35,700; 1% get federal tuition loans; and 38% are paying off their debt (averages $7,250) at $77 a month.

For four-year state universities:

At SF State tuition is $13,707 a year; 53% students graduate; graduates earn $49,200; and 3% get federal loans. The typical total debt after graduation $16,712; the average monthly payment on the loan is $178 a month; and 64% are paying off their loan.
San Jose State is $14,627, with a 59% graduation rate; graduates make $65,000; 32% got federal loans; 74% are paying off their loans; the typical debt is $15,000 and the monthly payment is $159.

For private institutions:

At Academy of Art University tuition is $33,012 a year; 38% students graduate; graduates earn $38,600 and 47% get federal loans. Typical total debt after graduation is $35,688; and the average monthly payment on the loan is $378 a month, with 36% paying off their loans.

At SF Art Institute State tuition is $46,570 a year; 41% of students graduate; graduates earn $49,200; and 56% get federal loans. Typical total debt after graduation is $25,524; the average monthly payment on the loan is $271 a month; and 49% are paying off their debt.

Conclusions:

While I did learn a few vague, basic facts, the government’s charts suggest all students will get the same income on their first professional job. I didn’t learn if there is a difference in income between studying computer animation verses painting as a fine art, or medical illustration.

Will an animation graduate from SFSU earn as much as a graduate who studied science, nursing or business? Let’s face it, an average income is too vague a number to be at all meaningful. What if you are going into a field where job openings are scarce? What if you transferred from a two-year program to a four-year program without graduating?

There is no information about how likely it is that a graduate will ever find employment in their field of study. I believe the site is not very useful, except to Trump who has tried to destroy everything Obama created.

I’ve left out private trade schools that try to teach animation at an accelerated pace, since I feel they burn out students and teachers trying to teach too much in short semesters.

After all is said and done, if loans aren’t made to qualifying recipients guess who gets stuck absorbing the financial loss? I’ll give you a hint: it isn’t Betsy DeVos and her free market educators receiving the money in the first place.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .
Posted on Aug 31, 2019 - 02:45 PM
Remarkable New Docs on Miles Davis and Water
by Karl F. Cohen

Maverick trumpeter and musician Miles Davis, circa 1958. image: courtesy M. Davis

TWO EXCITING NEW FILMS ABOUT TO
premiere in the Bay Area show how remarkable, yet different, the creative edge of the documentary medium can be.

In the same day, I saw “Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool” and “Aquarela”, the former about the famous jazz trumpeter, the latter a remarkable work of art that pays homage to the dangerous and threatening power of water, a power that can kill and destroy. Like the thrilling "Sea of Shadow", which I reviewed last month, both films advance documentary filmmaking, however, they go in totally different directions, resulting in each achieving unique forms of greatness.

“Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool” dares to take on an extremely complex character, a man who was a musical genius but with a really flawed personality. Director Stanley Nelson, who did “Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution" (2016, see cineSOURCE article), manages to carefully explain how Miles’s greatness evolved around his behavior.

Nelson’s narrative is constructed so the film flows smoothly from his days as a teenager who had his own dance band, to traveling to NY to study classical music at Julliard and meeting Charlie Parker, his musical idol. It goes on to follow Davis becoming the musical legend who created what was known as “cool jazz.” Recognized as a superstar in his final years, he was treated as a pop celebrity who made frequent TV appearances.

Unfortunately, Davis’s life behind the scenes is interrupted with numerous personal conflicts, which Nelson explores honestly. Although some of it not at all complementary. that discussion is critical to understanding how changes in his personal life influenced his music with a direct correlation at times between both positive and negative events.

Miles Davis continued innovating in new fashions as well as music in the 1980s. image: courtesy M. Davis

For example, one happy period began with his falling in love with Frances Taylor Davis, who died last year at 89. Unfortunately, it ends with his violent physical abuse of her. There are frank discussions about other women in his life and how their relationships influenced his music.

There are also details about his troubled use of drugs, his giving up playing for long periods of time due to pain and depression, even a shocking discussion about his painful encounter with a racist NY policeman.

One of the Nelson’s themes concerns the importance of money to Davis and how that need motivated changes in his music. He wasn’t a musician who could sit back and rest on his laurels. He loved owning Ferrari sports cars and fine tailored clothing. To afford the luxuries he enjoyed, he challenged himself to stay current as the public’s tastes in popular culture changed.

When sales of jazz records plummeted due to the public preference for rock, he adopted more contemporary sounds. As tastes in music changed, he enjoyed keeping his music fresh by working with younger hip musicians including Carlos Santana.

While some documentaries run out of steam after an hour, this film is just getting started. If you are not a jazz fan you may lose interest in the film, but as a kid I saw Miles Davis in concert more than once and enjoyed owning some of his LP records. I appreciated his art then and I still enjoy listening to his music.

Yes at times, he was a vain, callous, and controversial, but he was a brilliant innovative artist who broke with conventions and created new sounds. Although he must have been satisfied with his accomplishments, he went on and on to surprise the world with further phases of his work. In addition to being an innovator who played bebop with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and created “cool jazz,” he explored working with modern quintets, orchestral music, jazz fusion, funk, rock ‘n’ roll, and even hip-hop. The film opens at the Roxie in San Francisco on September 6.

The second impressive documentary I previewed was “Aquarela”, an intense experimental film experience that is probably quite different from any film you are familiar with. It is a beautiful study of weather at its worst. The photography is excellent, but it is a disturbing essay built around various dangerous moments in a world full of ice, wind and water.

Victor Kossakovsky, a Russian filmmaker, chose to document the dangers of water in all its forms. image: courtesy V. Kossakovsky

The journey you experience starts on a frozen body of water (actually a giant lake in Russia) with a few brave men fleeing as the ice is breaking up a few weeks sooner than expected. They are trying to pull a SUV out of the lake that has crashed through the ice. The drama we witness is real.

Next the journey takes us past enormous glaciers that are beginning to disintegrate. Eventually a two-masted sailboat is seen, hopefully a safe distance from the falling ice. That section continues with the boat venturing into a sea chocked full of icebergs while the weather is turning treacherous.

There is almost no dialog in the entire film, leaving you to imagine any details you might want to know. The soundtrack in the first part is mostly the sound of ice cracking, breaking and glaciers falling apart and crashing into the sea. Then modern symphonic and hard rock music begins to accompany the visuals. As you might expect the music and visuals keep building into a powerful climax and that is followed by a lull before an even more ferocious storm.

The project was headed by Victor Kossakovsky, a Russian filmmaker who is credited as director, editor, cinematographer, and writer; however, the full credits include an extremely long list of names and titles. Sections of the film were shot by different crews in Greenland, Norway, Denmark, Russia, Scotland, the USA and several other countries. Well over 100 people were involved in the production.

Visually, to gain maximum sharpness of details some of it was filmed at 96 frames a second. It is being shown in theaters with special projectors that will be playing it at 48 frames a second, instead of the standard 24. That means scenes of glaciers disintegrating and shots of artic ice flowing to the ocean are slightly sped up to make the action seem even more dramatic.

Kossakovsky, who shot as well as directed, on another one of his dangerous camera platforms. image: courtesy V. Kossakovsky

The soundtrack uses Dolby’s new Atmos System and you actually feel the sound vibrations at times. I saw it at the AMC Metreon 16 in a new extra wide hall with an enormous screen. I was overwhelmed by the film and soundtrack while sitting in exceedingly comfortable, reclining and extra wide chairs which are motorized so you can adjust them to what you believe is the most comfortable position. The only thing that seemed missing from this presentation was a mist system so the audience could feel the weather.

The film’s press release says, “‘Aqurela’ is a visceral wake-up call that humans are no match for the sheer force and capricious will of the Earth’s most precious element.” The film opens August 23 at the Metreon in San Francisco, August 30; in Pleasant Hill, San Jose, and San Rafael; Sept. 6 in Santa Rosa; Sept. 13 in Santa Cruz and Sept. 20 in Sacramento.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Aug 17, 2019 - 12:38 AM
Small Acting School Makes Big Shorts
by Doniphan Blair

Scene from 'Unmasked', (lft-rt): Kyle Simsek, Tim Baylar, Thomas Nguyen, Bill Dietz, Lea Robinson and Karla Acosta. image: courtesy FABA

IT'S RATHER UNPRECEDENTED WHEN
a festival accepts two films from a filmmaking team, let alone honors them both. But this is exactly what happened to films from Film Acting Bay Area, based in Emeryville, at the recent Independent Shorts Awards.

Relying only on its own student actors and faculty, FABA, a smallish vocational school, produced two award-winning shorts this year, “DNA” (8 min, 2019) about a father-son confrontation, and “Unmasked” (10 min, 2019). An incisive but humorous attack on racism, sexism, ageism and the associated hypocrisies, “Unmasked” portrays a situation the FABA folks know well, the drama, worry and often embarrassment involved in a casting call.

Both films were directed and written by FABA’s founder and director, Celik Kayalar (see short doc on him here). A biochemist of Turkish origins, Kayalar studied and settled in Los Angeles in the ‘70s. While working there at a world-famous lab, he became intrigued by another one of the city’s industry soon started studying and transitioning to its entirely different discipline. He also stars as the father in “DNA”.

"Celik is a director who has a brilliant vision of creating characters so organic yet interesting at the same time,” I was told by Ani Avetyan, an LA casting director, who has worked on the long-running TV shows like "The Closer" and "Major Crimes", and who produced the 2019 movie "Homecoming". “His casting taste exceeds all expectations, talented actors who capture his moments and a very diverse cast that allows us all to feel this is real!"

Another scene from 'Unmasked'. image: courtesy FABA

The son in “DNA” was played by Kyle Simsek, who does an excellent job, while the roles in “Unmasked” were also entirely filled by FABA student actors, including Karla Acosta, Tim Baylar, Bill Dietz, Dominic Dunnaway, Reagan Harwood, Thomas Nguyen, Jenny Oz, Lea Robinson and Annie Roumeliotis, as well as Simsek.

A more challenging piece, “Unmasked” juggles a jumble of hot button issues like race and gender, where a slight misstep can cause a film to tumble. They keep it very much in the running, however, as attested to by the festival judges.

Indeed, “Unmasked” took the Best Parody Short and “DNA” the Best Acting Duo (Celik Kayalar and Kyle Simsek) at the Independent Shorts Awards in July (Los Angeles), and both films were semi-finalists at JellyFEST, a brand new festival out of North Hollywood, which will probably screen the work in January, 2020.

Meanwhile “DNA” played the Sacramento International Film Festival in May and will play San Francisco’s World Independent Film Festival in September. The latter festival just announced that they will play “Unmasked” as well, another unprecedented accomplishment for Kayalar and his student actors.

Celik Kayalar managed a shot, during an exterior for one of his school's films. image: courtesy FABA

While double hits might be common for bigger film schools in media centers like Los Angeles or New York, it hasn’t happened before in FABA’s ten years of operation, nor any other school in the Bay Area, as far as I have been able to research. But FABA has been expanding, both in enrollment and ambition, especially since its cinematic form of thespian training is not that common in the region and has become highly coveted.

What is even more desired is to find contemporary scripts that inspire students to rise to the level of great filmmaking and to provide them the technical staff to do just that. Evidently, that is what FABA does and we look forward to many more.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Aug 13, 2019 - 04:34 PM
A Thrilling ‘60s Rewrite by Quentin Tarantino
by Doniphan Blair

Leonardo DiCaprio's Rick Dalton, in an imaginary WWII film, wields a weapon that makes Chekov's mantelpiece gun seem like a pen knife. image: courtesy Q. Tarantino

THE '60S ENDED FOR MOST CALIFORN-
ians not on new year’s eve, 1969, but three weeks or five months earlier, respectively. That would be the Altamont concert, where some Hells Angels killed Meredith Hunter, a black man, after The Rolling Stones played “Sympathy for the Devil”, and the Tate-La Blanca murders in Los Angeles, when acolytes of Charles Manson did almost ten times that damage, albeit after listening to The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter”.

Quentin Tarantino attempts to address this story, along with the angst of an aging actor and his homoerotic relationship with a similarly-sinking stuntman, supposedly based on Burt Reynolds’s relationship with his stunt double Hal Needham, through alternate history in “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”, his ninth film.

The biggest hipster cinema event since “Black Panther” last year, I and a majority of my friends raced out on opening night, July 26th, or later that weekend, the lucky ones also bringing home a ‘60s-style “Once Upon a Time” brochure.

Despite a couple of false notes, notably his characterization of actress Sharon Tate and martial artist Bruce Lee, Tarantino grabs hold of his three massive themes—especially the hippie story—and doesn’t stop shaking until he squeezes out the revenge catharsis, with his signature hyperbolic film violence, that closed his last three films.

The fading actor Rick Dalton, excellently enunciated by Leonardo DiCaprio—an obvious stand-in for the director, who claims this is his second-to-last-film—became a TV star in the ‘50s, playing the lead in “Bounty Law”, one of the hundreds of period pieces and props Tarantino lovingly concocts. Unfortunately, by 1969, he has degenerated from leading man to having to hustle for one-episode bad-guy roles.

Dalton and his stunt double Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt, cruising Hollywood in his Cadillac. image: courtesy Q. Tarantino

To watch DiCaprio overact a lushly-filmed western bar scene, transition to fully human, after the director yells cut, and then wreck his trailer, in a symphony of self-indulgence and pathos, all while playing a shallow soul trying to find himself, is a wonder in acting styles and agility as well as psychology.

An adulatory homage to all things early-‘60s, replete with faux cigarette brands and commercials, movie scenes, posters and billboards, dog food and much more, “Once Upon a Time” actually hails the freedom of the late-‘60s in the form of Dalton’s stunt double Cliff Booth, tenderly rendered by Brad Pitt. Even further down the backside of his career—indeed, Dalton will soon be letting him go—Booth is Dalton’s Man Friday and only friend, leading to a well-developed buddy picture.

Reviewers from Variety to The New Yorker ridicule “Once Upon a Time” as a paean to ‘50s’ establishment white maledom and a frontal attack on hippies, especially with the pummeling of longhairs that Booth provides in a couple of scenes. He also kicks the ass of Bruce Lee, oddly overplayed by Mike Moh, but an obvious symbol of what many Americans would like to do to today’s China.

Although hippie shaming may be what Tarantino tells us, it’s not what he shows. Booth wears moccasins, presumably for a better grip from which to launch into stunts, but also a footwear famously favored by hippies. Booth is upbeat, even Buddhist, in the face of adversity and follows the adventurous life, wherever it might lead, even scuba diving and “accidently” spear-gunning his nagging wife, or smoking LSD.

Booth picks up hitchhikers, notably Pussycat, a vivacious hippie chick played by Margaret Qualley, who steals the picture in a bravura, over-the-top performance. While she claims she was inspired by Tarantino’s cine enthusiasm, he obviously directed her to within an inch of her just-starting career—one millimeter further it would have imploded into farce, clowning and embarrassment.

The daughter of Andie MacDowell, the more sedate center of “Sex, Lies and Videotape” (Steve Sodenbergh’s 1989 break out pic which started an indie wave), Qualley makes hippie life incredibly attractive—until it’s not—and has the film’s most iconic line.

Pussycat, played by Margaret Qualley, steals the movie before and after stuntman Cliff Booth picks her up hitchhiking. image: courtesy Q. Tarantino

Two anti-heroes meeting to trigger a super nova, Pussycat provides Booth both the opportunity to maturely turn down the sex with a minor she freely offers and to drive her to the Spahn Ranch, the abandoned Western set where the historical Manson Family holed up.

“To live outside the law, you must be honest,” according to Bob Dylan ("Absolutely Sweet Marie", 1966), and it’s a dictum Booth takes to heart.

After meeting The Family, which was 90% female as well as the epitome of evil hippies, Booth becomes the good hippie, the mensch, the standup guy who checks in on his acquaintance, Spahn the ranch owner (Bruce Dern), who was in fact half blind, 80 and trading sex for rent, to make sure he’s not being held hostage.

Those who live outside the law must police their own, as Oaklanders learned the hard way on December 2, 2016. That was when a once-happy artist collective turned, within fifteen minutes, into an inferno, the horrific “Ghost Ship” fire. If one of the hundreds of people who attended events there had pulled a Cliff Booth, grabbing the venue’s ringmaster by his dreads and insisting he make some changes, many lives could have been saved. Derick Almena and his assistant, the more innocent Max Harris, are currently awaiting sentencing on 36 manslaughter counts (see article).

For the fictional Pussycat character and the very real Spahn Ranch scene, Tarantino borrowed beaucoup from “The Girls” (2016) by Emma Cline, who in turn may have borrowed from her ex-boyfriend, a contention still in litigation. As if that were not enough first-hand female insight, he also had Lena Dunham, director/writer/actor of the television series “Girls”, play one of Charlie’s angels of death.

Although hippie material can easily veer into kitch, Tarantino’s rendering of the ranch, the Manson matriarchy and especially their “man”- and “like”-ladened pseudo-revolutionary rap is dead on.

Unfortunately, Tarantino only comes close to his signature, slow-crawl set pieces, like the gimp in “Pulp Fiction” (1994) or the café in “Inglourious Basterds” (2009), a couple of times in “Once Upon a Time”: when the Mansonites pull up to Tate’s house in their smoking hulk of a ‘60s classic car, and in the film within the film when Dalton, as an outlaw, takes a girl hostage.

Director Quentin Tarantino yucks it up with his new star, Julia Butters, between takes. image: courtesy Q. Tarantino

Fantastically played by the twelve-year old Julia Butters, who’s being called the next Meryl Streep, she schools Dalton on method acting and is about to do the same with misogyny—his patronizing use of the term “pumpkin puss”—before magnanimously letting him slide.

Tarantino, however, is not one to leave well enough alone and has her show a sado-masochistical streak. When Booth throws her to floor in the scene and politely apologizes after, she says “It’s OK, I’m wearing pads. Anyway, I like to throw myself on the ground just for fun.” Altogether, it’s a beautifully nuanced commentary on the Me Too movement, which undoubtedly plagues Tarantino, given he owes his meteoric rise to the producer of his first eight films, the notorious abuser and alleged rapist Harvey Weinstein, also still in litigation.

While the Hollywood women have not come after him for this film, Shannon Lee didn’t see anything of symbolic value in Tarantino’s trashing of her father, the brilliant and innovative Bruce Lee, who had to work extra hard as an immigrant of color to break into Hollywood, even teaching Tate kung-fu for a few extra bucks, which Tarantino shows briefly.

Another voice of outrage is from the French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, Roman Polanski’s 33-years-his-junior third wife—Tate was his second—who claims HE is being exploited, without his consent, to make money for a Hollywood which abandoned him—pretty rich for a guy with almost a dozen sex-with-underage-women charges against him, something Brad Pitt’s Booth would NEVER have done.

The real crime against Polanski, which Seigner fails to mention, is that Tarantino plays him flat, as a happy-go-lucky rich guy zooming around the Hollywood hills in his MG.

In point of fact, he was a Holocaust survivor riddled with injury while also the king of Hollywood, due to his masterpiece hit “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), about Satanists no less. I would have loved to see “Once Upon a Time” grapple with the character of Polanski—the European, the short, dark filmmaker, the Jew, and the tantric opposite of the aging-if-still-adolescent gentile Rick Dalton—but that is both another movie and something Tarantino couldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, due to Polanski’s sex abuse.

Sharon Tate, played by Margot Robbie, takes in one of her own movies, 'The Wrecking Crew' (1968), one afternoon on Hollywood Boulevard. image: courtesy Q. Tarantino

In his stead, Tarantino places Sharon Tate, decently played Margot Robbie, but whom Tarantino portrays as a shallow, smiling model type, another missed opportunity. Despite the critics' frequent complaint that he can’t write women, his films have many intricate females—Jackie Brown, played by the great Pam Grier, leaps to mind. Indeed, Tate was a shy, alienated army brat as well as stunning beauty and talented actor, who was making her way in Hollywood as a second Marilyn Monroe, including her literary side—falling for the obviously difficult Polanski—and great comedic acting, replete with pratfalls.

While not quite achieving the genius of “Jackie Brown” (1997) or “Pulp Fiction”, “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”’s alternative history provides a lot of intensity, story and love—Dalton for Booth, Booth for life, Tarantino for hippies, and, most of all, Tarantino for Hollywood—enough to provide those of us who raced out on opening night numerous enjoyable repeat viewing for years to come.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Aug 01, 2019 - 03:34 AM
Eco-Doc Bests Bond Thriller
by Karl F. Cohen

The feature doc 'Sea of Shadow', shows Jack Hutton and his armed guards trying to protect at-risk fish in Mexico. image: courtesy R. Ladkani

'SEA OF SHADOW' IS ALMOST AS MOVING
as a James Bond thriller, but it is a real life documentary about a serious problem unfolding in Mexico. Premiering at Sundance, where it won the audience award, and directed by Richard Ladkani, who did the Oscar-nominated “The Ivory Game” (2016), it covers the corruption of fishermen, police, high-ranking military officers and others, who are bribed and intimated by Mexican drug cartel mobsters.

Now the cartels have expanded their operations into smuggling contraband to China and the film also provides information about the Chinese businessmen willing to sell the illegal products there. There are other disturbing facts presented, including the life threatening dangers to journalists who dare to report this story. In fact, more reporters are killed annually in Mexico than in any other nation in the world—including Syria!

Why? It turns out that one of the most important current but vastly under-reported stories is about a multi-million dollar black market that threatens the extinction of a rare giant sea bass known as the totoaba fish. They are being killed off for their air bladders, which are harvested, dried and sold in China, while their remaining carcasses are discarded. They are worth millions in China because they are considered both a culinary delicacy and a miraculous medicine, although its curative powers are questionable. Due to the outrageously inflated prices of the totoaba’s bladders, they have become known as the "cocaine of the sea."

What makes this hunt for totoaba more tragic is that the fishermen use giant gill nets, not constructed with fine string but with strong rope. The film shows members of the environmental group Sea Shepherd capturing a net and freeing what is still alive in it.

The Mexican military supports the Sea Shepherds in their four-year fight to save the endangered vaquita nicknamed 'the cocaine of the sea.' image: courtesy R. Ladkani

Among the dead creatures are an endangered, air-breathing mammal, a vaquita, the world’s smallest whale. The nets also catch and drown porpoises, turtles and other sea creatures that flourish in the Sea of Cortez, between the Baha California peninsula and mainland Mexico.

The Shepherds, part of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an international non-profit, conservation organization based out of New York, have been working in the Sea of Cortez since 2015 and travel with armed military escorts who can arrest illegal fishermen. Most of the time the fishermen drop their nets and speed away. Getting and destroying the nets is more important than catching the users of them. Unfortunately the ones that drift away can go on killing sea life for many years.

To find fisherman illegal operating the nets, the Shepherds employ radar-like equipment and drones. Most of the fishing takes place at night, but by using night-vision technology they have found and destroyed over 800 nets. Fishermen who lose a net (each net can costs over $5,000) can’t afford the loss, so the syndicate loans them money replacements, enabling the gangsters to buy protection from someone who might turn them in to authorities. Indeed, the cost of a few nets is nothing compared to the value of a single fish.

At present researchers believe there are only eight to 24 wild totoaba still alive. They can grow to be six feet long and weigh around 200 pounds. If the poachers manage to kill off the last these creatures, greedy merchants will no doubt “discover” yet another species that they can claim has similar or even better culinary or curative powers. The black market syndicate is interested in making money, not protecting animals or anything else that gets in the way of their making a profit.

The gorgeously cute vaquita whale is about to go extinct due to Chinese 'medicinal' avarice. image: courtesy R. Ladkani

One of the informants, who is digitally disguised in the film, was later killed by the cartels (he was killed prior to the completion of the film, so his participation in it was not the cause of his murder). Other people in the film have reported death threats including a TV reporter who has broadcast news of this ongoing battle to save the totoava and vaquita.

At the press preview Jack Hutton, a Sea Shepherd who is seen in the film operating the drones, talked about how he and his mates have had threats made against them, and how personal property left ashore has been vandalized. Jack said he feels safe on their ship as they travel with armed guards.

After the event my wife talked with Jack. He is Irish, 22 and has a Mohawk haircut. He told her he comes from a large family in Ireland and that his relatives will be surprised to learn about his recent activities when they see the film.

Although the gangsters in the San Felipe area of Mexico know who he is, he was going back to his ship. He assured everyone at the reception that their military escorts would continue to protect them.

To protect the endangered sea life from extinction, the Mexican government has outlawed fishing in parts of the Sea of Cortez during several months each year. The government compensates families whose income is based on fishing, but that hasn’t prevented hostilities between the citizens and the authorities from breaking out. There are several ugly moments in the film, including footage of a potential riot to free three fishermen who were arrested for illegal activities.

A typical-thriller shot shows Mexican investigative journalist, Carlos Loret de Mola, looking for leads. image: courtesy R. Ladkani

Among the film’s most disgusting moments are interviews with authority figures. Hearing them try to explain why they don’t arrest known gang members is disturbing. To see a highly decorated Navy officer wearing his uniform tell us that he fears for the safety of his family is shocking to me. Ladkani did tell us, however, that the head of the cartel in the San Filipe area has been arrested for murder.

“Sea of Shadows supporters include Leonardo DiCaprio, who was one of its seven executive producers, and the National Geographic Society, which is involved with its distribution. The cast includes Andrea Crosta, executive director and co-founder of Earth League International (formerly Elephant Action League), an organization that uses undercover operatives to trace links to traders in China.

“Sea of Shadows” is a remarkable film about human greed destroying our planet. Hopefully it will be widely seen. Although seeing it is a disquieting experience, you learn a lot more information than you are used to getting in a documentary. You will probably spend time after you see it thinking about how you can help.

You can help by signing a petition to save the vaquita from extinction. You can also send a postcard or letter to the Mexican government asking them to do more to prevent the extinction of the endangered vaquita and totoaba. Send it to Minister Victor Toledo, SEMARNAT, Embassy of Mexico, 1911 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20006.

Now is the time to sign a petition or write as in May 2019 the former Minister of the Environment in Mexico resigned following public criticism by the president for her lack of action on protecting the sea creatures. She was also accused of abuse of power.

Jack Hutton enjoys a light moment after 'Sea of Shadow' takes an award. image: courtesy R. Ladkani

The new minister, Victor Toledo, is forming his policy and agenda with Mexican President Lopez Obrador. Public concern will show them we believe the vaquita and totoaba need protection including strict enforcement of the gillnet ban. Critical actions are needed to protect the Sea of Cortez. The world is watching, and there is no time to lose.

The film, the trailer for which can be seen here, opens July 19th at the AMC Metreon 16 in San Francisco, and July 26th at Landmark’s Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley and at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Jul 18, 2019 - 12:47 PM
Beats Writers Blend East and West
by Doniphan Blair

Gary Snyder, the most Buddhist of the original beats, in his monastery room, Kyoto, Japan, circa 1960. image: courtesy G. Synder

EASTERN PHILOSOPHY WAS FIRST
brought to America by Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophists in 1875, the Japanese Zen Buddhist master D.T. Suzuki twenty years later and Muslim Sufi musicians, a decade after that, but it was the beatniks who made it hip, especially Buddhism.

The very word beat referenced both “beat down” and “beatitude,” according to author Jack Kerouac, making it inherently anti-materialistic, spiritual and Buddhist. And the poets, artists, rebels and travelers who began gathering in the Bay Area in the late-1940s naturally followed his lead.

Although a devout Catholic, Kerouac read up on Buddhism, recommended it to his friends, especially the poet Allen Ginsberg, and wrote about its influence on his life in his fourth book, the bestselling “The Dharma Bums” (1958), dharma being a Buddhist term for eternal nature or cosmic law.

Before that, Alan Watts had moved from England in 1938 and began training in Zen in New York. After shifting to San Francisco to teach eastern thought, he began his popular KPFA radio program on the subject in 1953 and eventually published over 25 books, mostly on Buddhism, making him its biggest proselytizer.

Gary Snyder was the most Buddhist of the original beats, which is why Kerouac made him the protagonist in “The Dharma Bums”, and he prepared assiduously for his eastern studies. Finally, in 1955, the First Zen Institute of America offered him a year’s training in Japan, which he was able to do after overcoming interference by the State Department, which withheld his passport on the spurious claim he was a communist.

Poster for an East-West monthly poetry meeting hosted by Chinese-American cultural activist Hanson Lee and cineSOURCE editor Doniphan Blair. image: D. Blair

In Kyoto, Synder served as an attendant and English tutor to a Zen abbot and hung out with or learned about the western Buddhists preceding him, notably Dwight Goddard, the first native pioneer of Buddhism in America, who lived there in the early 20th century.

Studying Japanese, Synder learned enough to converse and read Zen kōans, or parables. For a decade, he flitted back and forth between the Bay Area and Japan, once even bringing a girlfriend, whom the abbot obliged him to marry. Although they soon divorced, he married a Japanese woman with whom he had two sons. So strong was Synder’s East-West interaction, a small Kyoto press published “Riprap”, the first of his over two dozen books of poetry, in 1965.

While Synder favored active, descriptive poems, often based on his adventures around the west coast, many came to include Eastern ideas, notably his well-known “Regarding Wave” (1970).

The voice of the Dharma, the voice now
A shimmering bell through all.
Every hill, still.
Every tree alive. Every leaf.
All the slopes flow.
Old woods, new seedlings, tall grasses plumes.
Dark hollows; peaks of light.
Wind stirs the cool side. Each leaf living.
All the hills.
The Voice is a wife to him still.

Allen Ginsberg first learned about Zen at Columbia University, in the ‘40s, and then from his dear friend Kerouac. But being Jewish and a bit more sensuous, he chose to focus on the Indian variant and went to the subcontinent in 1963, precursing India's hippie invasion, which exploded in the late-‘60s and lasted a decade.

Although he studied religion, learned Hindu mantra chants and took up the meditative harmonium instrument, all of which he used to good effect for the rest of his life, Ginsberg also had affairs with local boys and shot morphine, making his East-West interplay a bit wilder. Indeed, it was already on full display by 1955 in his little-known but excellent “Haiku (Never Published)”, written on Milvia Street, in Berkeley.

American poet Allen Ginsberg with 8th century poet and wildman Li Bai. image: Jiang Yuan Hua

Drinking my tea without sugar—no difference.
The sparrow shits upside down—ah! my brain and eggs.
Mayan head in a Pacific driftwood bole—someday I'll live in NY.
Looking over my shoulder, my behind was covered with cherry blossoms.
Winter Haiku, I didn't know the names of the flowers—now my garden is gone.
I slapped the mosquito and missed. What made me do that?
Reading haiku I am unhappy, longing for the Nameless.
A frog floating in the drugstore jar: summer rain on grey pavements (after Shiki) [Masaoka Shiki, the 19th century Japanese poet, critic and pioneer of the modern haiku].
On the porch, in my shorts; auto lights in the rain.
Another year has past—the world is no different.
The first thing I looked for in my old garden was the cherry tree.
My old desk: the first thing I looked for in my house.
My early journal: the first thing I found in my old desk.
My mother's ghost: the first thing I found in the living room.
I quit shaving but the eyes that glanced at me remained in the mirror.
The madman emerges from the movies: the street at lunchtime.
Cities of boys are in their graves, and in this town...
Lying on my side in the void: the breath in my nose.
On the fifteenth floor the dog chews a bone—screech of taxicabs.
A hard-on in New York, a boy in San Francisco.
The moon over the roof, worms in the garden. I rent this house.

Ginsberg became the beats’ fairy godmother and hardest working impresario, rallying them to write, write, write, while flogging their books around New York, even as his bestselling “Howl” (1956) made him the earth’s most famous poet. Indeed, he toured his terrain relentlessly, including the then-closed closed communist block, and never ceased supporting any comrade, despite their descent into right-wingism or alcoholism, like Kerouac, or other infirmities.

Another beat Buddhist was poet Philip Whelan, who attended Reed College with Synder in the ‘40s. Whelan got way into Zen, after Synder gave him a book by Suzuki, and even joined him in Japan, also becoming a monk for a couple of years.

Then there was Bob Kaufman. The son of a German Jew and a Caribbean woman of color, who grew up in New Orleans, he came to San Francisco to devote himself to poetry in 1958, where he was credited with coining “beatnik”, in homage to the Soviet sputnik satellite. Along with Ginsberg, William Margolis and others, he founded and helped edit Beatitude magazine, which highlighted beat-Buddhist synergy.

While Kaufman was hardly an ascetic when it came to sex and drugs, upon hearing of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, he took a Buddhist vow of silence and dutifully stuck by it for a decade until the Vietnam War ended in 1973.

Generally not Puritans, Buddhist beatniks simply suggested that you could enjoy a more fulsome, fruitful life by rejecting materialism, following your dreams and adhering to Asian ideas of abstention, cosmic unity and natural ways.

The beats do Islam: (lf-rt) Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Paul Bowles, Tangier, Morocco, circa 1958. photo: courtesy A. Ginsberg

But these were beat easternism’s more genteel prescriptions. More boundary-breaking ideas emerged from those who went to Morocco and immersed themselves in Islamic culture. William Burroughs also did a lot of young men and heroin in Morocco, but he wrote prodigiously, which became “Naked Lunch”, after Kerouac and Ginsberg visited him and heroically typed up and pieced together his scraps of paper covered with scribbles. Fortunately, Burroughs liked Byron Gysin’s “cut-up”, or collage, technique, which helped him revolutionize writing, refashioning the novel into something like a Jackson Pollock painting or a holistic Eastern vision.

First published in France in 1958 but harassed by pornography trials in the US until 1966, it is based on Burroughs's adventures in drugs, love and ideas from New York and Mexico City to Morocco. Admittedly a bit hard to decipher, the dedicated reader is rewarded with a devastating, sometime riotously funny, critique of squares, hipsters, junkies and Western culture, including language in general, which made “Naked Lunch” the most influential beat book after Kerouac’s “On the Road”, and the most avant-garde American novel since Henry Miller’s two “Cancers” (see cineSOURCE article, "Should We Re-Censor Henry Miller?".

Also monumental were the novels of Paul Bowles: “The Sheltering Sky” (1949), “Let It Come Down” (1952) and “The Spiders House” (1955). Bowles moved to Tangier, Morocco, in 1947, and lived there until his death in 1999, graciously hosting the beats on their visits.

While using traditional novel elements, like well-crafted characters and lush descriptions, Bowles slowly pushes the reader out of their comfort zone, beyond known literary landmarks, much like the protagonist of “The Sheltering Sky”, who finally finds himself psychologically albeit lost in the desert physically Although no longer read much, “Sheltering Sky” made a pretty good Bernard Bertolucci film in 1990 and remains high on many critics’ lists of the 20th century’s top novels.

Buddhism also figured in the ideas and work of many other beat poets like Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane diPrima and Gregory Corso. While a few were criticized for dimestore Buddhism, many have been lauded for good work and East-West activism in many essays and books, notably “Big Sky Mind: Buddhism and the Beat Generation” (1995) by Carole Tonkinson, former editor of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle.

Of course, from its conception by Gautama Buddha in Benares, India, in the fourth century BCE, Buddhism had to make long journeys and cross many borders to achieve success. Fleeing Hindu oppression, Buddhists emigrated to Afghanistan, where they built the magnificent sculptures tragically destroyed by radical Muslims in 1999. Then they traveled to China and finally Japan, where fully a third of the population identify as Buddhist (compared to only 18% in China), proving once again that it is the aggressive multiculturalist and long-distance traveler who hybrids the headiest worldview.

For more on the beats, if not their Buddhism, see the great "The Beats: A Graphic History" (2009), by Harvey Pekar and a host of others—graphic referencing its sex as well the fact it’s a graphic novel. Or, for more details and chronology and less sex, see the masterful "The Typewriter Is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation" (2010) by Bill Morgan, Ginsberg's personal archivist, bibliographer and amanuensis from 1982 to 1997.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jun 26, 2019 - 01:54 AM
Always Be My Mediocre
by Doniphan Blair

'Always Be My Maybe''s Ali Wong ambition-shames co-star Randal Park, a move she should have applied to her own film. image: courtesy Nahnatchka Khan

SAN FRANCISCO GOT TARRED AGAIN
by another barely-funny rom-com set in The City, this time by an almost-entirely Asian team, proving that white privilege is not necessary to make pretentious overblown films and begging the question: Can you parody hipster idiots while imitating Hollywood at its most commercial?

No wonder “Always Be My Maybe” went straight to streaming on Netflix, the international media conglomerate whose business model—cheap, fast and obsessively-topical—can not help but produce 80% crap, on May 29th.

The tragedy is the talent wasted, notably the brilliant, beautiful Ali Wong, fresh off her second “pregnant and hysterical” comedy tours/films: “Baby Cobra" and "Hard Knock Wife" (2016 and 2018, respectively), also from Netflix (part of its masterful 20%). Born and bred in San Francisco’s wealthy Pacific Heights neighborhood, Wong apparently felt it was worth letting down her hometown by going completely commersh to cover tuition at SF’s ridiculously expensive private schools, which she now needs for two kids.

Wong’s co-star Randal Park is another eminence grise of Asian comedy, having created a string of award-winning shorts, played dictator Kim Jong-un in the near-war-starting “The Interview” (2014), and garnered a Best Actor Critics' Choice Award for starring in the TV show “Fresh Off the Boat” (2015-ongoing).

The freshman film from Nahnatchka Khan, who directed/produced “Fresh Off the Boat” and whose parents are from Iran, the directing is utterly unremarkable, a disgrace to her parent's homeland, the first film nation of Islam, if not the entire Global South. But it is the lackluster writing from Wong, Park and Michael Golamco, a respected—until now—Filipino-American playwright, that is truly odd.

Wong falls madly in love with Keanu Reaves—for only a few days—setting the stage for 'Always Be My Maybe''s most searing satire. image: courtesy Nahnatchka Khan

Of course, it must be said that, in regards to the “can you parody hipster idiots” question, Wong, Park and Golamco did write a stunning scene for Keanu Reeves, where he plays himself and steals the movie in a devastating satire of celebrity sick-fucks as well as hipster idiots.

Sadly, Reeves’s startling appearance only serves to highlight the paucity of searing self-effacement and surgical insight into their own story and characters, although they also do a decent take down of Asian hipsters in a character played by the incredibly-named and obviously-talented actress Vivian Bang, as the oversexed, dreadlocked lover of Park, during his long separation from his childhood beloved and eventual wife Wong.

There are also a lot a sweet moments for a host of underserved Asian-American actors, starting with the always-excellent James Saito (from 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles', 1990, on), who plays Park's character's father.

Indeed, the Reeves scene proves that buried within “Always Be My Maybe” is an edgy, funny film fighting to get out. This is also indicated by a half-a-dozen solid lines, like when Wong says something like, “I hope it’s not still as small and grungy,” and Park retorts, “I hope your referring to my car’s back seat”—Asian comedy’s now-requisite small-penis joke.

In fact, all Wong, Park and Golamco needed was a standard-issue studio script doctor to cut the lard, like all the trillionaire bits—does Wong really have to go from learning cooking from Park’s mom to the planet’s most famous chef without even a mis-en-scene???—and add a couple of aggressive pages, of which the writers undoubtedly have notebooks, drawers and suitcases stuffed full.

Instead of shooting white koi in a Zen garden barrel, how about some Asian-on-Asian humor, since Wong’s character is Vietnamese and Park’s is Korean, and we know there must be some fascinating and funny stereotypes harbored by each group about the other? At the very least, instead of all that drawn-out, feel-good childhood footage or the long march towards marriage, how about more riffing repartee, given Park emerges in the film’s finale as a vicious cutup.

While Rotten Tomatoes gives “Always Be My Maybe” a 91% approval rating, and Rolling Stones’ Peter Travers claims, “It’s an irresistible romantic romp that turns the familiar into something sweet, sassy and laugh-out-loud funny,” that’s obviously patronizing white people and middle brow people of color talking, not cutting-edge comedic analysis.

After years of minor roles, the talented Vivian Bang gets her star turn, albeit as the fall-girl for all the satire 'Always Be My Maybe' holds back from its main characters. image: courtesy Nahnatchka Khan

Just because people on the screen look like you, that’s only twenty percent of the battle. If they don’t think like the you that you aspire to be, if they aren’t truly visionary, monumentally human AND hysterically funny, they aren’t all that inspiring.

If “Always Be My Maybe” is what kids of color or non-binary gender—and there’s the obligatory gay secondary character, of course, who is also pregnant and even gives birth mid-film (a nod to Wong’s “Baby Cobra”)—are obliged to watch on their first dates or to get their rom-com fix, the new army of Hollywood integrators are shooting themselves in the foot.

Indeed, they’re sending those kids to search Netflix for actually smart and funny rom-coms about love, separation and reuniting, like “His Girl Friday”—almost 80 years old and ALL white, but that's the thing about true talent, it transcends ALL barriers—a futile search, in fact, since Netflix doesn’t even have it. (Fortunately, Amazon does: go here.)

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jun 10, 2019 - 04:55 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner: July 2019
by Karl Cohen

Ad for the first 'talkie' Mickey Mouse cartoons from Disney Studios. image: courtesy Disney Museum

This article's author is covered in this month's feature, "Karl Cohen: Cartoon King".

Excellent Exhibit at Disney Museum

The new large temporary exhibit at the Walt Disney Family Museum is a tour-de-force honoring their first big character, Mickey Mouse. Indeed, it features over 400 pieces of art, plus a balcony gallery of fine art paintings of Mr. Mouse by artists ranging from Wayne Thiebold and Andy Warhol to an amusing enormous work by San Francisco-based muralist Sirron Norris that has twelve Mickeys in it. (I only spotted nine—three are too well hidden.)

The show is full of rough preliminary drawings. The guest curator/Disney animator Andreas Deja told us at the press preview that he favors preliminary sketches by animators as they show the person’s hand movements and thoughts, while cleaned up drawings are normally by assistants and lack some of the artist’s personal touch.

By seeing this wide variety of images, you can trace the evolution of the way Mickey was drawn. While the drawings are fascinating, I was amazed by a large painted cel from The Band's last concert that showed a wide angle shot of the crowd around the bandstand, with what must have around 100 characters.

On the balcony there is a collage of large photos that shows the evolution of the costumed Mickey that greets people in the theme park. If you look closely, there is a very early goofy-looking Mickey with tiny black pupils. Not an image we are familiar with.

The production art includes Ub Iwerks drawings from 1928-30, drawings and cel paintings, including cels from some of the great films that were released in Technicolor. There is also more recent work, including a few films made with computers that are shown on a very large, flat screen display.

I was told that some of the hand-drawn works I was seeing had never been shown to the public before. Indeed, some were from projects that were never completed.

While Mickey and his friends sold over $3 billion in merchandise in 2018, according to the Wall Street Journal, the exhibit makes no mention of Mr. Mouse being what Forbes magazine calls “a fictional billionaire.” (I assume Spider Man is now on that list.) Instead, there is one tasteful display of really old toys—with no T shirts, balloons and other yucky things—to remind us that some really cool-looking things have been made that have his likeness on them.

“The exhibition is a testament to Mickey’s transcendent influence," notes a brochure, "from cartoons and comic books to real-life appearances at Disney Parks worldwide.”

Located in The Presidio by the main parade ground (104 Montgomery Street, not on the street of that name in downtown SF), the museum is open from 10 to 6, but last admission is at 4:45 pm, as you need two or more hours to really enjoy the exhibits. It closes Jan. 6, 2020.

A scene from 'Entropia' by Hungarian Flóra Anna Buda. image: courtesy F. A. Buda

Frameline Goes Animated

Frameline, San Francisco's world-famous LGBT festival, is presenting a program of animated films at the Roxie Theater Saturday, June 29th at 1:30 pm

The film "Entropia" (11m, 2019) is by Flóra Anna Buda, from Hungary. Winner of the Teddy Award for Best Short at the Berlin International Film Festival, it has vibrant colors that illustrate a science fiction tale about “queer relationships in the future without bras.”

"Biidaaban" (The Dawn Comes), by Amanda Strong (Canada, 19m, 2018), is a stop-motion work about “the indigenous musician-writer-poet Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.

Canadian provocateur Trevor Anderson gives us "Docking" (4m, 2018), which infuses absurdist humor in his inventive and surreal approach to documentary. Here he explores his fears of dating through phalluses in space.

"Les lèvres gercées", by Fabien Corre & Kelsi Phung (5m, 2018, France) deals with gender identity when a mother and child attempt to start a dialogue in their kitchen.

"Sweet Sweet Kink: A Collection of BDSM Stories", by Maggie M. Bailey (14m2019, USA/Chile), is a fun and sexy short, which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival. It tells four naughty stories, highlighting each of the letters of BDSM: bondage, dominance, and sadomasochism.

The featurette, "Top 3", is by Sofie Edvardsson (45m, 2019, Sweden). “In this funny, bittersweet romantic comedy, perpetual list-maker Anton falls in love with David," according to the website, "but things start to go awry when Anton realizes that his dreams in life might be in direct opposition to David’s.”

Another program includes "Bacchus", the all-too-brief trailer for which is full of stunning, exquisite, abstract images. This gem is an impressive work of art made by 3rd year character-animation and CG-art students at the University College in Viborg, Denmark's animation workshop. The film was a Viemo pick last year.

A cartoon Moses leads his people to freedom in Nina Paley's 'Seder-Masochism'. image: courtesy Nina Paley

The Jewish Film Festival

"Seder-Masochism", by Nina Paley ("Sita Sings the Blues, 2012), who lived in San Francisco from 1981 to 2002 (Castro, Haight, Mission and Noe Valley), is a beautifully crafted, highly entertaining and delightfully provocative. A musical retelling of the Exodus and Passover, think "Fanatasia" (1939) meets the Old Testament, coupled with serious feminist criticism and a rocking soundtrack. Paley’s syncopated, beat-driven scenes of the ten plagues are exceptionally drawn.

Besides Paley’s “Seder Machoism,” there are two more animated or part-animated features in the upcoming SF Jewish Film Festival.

Still from Rachel Leah Jones's 'Advocate'. image: courtesy F. A. Buda

Rachel Leah Jones's "Advocate" follows Israeli human-rights lawyer Lea Tsemel. Having defended Palestinians against a host of criminal charges in Israeli courts for nearly five decades, she is a staunch supporter of compassion within the court system. This documentary juxtaposes two of Tsemel’s cases: the defense of a minor accused of attempted murder and a past case in which she defended her activist husband from an accusation of treason against the state. Director Rachel Leah Jones was born in Berkeley and lives part time in Tel Aviv.

"The State Against Mandela and the Others", by Nicolas Champeaux and Gilles Porte, focuses on the 1963 trail of Nelson Mandela and nine confederates forattempting to overthrow the South African state. While Mandela’s story is well known, there were a number of important supporting actors in this drama, including members of South Africa’s small Jewish community. Blending chilling archival audio with striking animation and interviews with surviving defendants, "The State Against Mandela and the Others" vividly brings this seminal courtroom drama to life.

Karl Cohen is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .

Posted on Jun 10, 2019 - 12:23 AM
Karl Cohen: Cartoon King
by Doniphan Blair

Cartoon fanatic, scholar and maker Karl Cohen relaxes on a overstuffed couch in the similar front room of his San Francisco Victorian. photo: D. Blair

KARL COHEN WAS NOT SIMPLY
crowned king of Bay Area animation curation, a concept that would offend his egalitarian sensibilities, he had to slowly crawl his way to the top.

After growing up a nerdy, film-obsessed kid in 1950s Washington, DC, and getting his BA there, he headed west. Matriculating at the University of California, Berkeley, for an MA in art history, he barely graduated given that the Free Speech Movement exploded on campus, in his senior year, 1965.

“I got radicalized one morning as I was going to class,” he told me recently. “I saw limp protesters being hauled out of the administration building and tossed into paddy wagons. That was a horrible moment for me. I joined the picket line to show my support.”

Decamping shortly thereafter back to Squaresville, he pursued his chosen metier at the Des Moines Art Center, in Iowa, where he taught art history, and then the Toledo Museum of Art, in Ohio.

Within six years, however, he was back in the thick of it, moving to the Haight-Ashbury and showing his rapidly expanding film collection to the hippies, then the beats in North Beach and eventually all over.

Soon landing teaching gigs at almost every film department in the Bay Area, he became a fixture in the light show, film display and animation scene, which had kicked off locally a decade earlier with the arrival of blacklisted Disney animator David Hilberman at San Francisco State, in 1967.

Cohen (right) with new age musician George Mundy, for whom he did light shows, circa 1978. photo courtesy: K. Cohen

Cohen covered this important development in his major work, “Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animation” (1997, McFarland). He has also published almost two dozen major articles and several hundred lessor works (including "Cohen’s Cartoon Corner" in cineSOURCE, which has appeared monthly since the magazine’s inception in 2008).

Along the way he also made almost two dozen 16mm and Super-8 shorts, two of which garnered distro on the Midnight Movies circuit and television. Others appeared in many festivals, including the Chicago International and New York Erotic. Along with DP-ing the indie feature "Deeply Disturbed", from Loonic Video (1993), he has had one-man shows at the Intersection for the Arts and the Berkeley Film House.

In the 1980s, Cohen became the head of the local chapter of the Association International du Film d’Animation (ASIFA), which was founded in 1975 by Jeff and Margaret Hale (of "Sesame Street" and "Thank You Mask Man" fame), Prescott Wright ("International Tournée of Animation") and others. Since then, he has published its newsletter and recently received the international organization's lifetime achievement award, which is usually reserved for directors.

He also became a special effects specialist, notably of UFO-related material, some so lifelike it inspired UFO-sighting testimonials, but also more routine footage for the likes of Bank of America or Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

In 1993, Cohen began teaching his now-famous animation class at San Francisco State, growing it from cut-and-dry lectures to a multifaceted survey of animation, replete with incredible shows from his extensive collection.

"While I still cover the basics," Cohen told me, by email, "I also add important themes, including the importance of surrealism in animation, the use of seemingly-harmless cartoons for propaganda or to present provocative subjects to adults. I discuss the importance of art to what makes animation truly great."

Despite suffering a stroke in 1998, he gets around with a cane and remains a vocal supporter of animation, notably its more experimental aspects. Given this and his decade-plus dedication to writing for cineSOURCE, as well as the amazingly-elevated position the Bay Area holds in the history of animation, I had long wanted to sit down for a chat with Cohen.

We finally did so at the end of May at his deluxe digs, a four-story Victorian just eight blocks from the epicenter of the Summer of Love, the corners of Haight and Ashbury.

Cohen veers easily from good humor to incisive seriousness. photo courtesy: D. Blair

cineSOURCE: So you were here when the storied Haight-Ashbury was just around the corner?

Karl Cohen: I moved back from the Midwest in 1971, when the Haight was a mess.

I came in the fall of ‘71 and was confronted by an apocalyptic image. As you recall, the entire street was covered with graffiti, all the stores were boarded up—

Not all, I showed movies in one of them.

I became friends with Eric “Big Daddy” Nord, a somewhat-famous beatnik. He was the biggest of the beatniks, over six feet—250 to 300 pounds, I would guess.

He was asked by Tony Serra [famous Bay Area lefty lawyer] to live in the back of an empty store because Tony wanted someone in the space so it wouldn’t get destroyed by vandals. It had been the Print Mint [which did Zap Comix issues #4–9].

What was your specialty then?

Cartoons and comedies, the classics.

How did the hippies take to the Marx Brothers—they must have loved it.

It was fun showing films there, but there was not much of an audience, even though we were only asking for $1 donations. Then I was invited to go down to North Beach and start a Sunday night series that I ran for about 15 years at Intersection on 756 Union Street.

Intersection for the Arts?

Yes, they’ve since moved. In the early ‘80s they had a new director who decided to turn it into a conceptual art center. So she got rid of the poetry project, the comedian workshops, the film shows.

She thought conceptual was the big new thing?

Yes. The rent had been a dollar a year from Glide Memorial Church that owned the building. [She said,] ‘Oh, we can’t do that to the Methodists, we have to pay rent.’ [They said,] ‘Oh you want to pay rent, we will find out what the going rent is in North Beach.’ ‘Oh, we can’t pay that.’ Then they said, ‘Get the hell out.’

When did you get bit by the film bug?

Buster Keaton and Cosmic Animation: two typical nights from when Cohen was curating film at Intersection for the Arts, circa 1975. image courtesy: K. Cohen

By the time I was five or six. I grew up in Washington, DC, My father had 8mm movies of Charlie Chaplin and I loved looking at those. It was an unorthodox cinematic education.

I was about eight when my Uncle Danny opened the Dupont Theatre, Washington’s first integrated movie theater. It got picketed by the KKK, and the Hollywood film exchanges would not give him their films. Out of necessity, he ended up showing lots of documentaries and foreign films.

By the 1950s, the Circle Theatre was showing foreign and revival programs. I ended up seeing Eisenstein and so on by the time I was ten or twelve. I loved Cocteau [‘Blood of the Poet’, 1930, ‘Beauty and the Beast’, 1946]. When most kids were learning to love ‘Howdy Doody’ [TV show, 1947-60], I was enjoying Buñuel and lots of British comedies: Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers.

When were you finally bitten by animation?

I grew up with it. The MacArthur Theater in Washington showed UPA [United Producers Association] animation on programs with British comedies. I went to other theaters that showed three-hour-long cartoon marathons. I became a fan of Bugs [Bunny] and Daffy [Duck].

I was obsessed with those, too. In one of your recent ‘Cartoon Corners’, you were covering ‘Crusader Rabbit’. An early example of Bay Area animation?

Yup.

That was the first successful animated series made for TV [1950]. There were other examples prior to that, but they are all obscure footnotes in history. The voice of Crusader Rabbit was Lucille Bliss, who had voiced one of Cinderella’s evil sisters and later became the voice of Smurfette. She lived in the Castro and was a delightful friend, as she loved to talk about her long career.

You grew up watching ‘Crusader Rabbit’ and were pretty impressed?

I don’t know. As a kid, I wasn't thinking in terms of impressive; it was entertainment. But I was too old for it so I rarely watched it.

I saw the replays, eight-ten years later, and found them to be fantastic. They had a lot of adventures—they went to the South Seas. They really created this story line, friendship and adventure.

Yup.

Disney was only movies then?

Yup. Disney hated TV at that point. That was before he made millions on TV.

Cohen gets a hug from Marjane Satrapi, director of the ground-breaking 'Persepolis' (2007), after his interview that inspired her 45 minute rant about the insanity of Iran and the US and the power of animation. photo courtesy: K. Cohen

At some point you started teaching at State and got into cartoons?

It came from showing them. I recognized that the audience loved them. I loved them. I realized that the best animation is a great form of kenetic art. I started to get serious about collecting 16mm animated shorts in the Midwest.

I was working in the art museum in Des Moines. There was a man who had a small basement theater in his house. He showed great classics like ‘The Great Dictator’ [1940], ‘Metropolis’ [1927] and ‘Phantom of the Opera’ [1925].

He introduced me to a magazine where I could buy these films. So I started buying 16mm prints of cartoons, silent comedies and other films, even 1950s and ‘60s TV commercials. I just loved collecting and showing them.

And you still have—?

Yes, upstairs, although it is dangerous to go in the room.

I assume Steve Parr [1953-2018, a mutual friend and owner of Oddball Films] would come over and try to convince you to give him a few of those reels?

Oh yeah!

Did you give some?

Of course [both laugh]. I wish I had given him more.

Parr used to toss extremely large gatherings when he lived south of Market. At one party there was a rather unusual guy going around with a can of shaving cream and a pie tin, asking young women rub a tin full of cream in his face. It was quite pleasurable for him—judging from the wet spot on his pants—and he found several women who obliged him that evening.

I wrote a note to Herb Caen [the long time SF columnist, 1916-97] about 'Pie Face' Mike. He found a discrete way to mention Mike and Steve. We became better friends based on my getting him in Caen’s column. Parr seemed quite delighted with those few minutes of fame.

Do you still show 16mm—?

Now no one is showing 16mm anymore, only transfers to DVD and other digital formats.

I used to show them to my students at San Francisco State. All my animation history classes had films presented on 16mm—except more recent work—from my collection.

When did you start teaching there?

1993.

That is about when Pixar started. So the Bay Area—please tell me why—became this world center for animation.

Because people liked to live here, and you don’t need famous movie stars to do the voices. As far as the production goes, you can do that anywhere. So a lot of people said, ‘where do you want to live?’ And they said, ‘San Francisco.’

But let me go back, the industry on the West Coast started in your hometown?

Oakland?

You know where it was?

That place near Fremont?

Cohen covers Phil Tippett, a stop-motion creature specialist, who did stuff for 'Star Wars' and 'Jurassic Park', which appeared in a local media mag, Film-Tape World (1979-2007). photo courtesy: K. Cohen

Niles? No, that was live action.

There was an animator working in Oakland from 1915-1916, up till 1918 or later. You know who Willis O'Brien is?

No.

He animated the stop-motion puppet in ‘King Kong’ [1933].

His early experimental work was distributed by Edison. He lived in Oakland and then moved his studio to San Francisco. It was at Powell and Market on the roof of a bank. He needed a good source of light.

Amazing. So the Bay Area—specifically the East Bay—has been at the cutting edge of animation for 100 years?

Yes.

So then there was the North Bay animation scene. When did that kick in?

When Lucas went up there, after the original ‘Star Wars’ [1977].

When was the golden age of animation in the Bay Area?

Ahhh, I would say there wasn’t one. It is all transitory.

Martin Rosen produced ‘Plague Dogs’ [1982] at a space in North Beach. The following year ‘Twice Upon a Time’, made in Mill Valley, was released. It was directed by John Korty and Chuck Swenson, George Lucas as the executive producer. It was a nice period, but it wasn’t a golden age.

There was a time when there was a lot of stuff up at Hamilton Fields [ImageMovers, Robert Zemeckis].

They did motion capture and a lot of stuff for Disney.

That was about 1990, and then the Disney Museum opened here.

That was ten years ago [2009], because the family lived up here. Diane Disney-Miller and her husband Ron Miller. They created Sterling Vineyards.

By the time you add it all up, the Bay Area has been a big player.

Yes, but it doesn’t have a nice, logical history, because it is always being interrupted.

And now it is on sort of a downturn?

You have TV animation starting here with ‘Crusader Rabbit’ but going nowhere. The next productions are in LA. At that point, Alex Anderson—Jay Ward’s partner [the co-creator of 'Crusader'], who was in advertising—he didn’t go to LA with Jay. So you really don’t have that continuum.

‘Crusader Rabbit’ basically died. There was a lawsuit. It was in production from 1948 to 1950, when a lawsuit ended the production. The studio was in rooms over Jay Ward’s parent’s garage in Berkeley, and the sound was recorded in SF.

Cohen drops by a film night hosted by the late, great Steve Parr, long time friend and coveter of Cohen's fantastic film collection. photo: D. Blair

The first episodes were made for about $500 each—that is why the productions were called ‘limited animation.’ Now Alex Anderson’s animation stand and archive belong to our Cartoon Art Museum, in Fisherman's Wharf. When production started up again, in the 1950s, Ward had moved to LA [1956-59].

The companies that were in San Francisco... you had John Magnuson, who did ‘Thank You Masked Man’, with Jeff Hale directing [written and voiced by Lenny Bruce, 1971]. They had a studio called Imagination Incorporated in the late ‘60s and into the ‘70s, but then that dies. They created a lot of TV commercials and segments for 'Sesame Street'.

Where was that?

In North Beach, on Jackson.

What I would say, if there was golden age, it would be the late ‘70s to early ‘80s. You have John Korty, who won an Oscar for ‘Who are the DeBolts’ [1977], a documentary about a family, which had ten or fifteen kids [19, actually].

He had a studio in Mill Valley, and he got a contract from ‘Sesame Street’.

All the way in from New York?

Yes. He needed animators. So he hired animators who were learning animation by the seat of their pants.

Two of them were Gary Gutierrez and Drew Takahashi. While working for Korty, they got a contract, around ’75, to do the animation for the Grateful Dead feature—the introduction of the film was animated. They did this cosmic pinball game in outer space set to Grateful Dead music, some tuning-up sounds, which was very weird. It was great.

When they got the contract to do the opening footage, Korty said something like, ‘I don’t want that in my studio, it will take up too much space,’ whatever his excuses were. So Gary and Drew did it in Drew’s mother’s basement. It was a Victorian in SF. In 1976, they incorporated as Colossal Pictures and they lasted until ‘99.

They moved down to Bayshore at some point.

They were all over. I followed them for years. They were the best animation company in town, practically the only one. They did fantastic work.

They did features as well?

Titles for lots of features and TV shows plus the special effects for ‘The Right Stuff’.

It looks simple but it was very effective.

[laughs] They had wires strung outside the building, where they would film at just the right time of day or night, when the wire wouldn’t show, shooting at a certain angle. They would slide flaming space capsules coming back into earth on those wires.

They also hired the late Jordan Belson, a great unsung visionary filmmaker [pre-computer, computer-like effects, see his master work ‘Mandala’, 1953], to create amazing images for the feature.

Colossal Pictures did some TV animation that is still some of the best animation you have ever seen—from Captain Crunch to Coca-Cola commercials, as well as early titles for ‘Saturday Night Live’, ‘The Twilight Zone’ and MTV.

A Betty Boop-impersonator, hired by Cohen's wife Denise, entertains him on his 60th birthday. photo: courtesy K. Cohen

[They also did ‘Back to the Future: The Animated Series’, 1991, the "Aeon Flux" series for MTV, 1991-95, and effects for ‘Bram Stoker's Dracula’, 1991, ‘Demolition Man’, 1993, and ‘Natural Born Killers’, 1994, among many others.]

Did you yourself do cel animation?

I did experimental animation, cutouts, optical effects.

I also created a series of postcards of UFOs flying over SF. They were sold for many years in stores around the world. SF Magazine published my circular space station flying over the Transamerica Building in a full page ad for subscriptions to the magazine.

At one point, I got a very strange phone call from the ‘Cosmic Lady’ thanking me for photographing the UFO she had seen.

When did you start teaching animation?

I’d rather not name the school. It was a horrible school.

We formed a legal union and went out on strike against them. We won our strike. When we were reinstated, they said I had to teach what my staff replacement was teaching. I was teaching film history and he was teaching a course in animation.

So this is your Rosebud moment, you were forced into it by the oppressor?

Exactly.

I think that is common artistically: doing something by necessity not choice.

I was friends with Marcy Page and others who worked for Colossal. I put together a course overnight. I knew enough about it because I had been doing under-the-camera animation with cutouts.

Cutouts, that is a great tradition, too. Where did that start—must have been very early?

I don’t honestly know.

Your class was a practicum?

Yes, I also brought in a lot of films to show. Later I did a few courses with SF State Extension.

At some point, you switched to doing the history of animation?

Yes, in the early 1990s at State.

And, at that moment, Pixar blew up and you knew those people?

Cohen dug deep into his vaults for material even shocking to Berkeleyites, circa 1999. photo courtesy: K. Cohen

Oh god, yes. When they were in Richmond—before they got the fabulous place in Emeryville—they were in temporary buildings, sprawled over a large area. That is where people started running around on skateboards, rolling skates and scooters.

I did an interview for Film Tape World with John Lasseter. His office was twice the size of this [room] and it had nothing but shelves full of toys, stuffed bears, metal toys, trucks, whatever.

For inspiration?

Yeah.

You wrote a couple of pretty tough articles about women complaining about John, are you still on speaking terms?

I haven’t seen him in years. Last time I saw him was at the opening of the Disney Museum. My wife and I came in and he gave me a big hug—no big deal—he was a hugger. Diane Disney-Miller was there with him, greeting people.

A bit like Biden, borderline but not with real bad intention. Nevertheless, he suffered quite a bit from it.

Yeah. John knew me by name, when I came in the door, but since then so much has happened. I feel sorry for him. He is just a boy at heart—an overgrown boy.

Once, years ago, when Spike and Mike [Craig 'Spike' Decker and Mike Gribble] were in town, presenting one of their ‘Sick and Twisted’ shows’, they rented a luxury apartment on the top of a tall building overlooking the Fisherman’s Wharf area. They were probably a little tipsy and, in any case, someone ordered pizzas.

So what did they do when the pizza boxes were empty? John Lasseter and Mike Gribble were at the window. ‘Hey, let’s see how far they can be thrown.’ They were throwing these cardboard rounds, that you have in pizza boxes, out the window. They were asked to clean up their mess and told not to come to back. [laughs]

Yes, that was an incredible boom time but—

It died.

Where did it move to, back to LA?

Animation is still written and designed on paper here in the US, and then it is shipped abroad to do the work.

The first ‘runaway production’ [sent overseas] was Jay Ward’s ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends’ [1959-1964]. The sponsor had a deal with a studio in Mexico. Their first work was awful, so Jay had to fly one or two LA animators to Mexico City, to teach that crew how to animate.

Soon other studios were sending work to Taiwan and Australia. I knew two women who moved to Taiwan to supervise a major production.

They ran into so much sexism on the job that they would have to call LA saying, ‘Hey so-and-so here at the studio, we asked him to make the changes, and he refused to listen to us. Could you tell him he will be fired if he doesn’t cooperate?’ It got down to threatening the guy’s career.

Women had to do a lot to win their rights to be recognized as descent human beings. It was hard.

And descent animators?

I won’t go that far. A lot of them were put in secondary positions. Disney wouldn’t even hire them in the 1930s, in a creative position. He would only hire them for ink and paint [coloring in the pencil sketches].

Cohen with Ron Diamond, producer of 'The Animation Show of Shows', which has featured outstanding animation from around the world for the last 20 years. photo courtesy: K. Cohen

He had a standard letter which said, ‘We do not hire women to do the creative work,' I was told by former Disney employees. The administration felt, ‘Why spend the money training the women to become artists when they are going to get pregnant and leave?’

Nevertheless a few women were hired in better jobs?

Mary Blair was one of his favorite designers in the 1940s and '50s. Retta Scott did some of the animals for ‘Bambi’ [1942]. She was here working on ‘The Plague Dogs’, probably her last job.

Right after that, Korty did ‘Twice Upon a Time’. He only put up the money, didn’t direct, although he is listed in the credits as a director, along with Charles Swenson, who did direct. Lucas put up some money. That was probably the pinnacle of animation here, along with the Grateful Dead feature.

It was a wonderful period, although ‘Plague Dogs’ was a very sad story. It was a British production [concerning two dogs who escape from a research lab]. Producer Martin Rosen did it here because he wanted to live in San Francisco—didn’t want to put up with a winter in London. So he opened a studio and hired Brad Bird—

Of Pixar?

Yup—[director of] ‘The Incredibles’ [2004] and ‘The Iron Giant’ [1999]. Brad Bird was a young animator working on ‘Plague Dogs’, along with Retta Scott, and Phil Robinson ['Casper', 1995, 'The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat', 1995].

Was there a feeder school producing a lot of these animators?

San Francisco State started its animation program around 1967 with David Hilberman, who was one of the blacklisted animators who moved here.

Blacklisted for what?

Walt Disney hated him—thought Dave was a communist. Dave told me and others that Disney must have thought that he ‘was the son-of-a-bitch behind the strike [Disney animators went on strike in 1941] and I’m going to get him.’ And he did.

So Walt Disney was not just anti-Semitic, he was a very vindictive guy?

He hired several Jews in key roles and was friendly towards them. I interviewed many of his retired employees and they never heard him say anything negative about Jews—that includes Dave [Hilberman].

That kind of contradicts the Saturday Night Live thing where Mickey shows the kids around the vault—isn’t that a masterpiece?

I show that to my students, it is ‘Journey to the Disney Vaults'.

It is one of the greatest spoofs—politically incisive as well as well acted. Poor Mickey is constantly trying to cover up, but he is chagrined to tell the kids about anti-Semitism.

Walt wasn’t openly anti-Semitic. However, he did have a typically southern upbringing that was offensive towards blacks. The NAACP went after him over blatantly racist moments in ‘The Song of the South’ [1946, an animated/live-action musical].

Cohen drops by Industrial Light and Magic's theater in the Presidio with his wife Denise, circa 1999. photo: courtesy K. Cohen

I interviewed Maurice Rapf, one of the film's scriptwriters. He was hired by Walt to clean up anything in ‘The Song of the South’ that might be objectionable to blacks. Maurice did that and then went on to do other projects at Disney. When the film came out, Maurice discovered Walt left in some of the offensive material that he recommended should be cut.

Maurice was one of several Jews Walt hired. He told me he believed Walt hired him because he offered a liberal perspective on the film. He believed Walt knew he was left wing and probably sympathetic towards communism, views quite different from Walt’s. Maurice said he met regularly with his boss and never saw any signs of anti-Semitism. He left in 1947 over a salary dispute.

In the early 1950s he was blacklisted. In his autobiography he talks about his politics, as he did when I interviewed him for ‘Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators.”

When Walt named Hilberman as a possible communist, I believe it was because he thought Hilberman was one of the major strike leaders. David disagreed. I knew David fairly well. He used to insist, ‘All I did was go around with cards asking, ‘Would you support us if we formed a union?’

And that is what he did. He followed the law of the National Labor Relations Board; he got the signatures and turned them into the union leaders. Others were the union leaders, not David.

The government recognized their strike as valid. They won. But Disney refused to go along with it, at first. He drew out the strike until it was the longest strike in film history, at that time. MGM and Warner Bros, they agreed right away.

The way the Disney strike ended, someone contacted the government—possibly Roy Disney—asking, ‘Can you do something.’ They went to Nelson Rockefeller, who was the head of the Pan American Union, an association Roosevelt supported. It was helping to create positive relationships with Latin America, due to worries that some Latin American nations might support Nazi Germany.

Rockefeller invited Disney to do a goodwill tour of South America. He was going crazy in the studio. I don’t know whether rumors were true or not, but he was supposedly washing his hands several times an hour and developed a nervous tic. They got him out of the way and his brother Roy settled the strike—supposedly, they say—in 24 hours.

What is your take on the man, in sum?

I agree Walt was a great producer. I loved the work that came out of his studio. Yes, it was very family-oriented, wholesome. He pushed his artists; he created great works of art; but to quote Dave, 'he was a son-of-a-bitch.'

What are some of your favorite films? I love ‘Snow White’ [1939] and ‘Jungle Book’ [1967].

A lot of the old work under his direction is great.

When Snow White walks into the first scene, it is better than any digital animation I have ever seen.

Yeah. It’s gorgeous work. ‘Fantasia’ [1940] is wonderful film.

Of course, ‘Fantasia’ is a masterpiece, shows that he is an artist. ‘Fantasia’ shows he opposed the Nazis, the symbolism is against mind control.

Disney made several WWII films that were very anti-Nazi. I don’t think he was ever favorable to their cause.

He was financially screwed by the Nazis. They showed ‘Snow White’ and some of his shorts and didn’t pay the rental fee. And Disney was a real businessperson: if you stiffed Disney, he was going to stiff you. He was nasty. Doing business with Disney was not always a gentleman’s handshake.

(Rt) Animation producer Marcy Page and animation teacher Diana Morse present Cohen a lifetime ASIFA Award, usually reserved for directors, at the Ottawa Animation Festival, 2008. photo courtesy: K. Cohen

If you were a Nazi not paying your bills—which they weren’t—then... He and Roy even went to Germany before the war to collect the money owed them. They met with some of the top Nazis—I don’t know if he met with Hitler or not—to try and get some of his money back.

What do you make of the fact Disney is essentially the biggest film corporation in the world now? Kind of odd, symbolically—the 'toons take over.

I think Walt would be very pleased to know that. The Wall Street Journal reported that his Mouse franchise sold three billion dollars' worth of products last year and the Star Wars items also represent an impressive chunk of change.

Do you think it is a good thing? Are they doing good work?

Most of their products don’t interest me. Their features are pretty frightening. You have the ‘lovely’ princesses films—

You find them just way too commercial?

Yeah. It is teaching all the wrong things to girls. When you go to Disneyland, you can have a Disney princess birthday party for her and buy her fake royal gowns—it’s nauseating.

What do you think of Disneyland in general?

It was fun. I have always been there as a guest of someone who works there. The entrance fee is over a hundred bucks now [$95-119 for adults, depending on day]. You can spend a very nice tidy sum staying at the Disney Hotel, although I think it includes free admission to the park.

But you know, they put on beautiful theatrical programs in their little theater, often very innovative, almost always musicals.

Yeah, but very wholesome. It is fine. The Christian right hates Disney for their stance on homosexuals.

Disney accepted homosexuals? When did they do that?

They accepted LGBT both as employees and as guests in their theme parks many decades ago. The Christian Right decided to ‘protect’ their flock by having boycotts. They hated Disney for holding things like ‘Gay Night’ in the park. I would have to look for the years when [the American Family Association and Southern Baptist Convention] called for boycotts. [The mid-‘90s.]

Around that time, they had a couple of gay characters [like Scar from ‘The Lion King’, 1994, according to many, given statements like ‘Oh, I shall practice my curtsy,’ and his lack of a mate.]

They have had gays on staff for decades. Some of the most creative people at Disney have been gay—they know that.

With gays he was OK?

Yes. The thing about Disney he was a Southerner and he did not realize his attitude was not loved in the North. He grew up in rural Missouri, for part of his childhood.

After WWI he was living in Kansas City, as was his brother Roy. They formed their first company with Ub Iwerks, a very creative and remarkable animator [an American of German descent].

The public is misled to believe Disney was a great animator, but by the mid-1920s he wasn’t animating. He was creating the scripts and making creative decisions, but he left animating to Ub. Together with Roy, he was running a company.

Iwerks was the genius who designed and animated the first Mickeys and silly symphony cartoons. Walt no doubt contributed a great deal to their creation, but Ub gets full screen credit on the main title card as the animator.

Animation was a great boon for hallucination, a spur to letting your mind run away. Watching Looney Tunes imprinted us all at an early age.

Yes.

Remember the time we went to Steve Parr’s and saw the pre-Hayes Code cartoons of cows with big—

Udders?

Very funny.

Denise and Karl Cohen do the Great Wall of China in 2004ll. photo courtesy: K. Cohen

Disney had one film where the cow is au natural, and she gets invited to party, and she puts on a skirt. That was the film that got the censor— originally the Oklahoma censor—to realize, ‘Oh my God, that cow is NAKED!’ And the censor’s reaction was perfectly logic, 'We can’t allow that!'

That was a Disney cartoon, black and white, made 1932-33, while strict enforcement of the Hayes Code began in 1934.

So he was really quite edge pushing when it came to those cows?

I don’t think Disney thought about it. The people who were offended were the censors in Oklahoma.

They were going along with the storytelling of the day, which was quite sexual because it was the Swinging ‘20s?

You did what was logical. I have never seen a cow with a hat or a dress on, have you? If you were a photographer and you took a picture of a cow, it wouldn’t occur to you that the cow doesn't have clothes on. [laughs]

I had known things were quite wild prior to the Hayes Code but I didn’t realize.

Yes, you see Betty Boop with her underwear showing. There is one 'Betty Boop' where you see through a hole in the wall, and a mouse is in bed with his wife. He gets up and goes to another bed—you know what is going on.

What do you see for animation in the future, aside from the mega blockbuster, family affairs?

The future of animation is excellent, if it comes from Europe or Japan.

If it comes from the US, outside of Pixar, it is probably going to be a little immature, loud, fast-paced. You end up with countless sequels. You are going to see sequel after sequel; you have ‘The Minions Part 12’ coming up.

They have become products, and they will milk as much money out of them as possible. They have created a recognizable product, and the kids are anxious to see more of this stuff.

There is also a lot of alternative animation?

Yeah. A lot of what is being done experimentally is wonderful, but the problem in this country is: we don't have the financial resources available for artists. They are not well compensated for the animation, except on TV. Some animators believe their only chance to make decent money is to create a successful TV series.

There is that lovely woman, Nina Paley, is she local?

No. She is now living in Urbana, Illinois, near the University of Illinois.

Her piece animating the old goddesses—

Oh, that is wonderful: 'You Gotta Believe' [2017].

Did you ever see Sally Cruikshank’s ‘Quasi at the Quackadero’ [1979]?

No.

She was here locally for about ten years 1970-1980, approximately [also did stuff for ‘Sesame Street’]. She was working for Gregg Snazelle as his in-house animator. ‘If I need a sample [shot], I want you to do it right away. And I want you on hand to pitch it. But when you are not pitching or doing my stuff, do what you want.’

She had ten years carte blanche do what she wanted. Her ‘Quasi at the Quackadero’ is now in the Library of Congress: 'one of the greatest of all times.'

Comedy Central has quite a few animated things on there. Where are all those made—‘Bob’s Burgers’?

Cohen relaxes against the 1930 Plymouth, owned by Vince Collins, who specializes in psychedelic animation and was visiting Cohen at the time. photo courtesy: K. Cohen

There is nothing centralized. The thing with TV animation is, that’s not where the really exciting animation is. Yes, ‘The Simpsons’ are still funny.

So you still give 'The Simpsons' high marks after 25 years? I saw one recently: they look very much the same.

I haven’t watched a ‘Simpson’ episode in years. They have good people and it is a formula now. They’ve done every script three or four times now—different characters but the same plot line. They actually just had the poorest audience rating they ever had, but they have a contract guaranteed for two more years.

Are you a fan of the ‘South Park’ guys?

I don’t watch TV. I have seen it. It is mildly amusing. I don’t know if I have ever watched an entire ‘South Park’ show. What I enjoy is seeing is European animation.

Anyone in particular, or country: Czech, Polish?

Any country. Schools are turning out brilliant students. So are the schools in the US. But in the US, if you do an exciting film, you have no place to show it. You’re lucky if you get it into a few festivals, and they don’t offer much money, if at all.

San Francisco is lucky to have the San Francisco International, which pays $2000 for the winning animated short, which is really good—I thank them for that. But the other people get nothing except a few free tickets and an invite to a party.

We just don’t have good animation festivals outside of the Bay Area.

There is one in The Netherlands.

There were two. One is more experimental, one is more for laughs, but the government said recently that they have to combine.

Were there any film in particular you remember really striking a chord with hippie audiences?

I was showing animated shorts. ‘The Sunshine Makers’ was a perennial favorite people are still talking about. Elves were singing the song ‘Sunshine, sunshine, I drink lots of golden sunshine.’ People were thinking that golden sunshine was LSD, sunshine acid, that was the brand name of the acid that Owsley had.

I did light shows for Bill Graham Auditorium, the Oakland Coliseum for Dead concerts for New Year's Eve. I used to show films at the Fillmore Auditorium before I had my stroke. I had great shows and full houses.

There was a Douglas Fairbanks comedy where he was high on coke. The character was called, Coke Anyday.

Pre-Hayes Code?

Yes, a silent comedy. It's a funny short. Audiences enjoyed that sort of thing. I also showed lots of Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny, with the sound off—films that were visually great.

What are your favorites from that period: Popeye, Mickey Mouse, Road Runner?

They were all great. I don’t have a top ten list. The cartoons were outrageous, not because of the character but the writing. They were all different directors, different stars.

Cohen's house is stuffed to the gills with the oddest art collection imaginable, including a nice little West African display. photo: D. Blair

I was a contributor to the Cartoon Network's book on the 50 Greatest Cartoons in the late ‘90s. I pretty much agree with their top-fifty list [see it here]. It was based on a fairly good sampling of totally crazed animation fans—supposedly a thousand of us.

I guess animation and cartoons have been popular since the late 1800s. They started slow with political cartoons. But, at some point, it just took off like a rocket—and it is still taking off.

Most of it I am not that interested in, it is made for TV. Hollywood Reporter is now hyping a comedy show with characters with human bodies and bird heads—I assume they talk and act like humans.

‘Tuca and Bertie’? That’s the new one from the people who did ‘Bojack Horseman’. Did you get to see that?

No, but I saw a sample of this ‘Tuca and Bertie’. It is all juvenile, pee-pee-caca kind of thing.

‘Bojack Horeman is quite hipster. The main character is played by Will Arnett but it uses this trope of having animal characters—an interesting multicultural trope—built into the middle of the show. I enjoyed it.

It has bunch of throw away hipster humor but also quite a bit of introspection, self-doubt, sex, drugs and alcohol.

But how mature is the content? Sex drugs and alcohol, let's get beyond that. Do they take on Trump?

I think they're last season was pre-Trump.

There are couple of hallucinatory episodes which were quite good. One of the greatest hallucinatory episodes was on 'The Simpsons'. He licks a toad or something and he goes into a completely psychedelic universe—did you see that episode?

No, but I would enjoy it.

You can look it up on YouTube [actually no, YouTube makes you pay for that episode].

He is in some weird space that is collapsing and, all of sudden, he is sucked out through some sort of drain into live-action filmmaking. Homer is played by a guy in a bizarre suit with a cartoony face,who is walking along what seems like a street in LA. He passes a bakery with I believe some gay baked goods and is, like, ‘Wow.’

That is a whole genre, hallucinatory cartoons. You remember 'Dream of a Rarebit Fiend’ [1906]?

Sure.

That would be a great show. Exploring when the animators finally convinced the producers to let them use their metamorphosizing skills to follow a hallucinatory plot line.

So some of your art was used for the production of blotter acid?

I was amused that they used my UFOs, but I have no idea if the product was any good. They didn’t offer me a sample, they simply used my design. They saw my UFO photos in a gallery that sold my special effect photos and they contacted me.

Oswley?

No, some one else, I don’t remember their names—too many years ago.

The big question today is what is society going to do with all those kids graduating from animation school?

The future of animation in this country is the internet.

But how will they derive an income?

That is the problem. People have a million viewers, who said they ‘like,’ but they didn’t get any money. So, as result, they will go elsewhere for their livelihood.

(Left) A famous shot of UFOs over the TransAmerica building created by Cohen for SF Magazine, circa 1984. images courtesy: K. Cohen

The educational system is producing too many people with career potential for whom there is no opening. Or it may take them months or years before they can utilize their talents. In some cases schools are overproducing.

Supposedly more art students graduate each year then there are art jobs in the country.

I am sure. It is a shame. That leads to a lot of disillusioned people, that are having exorbitant student loan bills. Betsy DeVos doesn’t want to acknowledge that there is a major crisis of debt in this country.

It scares me as a teacher. I do my best to explain the subject and how students can do their best, but I don’t have jobs to offer. I can write letters of support, promote resources and give advice, but we have a system that is out of balance.

What would it take to balance it? Cut back on the department?

We have a small highly-successful, well-run animation program [at State], only about 25 or 30 carefully-screened and hand-picked students. Most of our former students—when I do run into them—do find employment in animation. I think the problem is with the for-profits that accept anybody who can pay, regardless of qualifications.

I ran into a woman who was working as a producer in an animation company 30 years ago. Now she is a student just taking it for her own edification and wants to do personal work. She doesn’t want to get employment within 30 days of graduation—but a lot of students will be facing collection agencies.

There are a couple of growth markets. Netflix is gearing up for animation. They are doing Netflix shorts, but whether it pays or not I don’t know. For my students, I certainly hope so.

Are you still teaching a class?

Yes. 'The History of Animation' at State. I go back to Winsor McCay [1866-1934], 'Gertie the Dinosaur' [1914], 'Dream of a Rarebit Fiend', but very quickly. The students need to know about what came before the Golden Age and they need to see some of the great classics. The other half of the class is about modern animation from Europe, Asia and the Americas.

I guess that covers it except for one last question, where would you point the young animator: the San Francisco State program?

Oh yes. It is extremely reasonable, as are the other state schools. San Jose also has an excellent program and it is absurd to pay the price of a private college.

If you want a similar education for almost free, you can go any of the community colleges. SF City [College] has a good program. Tim Harrington ['Rango', 2011, among many others] is teaching a course in animation. De Anza College has a well-established program, headed by Marty McNamara.

Cañada College, in San Mateo county, also has a good one. The head of the program is a Paul Nass, a former Disney animator—at one point Paul was teaching adults at Disney in Orlando. There are teachers who once worked at Colossal, WildBrain, Electronic Arts and other local companies.

Is there anything like an animation collective or avant-garde group here in town?

Not that I know of. There are members of ASIFA-SF, who are individual talents, and they network. But a workshop, no.

You are still the head of that group? What sort of stuff do you do?

We publish a monthly newsletter, ten to eighteen pages, that is quite informative to people who love animation. We have four or more screenings a year.

One is with the animators who were nominated for the animated shorts Academy Awards. Another is with Ron Diamond, his annual pick of films he admires that are winning awards at international animation festivals. Another presents the latest films from the National Film Board of Canada, with one or more guest animators presenting.

We do programs, big events, screenings at State. We have full houses in our 150 seat theater—it is not a huge but that is still 140-150 people who care. We hold an annual animation celebration that showcases new films by professional, independent and student artists. [For further info, go here].

But people are quite happy staying at home watching the internet or videos with their kids. We live in an exciting city, so whatever you are doing has competition.

Yup, it is a struggle.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on May 30, 2019 - 11:15 AM
Scoping the SFIFF Shorts
by Jerry McDaniel

'The Slows', from local screenwriter Nicole Perlman ('Guardians of the Galaxy', 2014), sees a forested dystopian future. photo N. courtesy Perlman

WHEN I ATTENDED THE SFIFF "SHORTS 2"
program at the Roxie, I largely enjoyed all six films, ranging in length from 10 to 23 minutes, the first four mentioned here presented by Cinema by the Bay films.

Paloma Martinez, out of Palo Alto, brings us the provocative and timely “Enforcement Hours”, a visual road trip meandering around San Francisco to a track of telephone recordings. The calls are to an emergency contact center for people experiencing an ICE raid. The confusion and fear of the callers, even though they are living here, in a sanctuary state, is palpable. Bizarrely, some jack-asses call up just to harrass them.

“Director’s Commentary” is a bit meta-experimental. As it opens we see the two characters, played by director John Herschend and the always funny and beautiful, Beth Lissick (see cineSOURCE article), who has done lots of film work around the Bay, at a bar talking. Simultaneously, we see the people who play the actors and the purported director of this movie in little bubbles discussing and giving commentary of the scene. This works with some funny Segway riding and moments of fourth wall breaking. Toward the end, this cute, little flick devolves into a dance movie, which is what it wanted to be all along.

In “Dunya’s Day” director Raeed Alsemari finds laugh out loud funny at a wedding in Saudi Arabia. photo courtesy R. Alsemari

Local screenwriter Nicole Perlman, who co-wrote "Guardians of the Galaxy" (2014, Marvel Comics/Walt Disney), puts on her director hat for “The Slows”. This narrative is set somewhere in the future when the majority of the human race lives only as adults because the children are aged extremely rapidly by an advanced scientific method. There’s a sterile, sort of revolutionary aspect to the story which brings to mind Ayn Rand’s “Anthem” (1938).

Clandestinely, the lead female character acquires a pass to visit a compound out in the woods. There a group of people are living in a more natural and down-to-earth manner than the clearly messed up and humorless way of thinking inside the city. She seems to be attracted to the animality that the dirty inhabitants of the primitive village embody, even coming to a realization that she eventually has to act on. I’m looking forward to what Perlman will do next.

Cambodia is the setting for producer/director Kalyanee Mam’s study of how Singapore’s dredging of huge amounts of sand from the beautiful island environment is slowly but surely having a devastating effect on the locals’ way of life. This is another testament to the sad fact that humanity is eating itself and all living things without any sense of responsibility. Scenes of the main character visiting the great mounds of relocated sand and a “nature” park in Singapore create a dark and unreal juxtaposition against the family fishing and village life scenes back in Cambodia. Well done.

For a bit of comic relief, “Dunya’s Day” offers us a view into how the well-to-do in modern day Saudi Arabia put together a graduation party. It quickly becomes apparent that Dunya is more concerned with how impressed her rival “friends” are with the party she throws than who she’s throwing it for. A series of mishaps from the mutiny of the help to an unfortunate dead sheep brought me to a point where I kind of liked the incapable hostess. Director Raeed Alsemari made me laugh.

Riders from a Native American relay horse racing team in Canada. 'Fast Horse' by Alexandra Lazarowich. photo courtesy A. Lazarowich

Finally, “Fast Horse” gives us an intimate look at the coach and a young rider from the Native American relay horse racing team from the Siksika Nation in Canada. Alexandra Lazarowich (director) sweetly and matter-of-factly handles the coach’s commitment to the boys on the team as well as protagonist rider’s own commitment to the team. The music video type footage upfront and an Tarantino-like walking shot of the team were entertaining, even if a bit odd. Ultimately, triumph prevails, even in the face of defeat.

All in all, a great series of shorts, and I am looking forward to next year.

Jerry McDaniel is an actor, musician and filmmaker, who starred in the breakout Oakland film ‘Everything Strange and New’ (2009) and can be reached . Posted on Apr 26, 2019 - 03:20 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner April 2019
by Karl Cohen

Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman) and the Sasquatch named Mr. Link (Zach Galifianakis) in 'Missing Link". Photo: Laika

'Missing Link' from Laika

Laika’s “Indiana Jones” inspired stop-motion adventure comedy opens in theaters April 12. Their fifth feature, it is an epic globetrotting buddy movie with explorer Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman) and a Sasquatch named Mr. Link (Zach Galifianakis) who embark on a quest from the Pacific Northwest in search of the legendary Shangri-La, home of Link’s ancestry.

A welcomed change, Laika sticks its neck out and dares to create a film that doesn’t star a child hero.

“Link embodies a child-like innocence,” notes writer and director Chris Butler (“ParaNorman”, 2012), “the kids in ‘ParaNorman’ acted more adult than the adults in this movie.”

Let’s hope Laika’s work pushes stop-motion and storytelling into new areas of exploration, especially since its advanced publicity says, “Missing Link” moves in a completely different direction from its four Oscar-nominated predecessors.

Set in the early 20th century, the puppets and sets were built 20 percent smaller than usual so Link can seem enormous. He was 16” tall, a size that was still comfortable for animators to manipulate. The art department made 110 sets at 65 unique locations, the most in a Laika feature. One location is a Yeti temple.

One technical breakthrough was using full-color resin 3D-printed faces. The replacement animation faces were created using Stratasys new J750 printer and Fraunhofer’s Cuttlefish software.

Call For Entries to 2019 ASIFA Animation Festival

Once again ASIFA-SF has teamed up with professor Tim Harrington of SF City College to hold a fun event honoring independent and emerging student animators. The show will be in June at City College and people in the program will once again get a free copy of the program should you want to be included in the DVD.

Send entries as a file or a link to Tim Harrington , or use their Google form here.

The Simpsons, the first family of fun, confront one of their greatest existential dilemmas: donuts. image: Matt Groening

Disney Buys Simpsons

Now that Disney owns Bart Simpson, will they tame him? What did they really get for their $73.1 billion dollars that they spent buying the assets of Fox?

Sure they bought the rights to characters from “The Simpsons”, “Avatar”, “Deadpool” and “Atlanta”, and some other things for that absurd amount, but is spending that much to control more of the market worth it?

"We are rapidly transforming our company to take full advantage of evolving consumer trends and emerging technology in order to thrive in this new and exciting time,” said Robert Iger, Chief Executive Officer of Disney. “What lies ahead is the challenging work of uniting our businesses to create a dynamic, global entertainment company."

That sound like the voice of greed. Frankly I’d be more excited if they cared more about our world and were spending that money trying to tame global warming, to end world hunger or to bringing peace to the world. I’m tired of hearing about exciting plans for corporations to increase profits.

NPR just had an hour discussion on how tech corporations will create so many new millionaires in the Bay Area by going public (only the upper level of employees will benefit by stock offers), that the cheapest single family homes in San Francisco will sell for four to five million bucks within the next five years.

Yes, that will eventually make it impossible for anybody who isn’t a millionaire to live in SF. And what will Iger do with his additional billions that he gets for selling some of his holdings? And who will hire all the employees of Disney and Fox that are being laid off?

Burton’s ‘Dumbo’ Now in Theaters

Tim Burton’s live action retelling of Disney’s ‘Dumbo’ is now in local theaters. The trailer looks impressive, but the reviews are quite mixed. One calls it “weirdly watchable,” see Rotten Tomatoes review.

Emma Thompson was knighted a 'Dame' in sneakers, after which she asked Prince William for a kiss. photo: courtesy W Magazine

Thompson Not Lasseter Fan

In a letter obtained by the Los Angeles Times, Emma Thompson explained why she decided to exit “Luck” when John Lasseter took the helm at Skydance Animation.

"It feels very odd to me,” Thompson wrote Skydance, “that you and your company would consider hiring someone with Mr. Lasseter’s pattern of misconduct given the present climate in which people with the kind of power that you have can reasonably be expected to step up to the plate.”

“If a man has been touching women inappropriately for decades, why would a woman want to work for him if the only reason he’s not touching them inappropriately now is that it says in his contract that he must behave 'professionally'?”

“If a man has made women at his companies feel undervalued and disrespected for decades, why should the women at his new company think that any respect he shows them is anything other than an act that he’s required to perform by his coach, his therapist and his employment agreement?”

Although Thompson allowed that Lasseter's defenders insisted he deserved a second chance, "he is presumably being paid millions of dollars to receive that second chance. How much money are the employees at Skydance being paid to give him that second chance?”

“Given all the abuse that’s been heaped on women who have come forward to make accusations against powerful men, do we really think that no settlements means that there was no harassment or no hostile work environment? Are we supposed to feel comforted that women who feel that their careers were derailed by working for Lasseter didn't receive money?”

“I am well aware that centuries of entitlement to women’s bodies whether they like it or not is not going to change overnight. Or in a year,” concluded Thompson. “But I am also aware that if people who have spoken out—like me—do not take this sort of a stand then things are very unlikely to change at anything like the pace required to protect my daughter’s generation."

Guess Who Got a Salary Cut of Half a Million?

Don’t worry, the total possible annual compensation for Disney’s chairman and CEO Bob Iger could still be as much as $13.5 million. Disney will also be eliminating his annual $8 million increase in his annual “target bonus.” Instead they will give him the same lousy bonus of just $12 million a year.

Still, he told the press, “I am proud to be leading the Walt Disney Company through this important time and believe the changes I, with the board, have made are in the best interest of the company.” He really isn’t going to be as well-off in the future considering Iger's total salary jumped 80 percent for the latest fiscal year to $65.6 million and he earned $36.3 million in 2017 and $43.9 million in 2016.

Well, I guess $12 million a year is better than food stamps.

Karl Cohen is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .

Posted on Apr 01, 2019 - 11:12 AM
Ferlinghetti Forever, or At Least 100
by Doniphan Blair

City Lights Bookstore celebrates founder Ferlinghetti's 100th Birthday. Photo: D. Blair

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI CELEBRATED
his 100th Birthday with a big bash at his bookstore, City Lights, last Sunday, March 24th, although he himself was a tad too tired to attend. Regardless, some 500 beats, hippies and punks descended on North Beach, San Francisco, jabbering, drinking, reciting poetry, recalling various art projects and having a fabulous time

I certainly did. Indeed I met over a dozen old friends, including Lalo Obregon, a Mexican cinematographer I hadn’t seen in thirty years, and made some new ones, notably Hanson Lee, a Chinese-American, who said poetry helped him endure the Cultural Revolution. Comraderie was easy given the overwhelming joie de vivre and all those books, provided by that great and stable beatnik, Lawrence.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, circa 1955, put his money where his mouth was in terms of literature, law and love. Photo: courtesy City Lights

Not only was Ferlinghetti an avant-garde poet and anarchist, he was schooled in classical French literature, served in WWII, on a dangerous minesweeper boat, and became a businessman. In fact, he became a prodigious publisher of hundreds of titles, including political analyst Michael Parenti, poet Jack Hirschman, musician Ry Cooder and French philosopher Georges Bataille, as well as dozens of his old beat buddies.

He also had Italian influence, although his father died before he was born—in Yonkers, New York—and Jewish ones, from his mother. While that makes him Jewish, technically, I’m guessing her people were secular, hence not much purchase on his soul.

Lawrence is the veritable opposite of the dissolute Kerouac, the beats’ fairy god mother Ginsberg and their junkie father and language re-inventor Burroughs. Indeed, he stood tall-short for stable-crazy, socialist-capitalist, classicist-renegade and urban-wilderness, as is often only possible in California.

Jimmy didn't claim to be a beat, hippie, or anything save an aficionado of Greek fishing caps also favored by Ferlinghetti. Photo: D. Blair

City Lights Booksellers & Publishers, which he started in 1955, the year after I was born, and ran to the end of the millennia, is doing great, I was told by an employee, Chris. Although the pay isn’t excessive, it's a bookstore after all, “It’s fabulous in all other regards,” he said. It didn’t become a collective, as one might suspect, given its syndico-anarchist owner, but it’s in good business hands, largely those of stalwart Elaine Katzenberger, executive director and publisher for the last few decades.

Before that, it was quite the wild ride. Indeed, Ferlinghetti was arrested in his very first year for publishing Ginsberg's “Howl”, which led to a groundbreaking First Amendment trial.

In January, 1967, he crossed town to the Haight to be the principal poet at the Be-In, which attracted some fifty thousand people and triggered the Summer of Love. He refused to pay taxes going to the Vietnam War, in 1968, nearly going to jail, but was crowned Poet Laureate of San Francisco thirty years later. In his acceptance address, he decried the automobiles and yuppies destroying a once artistic city.

A disabled poet celebrates Ferlinghetti's 100th. Photo: D. Blair

Interestingly, City Lights faces San Francisco’s Little Italy—and the tittie bars where Lenny Bruce broke open the zeitgeist in 1963—but it backs up on Chinatown. If you tunneled through the store’s back wall, in fact, you would essentially emerge in China. “You need a visa just to walk down the street,” quipped my new friend Lee (coincidentally the monniker used by Burroughs in many of his novels for himself).

Lawrence undoubtedly did venture into Chinatown, to attend literary groups discussing China’s great beatnik poet, Li Bai from the 8th century, say, or to smoke opium, which may have still been around when he first rented the store.

I was about to ask Lawrence about those intriguing details when Elaine Katzenberger saw my list of fifteen questions and freaked.

Cinematographer Lalo Obregon(cntr) and Gustavo Vazquez, director of UC Santa Cruz Film & Digital (rt), old time friends of cineSOURCE. Photo: D. Blair

“Have mercy, he’s half blind for god’s sake. He doesn’t want to be bothered by your philosophical drivel.”

“OK, how ‘bout two?” I asked.

“A couple questions, OK," she allowed, "but make them ones he might be interested in.”

“What would he be interested in?”

“I don’t know, for god's sake—really busy with his birthday here—use your imagination.”

Although Lawrence just released an experimental autobiographical novel “Little Boy”, arguably one of his best books, see the laudatory NY Times review, and he would make a perfect cineSOURCE feature, the magazine was similarly un-forthcoming with what was needed for a fully-researched article.

Although Asian-Americans are slow to jump on the legal weed band wagon, this hipster graphic designer saw no reason why not. Photo: D. Blair

All I could do is shoot 200 photos and crack my first edition of his “Coney Island of the Mind” (1958), title from a line by Henry Miller, whose life work I was also obliged to synopcize this week (see article).

Rereading “Coney Island”, which has been translated into nine languages and sold over a million copies, I was deeply taken with the poetics of “I Am Waiting”, but also surprised at the term “darkie” around half way through.

Although that was central to one of my unanswered questions, I assume it was just something someone would say when Lawrence was growing up in the 1930s. Other then that, "Coney" was a newly-installed street lamp lighting the way in the onrush of doom and gloom.

And a bit more. Photo: D. Blair

One of the many malignant elements Lawrence continues to rail against is San Francisco’s cut-throat gentrification. Chinatown and North Beach have strict zoning laws, which keep buildings under four stories, but a few blocks away in the financial district, the sky is being scraped—a painful metaphor for a visionary, back-to-nature poet.

Although Elaine would not pass Lawrence my questions, I heard his answers to the big media she let into his apartment, on the radio or read them in the papers. What he seemed to be saying is:

Run for your lives.

Scoop Nisker, author of bestseller 'Essential' as well as comedian and meditation instructor entering City Lights for his reading. Photo: D. Blair

Don’t let the capitalists eat you.

Try and find some peace and enjoy it right now before they destroy it forever.

Keep painting (as he did, he was also an accomplished painter).

Keep writing and thinking, or stop thinking, as the case may be.

As I surveyed the celebration, I noticed it was almost entirely over-60 hipsters, with a smattering of over-80 beats—not a techie, rapper or kid of color in sight, save the seven-foot-tall black guy, undoubtedly a poet, whose name I didn't catch. Nevertheless, the vibe was open enough to accept us all, as Whitman, our poetic father-mother recommended, and we’ll be here when they’re ready to build on that history.

Claire Greensfelder, local nonprof maestra, who used to hitchhike in to SF as a kid to hear beat poets . Photo: D. Blair

With the bookstore, now with three large rooms, flourishing from paper books, not digital copies, smack dab in the middle of North Beach, a fantastically expensive area, the survival of poetry, beatitude and the arts in San Francisco seems entirely possible, if not guaranteed

So long live Lawrence as well as the beats, hippies and punks—as well as the kids to come.

We here at the minor media outlet of cineSOURCE salute you.

Indeed we vow to carry on the tricky poetic process—eviction, alienation, cynicism, accusations of elitism and threats of arrest be damned.

Doniphan Blair chatting with an African-American poetry aficionado. Photo: Tracy Welsh

Posted on Mar 28, 2019 - 04:28 PM
Should We Re-Censor Henry Miller?
by Doniphan Blair

Henry Miller, photographed by famous indie photographer and close friend Gilberte Brassai, 1932, Paris. Photo: G. Brassai

Early version published as “Miller Under Attack” by the Henry Miller Library, February 3, 2019

I WAS HEART WARMED TO READ ELAINE
Blair’s Henry Miller piece in a recent New York Review of Books (2/21/19 issue). Both her review of “On Henry Miller: Or, How to be an Anarchist”, and the book itself, by Scottish author John Burnside, are laudable attempts to decipher Miller, which is critical today.

Indeed, Miller’s survival as a pioneer modern novelist is now in doubt, as Blair quips in her opening line: “Pity John Burnside. It’s not the best time to publish an appreciation and defense of Henry Miller.”

In fact, today’s triggered-warned modernists may "cancel" Miller, as the saying goes, voluntarily reinstating the state censorship imposed on “Tropic of Cancer” (1934), and almost all of his books until 1961. That was when William Burroughs’s legal push to publish his own supposedly-pornographic “Naked Lunch” (1959) also freed “Cancer”, which became an overnight bestseller for Grove Press.

Ironically, young people viewing so much pornography on line, hypocrisy in politics and absence of romance in relationships desperately need an underworld expert to guide them through the contradictory physical plane to a functional understanding of experience and ideas, what could be called full freedom of thought, or Burnside’s anarchist ideal, or “Men’s Lib”, as Blair titles her piece.

Little does Blair realize: it is hardly men only who will be liberated. Indeed, Miller is linguistic LSD. His writing radically expanded literature, a leading edge of consciousness, opening it to the quotidian life, dirty little secrets and radical big pictures previously excluded from books.

Sure, some pages of “Tropic of Cancer” scan as misogynist pig drivel, but “I will ream out every wrinkle in your cunt,” on page two, is hardly “something an angry gamer might have tweeted to Brianna Wu, the video game developer who received numerous threats after criticizing the sexist nature of her industry,” as Blair insists.

It was a joke—“After me you can take on stallions, bulls, rams, drakes, St. Bernards. You can stuff toads, bats, lizards up your rectum. You can shit arpeggios if you like,” Miller continues—not to mention great writing and seminal sexting.

This author, Doniphan Blair, presents on Henry Miller's controversial ideas, April 13th, 2019, Big Sur, California. image: D.Blair

Indeed, we now know that the “Tania” to whom that passage was penned enjoyed Miller's pronouncements, both in person and in print, given she was none other than author and feminist icon Anaïs Nin (1903-77), according to reputable sources.

Nin found Miller’s earthy honesty, flights of fancy and overall philosophy so refreshing, brilliant and essential, she gave him her heart as well as her body, typewriter AND money—from her banker husband—first to rent a decent room, where he could finish “Cancer”, and then to publish it. She also wrote the forward and helped edit. Although she did edit their affair out of her own ground-breaking diaries published in1966, which Miller endorsed enthusiastically in his only uncensored early book, “The Cosmological Eye” (1939), and they decided not to marry, they remained life-long friends and collaborators.

As it happened, Nin was also intimate with June Mansfield, Henry's second wife, Antonin Artaud, the theater pioneer, and Otto Rank, the famed psychiatrist (Freud’s right-hand-man), whom she hit up for funds to publish “Cancer”—suggesting a symphony of love, elevated vision and cultural activism.

Such cross-gender, -ethnic and -profession cooperation was nothing new for Miller. June, a Jewish American Princess, who was a gorgeous genius grifter, because she was estranged from her wealthy family, had already seduced a man to finance an early, unpublished Miller tome called “Moloch”, about an anti-Semite oddly enough, while pushing him to find his iconoclastic voice.

And break everything he does.

If Miller’s misogyny seems shocking, try his anti-Semitism. Not only are June and Tania Jewish (in the book, the actual Nin wasn’t), so are most of the characters in "Cancer", including the protagonist’s closest friends, who were based on Miller’s best buds Michael Fraenkel and Alfred Perles. “[A]lmost all Montparnasse is Jewish, or half-Jewish, which is worse,” Miller writes, while he himself is “as ugly as a Jew. And who hates the Jew more than the Jew.” Miller often attacks himself, if not first, then foremost and in the most extreme terms.

While many writers of Miller’s day—Joyce, Gide, Orwell, Hemingway, Kafka—addressed the complex Jewish question glancingly, Miller tackles it straight up on page three of "Cancer", using reverse psychology and his patented technique: first shock the squares, then bury the gold, finally sneak in secrets in soaring psychedelic rhetoric.

Only gradually and sparingly does Miller reveal his intense romanticism, universalist mysticism and devout humanism. Ten pages into "Cancer", for example, he tells of a Jew in a lion cage without a gun trying to explain Spinoza to the lions, essentially a parable predicting the Holocaust.

Henry Miller (rt), Anais Nin and her husband, banker/artist/filmmaker Hugh Parker Guiler, circa 1932, Paris. Photo: unknown

In his attempt to take the piss out of all pieties—American, French, Nazism, capitalism, all “isms,” doctors, lawyers, priests—Jews and women were not exempt. Moreover, both Jews and women were coming of age AND under full public scrutiny in the 1920s. Miller's philosophy was that addressing them in a fusillade of irony and overexposure would prove much better for their equal treatment than pandering to them in exaggerated panegyrics, especially given Jews had "The Bible" and women had millennia of rose-tinted romantic verse. Nin and Rank, a Jew as well as a psychiatrist, must have agreed wholeheartedly, given they were essentially Miller's partners in "Cancer".

"Hardly!" would harrumph Kate Millett. In her well-known “Sexual Politics” (1970), Millett examines and excoriates Miller's many seeming or actual misogynist passages, but fails to note that his first book was edited and published by Nin, whom Millett considered the first truly female author. She also says nothing about the rather naive view women had of themselves, after their century of prodigious novel writing and reading and even more-elevated-than-normal romanticism. In this light, Miller's swarm of “cunts” and “fuckings” are largely a necessary defrocking of the lily-white, prudish view of women, freeing them up to be as animalistic and base as men, in a sense paralleling the sentiment behind the use of the word "bitch", now so popular among women.

Upstanding, middle class and extremely straight women were powerful in the home, as Miller well knew from his mother, and in the streets, as the suffragettes proved by pushing through prohibition—their signature legislation to control men—a year before they obtained the actual vote in 1920. Ironically, that fantastic matriarchal achievement brought a wave of female drinkers and radical freethinkers.

But before Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe and Dorothy Parker can-opened modern art and ideas to a female avant-garde and sex positiveness, most establishment women were not prepared to discuss the widespread flapper phenomena, driven by women fleeing the farm to dance and have fun, which often included fucking, at least according to Miller. My grandmother, the educated sister of an American poet famous in the '20s, probably would not have been able to explain flappers and their enthusiasm for drink, dance and sex, let alone write about it.

Miller, meanwhile, wrote that book, which is precisely what endeared him to Nin. Indeed, we visit a completely contemporary Swinging '20s through his "Tropic of Capricorn" (1938) and "The Rosy Crucifixion" (“Nexus”, “Sexus” and “Plexus”, 1949-59), so-called due to the eviscerating wounds inflicted by his proclivity for love.

Nor does Millett mention the feminine idyll Miller suggests in exchange. Aside from the trickster goddess June or gold-hearted Parisian prostitute, there’s the Greek peasant “monster with six toes.”

Henry Miller, circa 1948, New York City. Photo: Gilles Nadeau

“That she was ugly I could not deny, but... hers was the sort which instead of repelling attracts. To begin with she was strong, sinewy, vital, an animal endowed with a human soul and with indisputable sexual powers… Her eyes glowed like coals… her lips were blood red… Renoir would have found her beautiful; he would not have noticed the six toes nor the coarseness of her features. He would have followed the rippling flesh, the full globes of her teats, the easy, swaying stance, the superabundant strength of her arms… He would have caught the animal lust, the ardor unquenchable, the fire in the guts, the tenacity of the tigress, the hunger, the rapacity, the all-devouring appetite of the oversexed female who is not wanted because she has an extra toe.” (“The Colossus of Maroussi”, 1948, p111.)

Three other elephantine issues appear to go unnoticed by Elaine Blair (no relation to this author). Obviously, the genders are identical in every aspect EXCEPT sex, where they have alternative, sometimes opposing, perspectives as well as equipment. Hence, one is an outie, the other an innie. One carries the child and may legitimately worry where the milk money will come from; the other may be pregnant with a novel they think is going to change the world—AUTOMATICALLY causing tension, regardless of misogyny.

Secondly, Miller is a no-holds barred satirist, surrealist and revolutionary, as befits a sophisticated soul suffering through severe depressions, wars and societal dislocation. But he is also an irrepressible optimist, providing the basis for his uniquely American outlook. "Ever merry and bright," was his impoverished Paris-days motto, even as his French friends ran home to lunch with mama, or to descend into a suicidal funk.

Thirdly, while there is plenty of porn and insult to go around, Miller uses it to accentuate his massive mental leaps, from crotch-level to our most advanced aspirations, which he often makes in a single sentence, sometimes turning an attack redemptive in the final clause with a back-handed compliment. Challenging them to decode the push from the pull, Miller enfranchises his readers to think for themselves, not only as literate sensuous citizens, but self-made autodidacts, now entitled to critique all of civilization!

As is well known, for civilization and its classical canon to remain relevant, if not vibrant, let alone cutting edge, it must be reinterpreted and updated.

Miller dropped out of City College of New York after one semester because it interrupted his voracious inhaling of Western civilization, eastern philosophy, fine art, literature and extensive esoteria, in what was then becoming the center of the West, Manhattan. Almost everything that interested him, Miller jammed into his books, making his oeuvre of over two dozen texts essentially Enlightened Civ 101, albeit as viewed by the person in the street, not a pompous, over-educated asshole.

Miller and Nin, at the Villa Borghes which Nin rented so Miller could finish 'Cancer in the Tropics', circa 1933. Photo: unknown

Indeed, his “Open Letter to Surrealists Everywhere”, also from “The Cosmological Eye”, published just before European civilization was butchered by Uncle Adolf’s minions, warns in no uncertain terms the myopic artists as well as politicians and PhDs.

“Now, my dear fellows, my dear Belgian, Swedish, Japanese, Dutch, British, French, American, Rhodesian, Arthurian, Cro-Magnon, Neanderthalian Surrealists, now is the time to grab hold of that most wonderful prehensile tail, which has been dragging in the mud for countless centuries. Get hold of it, if you can, and swing for your lives! It’s one chance out of a million, and I wish you luck, you poor bleeding bastards.”

Famously friendly with average folk, Miller stood in fierce opposition to all authority, an artistic necessity he learned while being ground down on the streets of New York, where he rode his bike everywhere, supported the black socialist leader Hubert Harrison, played piano at parties and honed to a razor’s edge his notorious gift of gab. After graduating from Grifting 101 with June, he perfected the art in Paris and Greece, to which he escaped just months before Germany invaded Poland.

He landed in Big Sur, California, where he lived off his watercolors, on a cliff overlooking the Pacific, in a cabin gifted by a female fan. Even in California, Miller was known for taking down liberal sacred cows, from Norman Mailer, who wrote a worshipful Miller biography, to Jerry Brown, who was immediately told off for being a politician, when he dropped by Miller's fancy new digs in an upper-crust neighborhood of Los Angeles.

He acquired that bourgeois palace, and transitioned to it seamlessly at 70, shortly after "Cancer"'s liberation from censorship earned him his first real royalty check: hundreds of thousands of dollars! At dinners there, his favorite hobby was identifying someone with a strong, sacrosanct position and working the conversation around to contradict it.

If Blair took the time to close read Miller, she would have found a master of the mellifluous flow, a weaver of multidimensional, sometimes contradictory, worldviews, ranging from radically-open autobiography to insightful critiques or fantastically freewheeling ruminations on love, art, death, writer difficulties, politics and, last but not least, the sex obsession shared by all classes and races as well as genders—but barely illuminated by literature until Miller.

Isn’t Miller merely reporting the facts, since men do think and talk just as he writes? Don’t women want to know what men actually think, instead of you’re-a-goddess whitewashes, to understand them better? And don't we—women as well as men, middle class as well as bohemian artists and liberated feminists—have to accept that many women thoroughly enjoy sex in all its aspects, including talk? In point of fact, dirty talk facilitates our ability to repurpose prudish, Protestant, patriarchal gender views to female fetish, fantasy and perversion.

Miller at his work desk, in a cabin in the California wilderness, Partington Ridge, Big Sur, circa 1955. Photo: unknown

By the same token, Miller had issues with women. Each of his five marriages only lasted around eight years. His other-gender understanding was tainted by being born in the 19th century to an overbearing mother, who once doused him in his bed with a bucket of water for laziness. Then there was the youthful homosexuality and truly Swinging '20s, not to forget the artist's obligation to break with society, or his extensive whoring, as well as his dream of reinventing a romanticism wild enough to inspire a new, very jaded and injured generation, powered solely by abstract exploration, without resorting to drugs, drink or mystical balderdash.

“Cancer in the Tropics” is over-the-top satire, cubism come to printed life, a multi-front attack on pretension and fake morality in iambic pentameter so tight it translates perfectly to punk, as this author proved in his song “The Happiest Man Alive”. A punk-folk rendition of the first two pages “Cancer”, it was debuted by The Doilies at Big Sur’s Henry Miller Library in 2001, three weeks before 9/11.

In fact, Blair's review quotes almost half of “Cancer”’s revolutionary opener and almost nothing else of Miller’s many books, suggesting that she, too, recognizes—along with Nin, Rank, Eliot, Orwell and many others in the ‘30s, as well as today, like John Burnside—it was a critical call to arms and consciousness, arguably one of the most important books in the evolution of writing, a modern, democratic “Bible”, bursting with actual reality and daily life.

Sure Gertrude Stein, Louis-Ferdinand Celine and James Joyce had begun dismantling the novel by the time "Cancer" came out. But she’s archaic and hard to read; he’s a fascist misanthrope; and Joyce, while wild, funny and profound, is so 19th century.

One need only glance at “A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller” (1987), or “Nexus”, when June and her girlfriend sneak out of the house to board a ship to France—breaking his heart—or when Miller sneaks up a fire escape, peaks through a window and sees them shooting up coke, probably—which dismembers his worldview—to realize Miller is not a simplistic, female-fearing hater.

He adored women, if perhaps too much.

I wonder about the pleasure experienced by women, Miller remarks somewhere in the "Cancer"s or "The Trilogy". Is it keener, different, in what way? This suggests a concern, if not for her full, every-wrinkle-in-your-cunt-reamed-out satisfaction, at least her feelings.

But, in point of fact, “[s]ex is a drop in the bucket when you consider the whole of a relationship," Miller told Hoki Tokuda, the Japanese-born singer-musician 45 years his junior, who became his fifth wife (see interview with her). "Some of the greatest love affairs in history were completely devoid of sex. I’ve found that my relationships with women that didn’t include sex were just as gratifying as the ones where sex was the main course."

Miller and his fifth wife, musician Hoki Tokuda, when he was about 80 and she 35. Photo: unknown

Unfortunately, Blair doesn’t mention Tokuda or Nin, except to admit she financed “Cancer” (perhaps because the NY Review of Books also recently panned her); nor Erica Jong’s immense Miller inheritance in “Fear of Flying” (1973); or the adoration of many other authors, from Kerouac and Ferlinghetti (whose book title “Coney Island of the Mind” is a Miller quote) to Philip Roth and Mailer; and, of course, astounded readers worldwide, like John Burnside.

It’s a complex intellectual dialectic, one well worth teasing out. While Blair adds some insight, she fails to recognize the massive structural columns, built almost entirely by Miller, holding up the modern novel.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Mar 26, 2019 - 03:36 PM
cineSOURCE’s 5 Day Idea Tour

Tour leaves 6PM, Friday, April 12th, see itinerary below, or contact cineSOURCE at 888.5MEDIA5

Hitting California Road

Have you ever thought about hitting the road for a few days to dance on a beach under the full moon, say?

Did you know that California has three deserts—which bloom in April, and this year's should be great—four mountain ranges, 300 hot springs, a MILLION miles of back roads and numerous inspirational literary as well as environmental locations?

Did you know that cineSOURCE does tours?

Indeed, our sixth annual 5Day Idea Tour is leaving West Oakland on Friday, April 12th, first stop being Big Sur, replete with fine dining, a literary performance and Esalen's famous hot tubs.

All you need is a sleeping bag and pad, a jacket and sun hat, and eating utensils, and to show up at 6pm, Friday, April 12th, 2200 Adeline Street.

Please RSVP: 510 220.2126 or .

Our newly rented van will whisk you to Carmel for dinner and then Big Sur, to sleep at the Henry Miller Library and do a beach day. The library is also where tour facilitator, Doniphan Blair, will perform "Blair Does Miller", an introduction to the still-controversial author with a focus on his misogyny, anti-Semitism and psychedelic romanticism (see article),

Later that night, we'll do a beach fire and drop by the world-famous Esalen Institute, to bath in its tubs thirty feet off the ocean. After camping in mountains overlooking the Pacific, we do a back road crossing of California, from Route 1 to Route 395.

From then on, it's one long line of hot springs, mountains and deserts, which should have great flowers this year (see Death Valley Flower Report. Finally, we will find ourselves, literally as well as metaphorically, at a paradise oasis in Death Valley, where the supreme silence can quiet even the most obstreperous inner dialogue.

Along the way, we will discuss film, search for good Mexican food, do yoga, indulge gourmet snacks and stop at fantastic vistas.

Indeed, our second rule is: Whenever anyone wants to stop, we will stop and look and smell.

The next days include on more hot spring, the Manzanar Internment Camp Museum, viewing the HIGHEST point in the continental US (Mt. Whitney) and, perhaps, skiing .

The costs will be shared evenly for cineSOURCE "family" and plus 33% for "new friends." It works out to about $200-50, for van rental, gas, food and one night lodging, or $275-350, for new friends, although we work out the specifics en route.

For more info, please call 510 220.2126, or email . California remains the mother of all road trips—come out and play—literally in our back yard.

Itinerary

1100 miles, 5.25 days

Fri, Apr 12, 7pm Oakland to Carmel, MILEAGE: 100, dinner: River's Inn, on to Big Sur to sleep, MILEAGE: 40

Sat, Apr 13, Big Sur beaches, lunch: picnic, dinner: Deijons, 8pm: Blair does Miller, literary performance at Henry Miller Memorial Library,, 2am: hot spring, Esalen Institute, campout, Nacimiento-Fergusson Road, MILEAGE: 50

Sun, Apr 14, Nacimiento-Fergusson and other back roads to Bakersfield, sleep at Geronimo Hot Springs, MILEAGE: 250

Mon, Apr 15, Geronimo to Lake Isabella and Saline Valley Hot Spring, MILEAGE: 220

Tue, Apr 16, Saline Valley Hot Springs leave afternoon to Big Pine stay in motel. MILEAGE: 100

Wed, Apr 17, Do Movie Museum, or Manazar Japanese Internment Camp or Mammoth Ski Area or hot springs, MILEAGE: 60 , dinner in Placerville or Groveland, drive back to Oakland. MILEAGE: 325

Over five days and few hours, we will have enjoyed beaches, flowers, hot springs, full moon camping and at least some artistic inspiration.I have done this tour five times, first in 2003, and it never ceases to amaze, surprise, even shock. So much, right in our back yard, a vision quest for the taking, if in modern automotive manner.

What to Pack

Sleeping Bag (preferably down)
Sleeping Pad (as thick as possible, child's mattress rolled up and tied with twine works well)
Warm Jacket
Sun Hat
Eating Utensils (bowl, cup, spoon)
Water Bottle
Good Shoes
Bathing Suit and Towel
Musical Instrument
Shorts and Long Pants
One Great Book
Electronics (allowed but minimal)

Posted on Mar 24, 2019 - 02:07 PM
Summer of Love Shows, Movies & Festivals, Part II
by Doniphan Blair

return to Summer of Love Shows, Movies & Festivals, Part II

Their worldview was well articulated by a hand-drawn poster I saw tied to a tree: “Pray For Peace, Learn From All. Carry “Home” with You. Love Yourself. Help Your Neighbor. We Are Family. We the People Need to Be the People, And Work to Create a Better World, By Making Your Own Life Better First. Find Your Happy. Be Your Self. Move if You Have to But Live Your Live. Fill the Now with Good Things.”

To which I might add: "Protect the tribe but don't tribalize. 'Search out knowledge, even unto China,' as Muhammad said. Civilization is the sum of the tribes' ideas not blood. Keep tools current but bear in mind psychology, sex and other basics are as unchanged through time as through space or race. Know that we are in turbulent times but they can hardly match the '60s, let alone the '40s. Maintain the balance—female/male, nature/tech, play/work—and we'll be fine."

In this way, perhaps, San Francisco might reintegrate its storied history with its unprecedented present to foment a flourishing, front-edge content culture.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Mar 21, 2019 - 03:06 PM
Rob Nilsson: Enfant Terrible, Old Master of the Indie
by Doniphan Blair

Rob Nilsson, the actor, painter and poet as well as prolific filmmaker, enjoyed his recent New York star turn at the premier of his 40-year old 'Prairie Trilogy'. photo: Nicholas Blair

Skip to Part II

ROB NILSSON, THE PROLIFIC, POETIC
and iconoclastic Bay Area filmmaker, just did a full circle of sorts. In August, he showed a brace of 40-year-old documentaries co-directed with John Hanson, collectively called “Prairie Trilogy”, to great acclaim at Manhattan’s cool, new Metrograph Theater.

“We got it because of Trump,” Nilsson told me at the beginning of our rambling, revealing and occasionally contentious three-day, two-coast interview, which started late July, at his large house in the flats of Berkeley, and ended a few days ago, via email. “People are looking to see if there is some other way, in the effort to get rid of this clown.”

Nilsson and I also chatted at the Metrograph, before his show and at the deluxe after-party, in the haute cuisine restaurant that is part of the theater—it was the film's forty-year-belated world premiere, after all. As we washed down their spectacular food with their vaguely-drinkable wine—Nilsson going light on the latter, due to his monkish demeanor—we couldn’t help but notice how far we were from the tough times depicted in “Prairie Trilogy”.

Fortunately, Nilsson’s an old hand at such surrealist stretches, having leapt from obscurity into the spotlight at Cannes, in The New York Times, at meetings in Hollywood, and back again, many, many times. As it happens, “Prairie Trilogy” is about hard-scrabble farmers, vicious capitalists, home-grown socialists and a brilliant poet-activist named Henry Martinson, whom Hanson and Nilsson found still working at the AFL-CIO’s Fargo, North Dakota, office, age 97!

Nilsson himself just cracked that number in reverse, 79, although he's as vigorous and opinionated as ever, and swears he'll never retire.

“No, heaven forbid. I do my bike riding and stuff to keep my mechanism rolling—so far, so good.” On October 30th, the day after his 79th birthday, he biked nearly forty-five miles, from his home, half way across the Bay Bridge and to the foot of the Richmond Bridge, “in 3 1/2 hours,” he bragged by email.

Those statements notwithstanding, Nilsson is now creating his last films, also a trilogy, coincidentally. “It will probably be the last major thing I will do. I don’t know. Maybe there is something more coming.”

Of course, making features is insanely taxing, no matter how masterful Nilsson has become after 51—or so he claims (his IMDb page lists a "mere" 33, and four shorts, while there must be almost a hundred of the latter). Making features can easily reduce youngsters half his age to blubbering idiots, not to mention Nilsson often acts or stars, as well as directs.

With his chiseled features—both sagging and drawn tight with age—intense gaze and priest-like bearing, which evaporates when he deems to crack his wide smile, Nilsson has delivered his unique brand of acting performance to scores of films. While IMDb lists only 33, there are undoubtedly double or triple that, given he's acted in at least half his own films and dozens more by cineastes from around the Bay, the States and the world, often indie mavericks in their own right.

Nilsson has also performed in Hollywood, appearing once each on “Miami Vice” and “Beverly Hills 90210” (1986 and 1992, respectively), and rendering roles in many of Bobby Roth’s TV films. Even at 79, he continues to send out headshots and garner much needed income from his acting career.

Nilsson's “Nomad Trilogy”, which he has already started with “Arid Cut", now in editorial, focuses on a young man embarking on a walkabout.

“This kid, Train Schickele—his name is Rail in the movie—this young, disaffected—well, I won’t call him disaffected—this young poet and tap dancer [is] needing to know about why he never met his father."

Farmer-actor John Ness (left) and 97-year-old poet-activist Henry Martinson in 'Prairie Trilogy' (1978). photo: courtesy R. Nilsson/J. Hanson

“He journeys through homeless encampments and out to the Nevada desert," Nilsson continued. "The search for his father provides the through-line through the three films.”

In another circle completing, Train Schickele is the son of David Schickele (1937-1999), one of Nilsson's best friend since the early '60s and their Peace Corps days in Nigeria.

That turned out to be a cultural adventure of immense proportions, given not only the fascinating village where Nilsson taught school for almost two years (Okeagbe, Akoko province), but the funky 8mm camera he brought and began shooting.

When the film came back from processing in England, he cut it—literally, using a razor blade and a board fitted with nails—into “The Lesson”, a spoof on colonialism featuring white surfers motorcycling around West Africa. Sadly, the only print disappeared, along with a box of camera equipment, when his apartment was burgled a few years later.

After his Peace Corps service, Nilsson retired to an island off the coast, where he wrote, painted and hung with locals through a paradise year, which ended abruptly with the news that Frithjof Holmboe, his beloved maternal grandfather, also a filmmaker, had died.

“He never even heard about my turn toward film,” Nilsson told cineSOURCE in 2008.

A peripatetic photographer known for shooting wild orchids and the first documentaries in North Dakota, where he was the state photographer, Holmboe eventually settled in Wisconsin, where Nilsson was born and raised to fourteen. After lighting out for the coast, Holmboe brought his extended family to Mill Valley, Marin County, fifteen miles north of San Francisco, where he bought and ran Strawbridge’s Camera store.

Nilsson ended up becoming the star of Mill Valley's Tamalpais High. Respected as a poet by his peers, he was also the class president, cross-country team captain and the big band's lead trumpeter, before heading off to college—none other than Harvard.

After taking a year off to work on Swedish freighters and hitchhike around Europe, he graduated from Harvard in 1962, only to find himself draft eligible and the war in Vietnam looming. When his conscientious objector application was nixed, he joined the Peace Corps, which was allowed as an alternative.

Before that, “I was trying to become a civil rights lawyer," he told me. "Food for Freedom was something that was being set up in Marin for people in Mississippi. They selected me to deliver the money. I had the check sewn into my jacket.”

“All these guys were in the SNCC headquarters,” the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in Greenwood, Mississippi, “trying to hold out. I don’t think it could have been my idea, but I did do the bulk of the work, going to the city hall, going through the records, finding all the people who were wealthy enough—and liberal enough—to stand bail.”

“It just seemed like: ‘Wow, this is something so powerful, I have to be a part of it!’ I asked my grandfather if he would stake me going to law school and he said he would. I called the SNCC [but] they said, ‘The outside agitator [accusations] are so strong, we have to just do it on our own.’”

Rob Nilsson as Mel Hurley, a lovelorn war photographer, in his Sundance-winning 'Heat and Sunlight' (1997), which he also directed. photo: courtesy R. Nilsson

After Nigeria, Nilsson drove a cab (in Boston), met a woman (Indira, one of his fares), which produced a daughter (Robindira, to whom he is preternaturally devoted), and developed his art (poetry, painting and film).

His first real movie, “The Country Mouse", was an hour-long drama about an innocent abroad shot on the streets of Boston. He turned next to documentary, as was his pattern, after getting the gig to shoot a 30-minute "making-of" movie about Otto Preminger’s “Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon” (1970). Repatriating to California, he cut it on a Steenbeck this time, lent by Schickele, who preceded him back to the Bay and, by some strange quirk of fate, had also become a professional filmmaker.

Schickele had a Steenbeck, an expensive German flatbed editing machine, because he was already neck deep in his first feature, the docu-fictional “Bushman” (1971). Still taught at some film schools, “Bushman” opens as a narrative about a Nigerian, played by one of Schickele's students from the University of Nigeria, Paul Okpokam, who comes to America to attend San Francisco State University.

But when the actual Okpokam started organizing students to strike against the war in Vietnam and was arrested, “'Bushman' turned into a documentary about [David’s] efforts to get him out of San Quentin,” Nilsson explained, “which Willy Brown [a lawyer, who became mayor of San Francisco] helped him do.”

Schickele also appeared in “Signal 7” (1986), Nilsson first film using the method he invented for preparing actors and creating improvised scenes, which he calls “direct action,” but is essentially “direct acting,” given there’s little scripted dialogue.

Since then, Nilsson has done Direct Action workshops around the world, including in Japan, South Korea, South Africa, Italy and Armenia, and developed its ideas in lectures, in the book “Wild Surmise: a Dissident View”, and on his websites, Rob Nilsson and Citizen Cinema (there’s also a Wikipedia page).

In addition to using improvisation, Nilsson recommends we reject the “film as short story,” a paradigm promoted by film schools and Hollywood. “Smash the iron ball and chain of excessive plot," cineSOURCE quoted him saying, in the same 2008 article. "Create a poetic cinema based not on writing but on observing… mistrust your ideas… trust your experiences."

“Film is not a director’s medium,” Nilsson proclaimed, manifesto-like, on his website at that time (a statement no longer up). “The magicians who bottle the genie are the actors. The magician who lets the genie out of the bottle is the editor.”

“The second [new film] is ‘Center Divide’. It is about how gentrification is pushing people into homeless and RV encampments,” Nilsson continued in our interview, the first round of which was conducted in his old screening room, now full of film cans, video cassettes and half-full cardboard boxes.

After decades in a house with an edit suite, living quarters and sizable third floor loft, which he used as a painting studio, as well as a screening room, Nilsson appeared to be moving. “It is about the trip, the voyage itself, the adventure,” he said about his new film, but with a furrowed brow I took as a reference to his current situation, having to start anew so late in life.

Nilsson on his motor bike, although he also does regular biking, including a 40-miler on håis 79th birthday. photo: D. Blair

For this epic, road-trip triad, Nilsson created a new workshop and production group, albeit still under the auspices of what he calls Direct Action or Citizen Cinema interchangeably. Along with Schickele, it includes Penny Werner, who co-stars in "Arid Cut", Russell Murphy, a retired principal dancer from the San Francisco and Smuin ballets, and Michelle Anton Allen.

Allen was an alienated south-Cali kid when she happened to catch, late one night on cable, “Northern Lights”, the companion narrative to the "Prairie Trilogy" docs. Its stark, black-and-white images of struggling farmers stuck with her as she studied acting at Julliard in New York and returned home to work in TV-landia.

“While on a movie set with a once-prominent TV actress,” Allen told cineSOURCE, “I had an epiphany. If I was not careful, I could easily end up as an unstable, insecure, addiction-riddled TV actress surrounded by 'yes' people.”

“My response was to shave my head, throw away my makeup and make several serious changes in my life," including becoming a Citizen Cinema stalwart, acting or producing, as needed. “I’m happiest working with Rob, my cinematic soul mate.”

Also signed up for this ride are Lydia Becker, a longtime CC actress as well as practitioner of the complimentary Reichian therapy, Dante Dunn, an up-and-coming rap artist, the actress, singer, dancer AND fine artist Emily Corbo, and newbie Tony Milliner, who has done several CC workshops but no film until now.

Nilsson also happens to live near one of Berkeley’s infamous homeless encampments, in this case a community of van dwellers, seasonal workers and off-grid techies. Having befriended some, he's enlisted them as character actors, consultants or even set providers, be it the interior of their vehicles or their collective mass at meet-ups.

“Some of these people have the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous [at] Quartz Site, Arizona, I believe," Nilsson noted. "They get about 3,000 people. They have workshops on how you can live in the rough, put a solar panel on a Prius.”

Fleeing personal demons or the Bay Area's ridiculous rent, Nilsson’s nomads are houseless, but not homeless, and are reversing a millennia of "westward ho" by heading east for their better life.

On top of his prodigious film work, Nilsson is an accomplished painter, who shows his large, brush-strokey and colorful canvases, both abstract and figurative, most recently at San Francisco’s Spark Arts and the Harvey Milk Photo Center.

Poetry, too, remains an important, ongoing self-exploration. Ten years ago Nilsson published, “From a Refugee of Tristan da Cunha” (2007), a “collection of songs, rants, raids, runs into the chaos” (according to its Amazon page, where it's available—by the way, da Cunha is a remote, south Atlantic island not a brilliant Brazilian poet).

But these are loner pursuits: “Poetry is very internal thing for me. I kind of trust it will emerge viscerally. Painting is imagination. Filmmaking is more observation, I think, for me.”

Pure observation would be documentary but, aside from "Prairie Trilogy” and a handful of others, Nilsson skews narrative, which requires actors and larger crews, in other words: community.

In the early ‘70s, Nillson joined the Filmmaker’s Union of San Francisco, an alternative labor union, which led to the formation of Cine Manifest, a film collective (see his long remembrance at the end of cineSOURCE's “Cine Collectives Come Back, Finally!”).

Nilsson enjoying the 'Prairie Trilogy' premiere after-party with a Japanese filmmaker, with whom he was discussing a collaboration. photo: D. Blair

Cine Manifest facilitated his partnership with Hanson, whom he first met in Boston. In part because they both had North Dakotan grandfathers, their bond blossomed into “Prairie Trilogy”, “Northern Lights” and finally a full-fledged film company, New Front Films, in 1982.

After the success of their first feature, “We set out to make two films,” Nilsson recalled, in one of the dozens of email follow-ups to our seven hours of recorded interview, “my ‘On the Edge’ and Hanson’s ‘Wildrose’.” They completed those projects in 1986 and 1984, respectively.

"We raised about a million and half for ‘On the Edge’ throughout the country," Nilsson elaborated. "Along the way, we met Bruce [Dern, a respected Hollywood actor], a lifelong runner. He was perfect for the lead role of Wes Holman, as the film featured a runner and a cross country race based on Mill Valley’s Dipsea," America's second-oldest foot race. Nilsson himself continued to run track at Harvard and 10Ks and marathons into his sixties.

After Cine Manifest, which was a bit too ideological and doc-oriented for his taste, Nilsson went on to found a number of narrative film tribes, notably the Tenderloin Action Group, in the late-'90s, which became the Tenderloin yGroup, and Citizen Cinema, in the mid-2000s.

“How could I do this without friends, without a whole fortunate…” he waved his hands. “Once in a while you meet people like Marshall,” he opened his arms further. Marshall Spight is a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has both acted in and funded Nilsson projects and now owns Meets the Eye, one of the Bay Area’s biggest green screen studios.

There has also been financing from David and Carol Richards, the former a Nilsson classmate from Harvard, and help from many friends and collaborators. John Stout, a lawyer, producer and fundraiser, raised much of the million-five for “On the Edge”, big money those days—big money these days, considering how hard it is to fund anything but commercially-minded indies.

“The whole workshop thing is hundreds of people just being able to be there for these movies,” Nillson said, spreading his arms again.

“One thing I do wish is that I could get back some needed capital to these people that never had much,” Nilsson lamented. “That would be mean a financial success I’ve never had. I guess I can’t say there is much hope of that.“ Except, perhaps, “Nomad Trilogy”.

“They are all multi-story films," he said, returning to the epic at hand, "and some of the characters come across all three stories. The third is called ‘In Outland’, or perhaps 'Yonder'.”

Regardless of whether the trilogy's final film has a Mobius strip title or one shooting for the stars, it will be shot on the Schickele family land outside Mina, Nevada, which will serve as an Ithaca homeland for both Rail, the trilogy's Prodigal Son, and Nilsson himself.

“Hopefully housing a transcendent Penelope,” I remarked.

"No, Penny [Werner]'s character dies at the end of the first film."

"I meant symbolically, as in Odysseus's Penelope... in terms of the film."

“No! They find out they’re outsiders no matter where they go,” Nilsson answered, looking down.

Bruce Dern stars Nilsson's most Hollywood films, 'On the Edge', which combines an underdog sports story with Nilsson's political ruminations. photo: courtesy R. Nilsson

“It was a good weekend,” he noted by email, about his latest Manhattan star turn. In point of fact, he’s had quite a few, starting in 1979 when "Northern Lights" went to Cannes and brought back the Camera d’Or, the best first film prize, and was well-reviewed by Vince Canby, The New York Times' premier film critic.

“I went to the [Metrograph] shows on Saturday and Sunday and had enthusiastic responses," Nilsson wrote. "Four major articles: NY Times, Village Voice, Counter Punch and something from Criterion.”

“We now have a distributor and requests coming in. I'm blowing on the coals.” And what do you know—they're fired right up!

Indeed, Nilsson has been touring ever since, showing “Prairie Trilogy” at art theaters, colleges and festivals all over the country, including San Francisco’s Roxie and Marin’s Smith Rafael Film Center in late October, although a black-and-white documentary about impoverished, fly-over farmers will doubtfully deliver much relief to Nilsson's impecunious associates.

Not to mention another problem: “If I had my choice of which of my films I wanted to be known and seen,” Nilsson admitted, “it is not my favorite film.”

“I got more interested… in the cities than in the countryside,” he remarked, in what would be his only explanation for his Damascus Road conversion from salt-of-the-earth, somewhat-straight, cinema explorations to more bohemian wanderings and wonderings.

“What are the joys and sorrows, the sufferings,” he ruminated, "of these odd migratory animals, who came in from the land to master new technologies and be confronted by modern contradictions?"

“I would say ‘Heat and Sunlight’ is a more challenging film," he said, surveying his enormous oeuvre. One of his most impassioned unrequited love stories, playing out over one long day—both of which became preferred Nilsson tropes—“Heat and Sunlight” (1987) combined scripted moments and Direct Action.

It follows Mel Hurley (Nilsson in a black leather jacket), a photojournalist who covered the Biafran Genocide, the starvation of over a million Nigerians while the world watched, during the civil war that destroyed the country a few years after Nilsson was there. Hurley is now confronting another massive indifference, that of his lover, a gorgeous dancer, whom he suspects is sleeping with her performance partner.

About the madness of art as well as jealousy, with music by David Byrne and Brian Eno (with whom Nilsson did a doc about The Velvet Underground's John Cale), “Heat and Sunlight” stormed Sundance in 1988 and took the Grand Jury Prize (see a short clip here, sadly, Nilsson is severely underrepresented on YouTube).

Consuelo Faust, who plays the dancer, in what would be her only film role, "becomes a sexy, vivid, mesmerizing focus," according to the now-well-known critic Janet Maslin, in The NY Times. "And Mr. Nilsson himself ably captures the urgency and jealousy."

“On the Edge”, Nilsson's film preceding “Heat and Sunlight”, is not one of his favorites. Arguably his most Hollywood, the promotional catchphrase—"Feel the pain, live the dream, share the glory"— probably makes him want to puke to this day. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it thirty years ago and it’s fascinating from a film-studies perspective (see its trailer)

Starring Dern and Pam Grier, the great Blaxploitation star gone mainstream, it also features John Marley, from “Faces” (1968), the film which brought John Cassavetes's unique breed of improvisation, cinéma vérité and intimacy to a large audience (it was nominated for three Oscars). As if cribbed from a Hollywood movie, Nilsson met Marley accidentally at the famous Schwab’s Pharmacy on Sunset Boulevard.

In fact, “On the Edge” garnered rave reviews, including one from the surprisingly-insightful mainstream critic Roger Egbert—"an angry, original, unpredictable movie... Bruce Dern, in one of his best performances"—and a pretty good one from The Times, which characterized it as a thinking man’s “Rocky” (1976), replete with requisite silhouette shots of training.

Nilsson hard at work at his edit bench/computer, which can require up to two years per film. photo: courtesy R. Nilsson

While The Times reviewer characterized the obstacles confronting the hero as routine, what is hardly Hollywood is Wes's father, a tough old lefty, who boycotts his son’s races because he wants him to stop dicking around and stand up for the people. I recall the father was played to a "T" by Bill Bailey, a non-actor who developed his back story fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War, ripping Nazi flags off German ships in US harbors and facing down the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Also Bailey’s only film appearance—he died shortly after production—the father character allowed Nilsson to explore issues vexing him from “Prairie Trilogy” and “Northern Lights” to the strange pair of Russian films he made seven years ago: How do we help our brethren? And what do we do if helping becomes hurting, if ideas or organizations become repressive or murderous?

Regardless of critical acclaim or personal faves, "It is always the next film that interests me,” Nilsson told me. “I like ‘Permission to Touch’ [2014]. I like ‘Fourth Movement’ [2017]."

Yet another Ouroboros digesting its own derriere, "Permission to Touch" is Nilsson's return to the characters and themes of "Heat and Sunlight", notably a now-elderly Mel Hurley and what women do with their bodies. While it doesn't achieve the original’s punchy, politicized romanticism or iconic black-and-white imagery—both in “Heat and Sunlight”'s cinematography and Mel's photography (provided by Steve and Hildy Burns)—it remains very solid Nilsson: heartfelt or insufficiently felt, as the case may be, taking place in one night and largely improvised.

Not to mention, he produced it on a fraction of the budget, with only two actors, himself and T. Moon, a stunning, woman-of-color television and theater actress who plays a performance artist (in lieu of a dancer), a crew of three and all shooting and editing executed entirely inside his Berkeley home.

T. Moon is a pseudonym because she doesn't want to be associated with the movie (for personal reasons), even though she delivers a fantastic scream-fest fight with Nilsson in its beginning, a lovely art-dance piece in its middle, and together they produce some rambling, if realistic, reconciliation, in its closing.

"Fourth Movement" didn’t grab me as much, although it's an intriguing piece about people on the periphery of the jazz scene who end up drinking and commiserating through one of the worst nights of their lives: election night, 2016, the dawn of the Trumpocalypse (see clip here).

"I guess it is because I can see what it is I am trying to do, and I can’t let it alone,” Nilsson explained, in reference to why it is always the next film that concerns him. “Whether anyone else sees, it is kind of irrelevant, anyway. I succeed, I fail, on my own terms—that way I know who to blame.”

“You can’t try to please anyone—that is ridiculous," he counseled. "Nor do I think you should play to an audience. You should play to your sense of what’s real, what needs to be done. In the end that’s all you’ve got. You have to know whose criticism to listen to. In the end, you feel it or you don’t.”

They obviously felt it back in the late fall of 1977, when Nilsson, Hanson and half of Cine Manifest decamped from their south-of-Market San Francisco warehouse and flew to North Dakota, where they were hosted by Hanson’s mother and neighboring farmers. Hanson also secured grants from the North Dakota’s National Endowment for the Humanities, arts organizations and unions.

So deeply did they feel it, in fact, they made not one but four films, “Prairie Trilogy” plus “Northern Lights”.

Nilsson in his once-lovely screening room now full of boxes and moving paraphernalia. photo: D. Blair

Perfectly complimenting its companion docs, right down to the elderly socialist Martinson doing the narration, “Northern Lights” was “stunningly photographed” by Cine Manifester Judy Irola, according to Times critic Canby. Using lots of chiaroscuro and graphic framing, Irola starkly iconized the young women and men trying to farm, survive and organize on America’s harsh northern prairies (see clips here).

“Northern Lights” opens equal or better than anything by Bergman himself: a laughing, lightly-dressed and erotically-charged Ray and Inga chasing each other through a snowy forest. Played by Susan Lynch and Bob Behling, from San Francisco’s theater scene, they're soon beset by money troubles, Ray's father dying and Inga leaving the homestead to look for work. Upon learning her marriage has to be postponed, Inga gulps down a whiskey—a rare Nilsson nod to hedonism.

One piercingly poignant scene shot in telephoto shows a clutch of young, inexperienced farmers struggling to thresh winter wheat in thin overcoats, high wind and swirling snow.

The story was based on Hanson’s grandfather, a Dakota farmer radicalized during World War I, who joined the Nonpartisan League, a movement advocating for farmers and against the rail, grain and bank monopolies. Nilsson’s grandfather Holmboe posthumously contributed the excellent North Dakota footage he shot in the 1920s, which appears throughout "Prairie Trilogy".

Joe Spano, another “Northern Lights” lead, moved to Hollywood soon after production to become Detective Henry Goldblume on “Hill Street Blues” (1981-87), but most of the remaining cast were Dakotan civilians. They were led by the Ness family, in particular John, with his commanding mustache and charismatic smile, who also appears in "Prairie Trilogy", scenes which look like outtakes from “Northern Lights”.

Ray, the first of many politically-conflicted Nilsson characters, reluctantly agrees to join the Nonpartisan League, which was called that to protect against the standard tactic of “red-baiting.” Sadly, the actual League was taken over by populists and right-wingers, just as Ray feared and for which “Trilogy” provides the historical account.

When “Northern Lights” returned from Cannes, in the spring of '79, with the first-time filmmaker's prize, Nilsson, Hanson and the Cine Manifesters were ecstatic but also shocked, as was much of the film world. European in style and politics but American in subject and character, it was the veritable opposite of the other great films of the late ‘70s, notably those by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, who were also forging a new cinema by the Bay. Coppola's "Apocalypse Now", also 1979, masterfully and artistically captured the '60s, but was unabashedly a war and Hollywood film.

Nilsson and Hanson's lower-budget backward glance seemed to provide a better window into the conflicts and complexities of the Bay Area, where artists and activists were trying to keep alive the ‘60s' social movements in the face of the tragedy of the Black Panthers, the Milk and Moscone murders and the Jonestown massacre.

“After having read about ‘Northern Lights’ for years, I reached out to Rob,” Jacob Perlin, the artistic director of the Metrograph Theater, wrote me by email, in response to my question: “Why the ‘Prairie Trilogy’ revival now?”

“I fell in love with the film and asked Rob and John Hanson if I could do a theatrical re-release. In 2013, the film opened at Film Forum in New York City, followed by a national tour.”

“[Then] I asked them for copies of everything they had done. I instantly recognized ‘Prairie Trilogy’ as being as much of a masterpiece as ‘Northern Lights’, and completely revelatory in terms of the kind of non-fiction films that were being made at that time.”

“Little did I know,” concluded Perlin, who decided to show and distribute "Prairie Trilogy", “the film had never had an official release, and the audience and critics are finding it just as wonderful as I had.”

'Signal 7', Nilsson's second break out film, featuring his improv technique, Direct Action, was presented by Francis Ford Coppola. photo: courtesy R. Nilsson

Why am I not surprised?

I became enamored of Nilsson’s work immediately upon viewing the wild and wooly, yet quite coherent, “Signal 7” at the Mill Valley Film Festival, which has world premiered many Nilsson films, in 1986 (not 1984 as listed on IMDb; also, its title is “Signal 7”, not “Signal Seven”). It, too, went on to be well reviewed by The NY Times, which called it “an unusual, touching, intelligent film," one that proved "excellent movies can be made without big stars and mega-budgets.” Presented by Francis Ford Coppola (meaning he introduced, not produced, it), Nilsson estimated it cost only $150,000.

I also happened to attend that after-party, which I spent drinking heavily with some "Signal 7" actors and their friends, notably the charming Raven de la Croix, a former Russ Meyer actress with a world-class bosom, whose day job was stripping.

About two cabbies (Bill Ackridge and Dan Leegant), in the course of one night (yet again), as they swerve around San Francisco, discussing life and dealing with difficulties (like the shooting of a fellow cabbie), “Signal 7” was the first movie—ever—filmed on the new generation of video cameras and transferred to 35 mm film for theatrical distribution.

Although marketed as “portable,” those cameras were not small and, with the film shot hand-held over three, very long nights, Nilsson introduced his cinematographers (Geoffrey Schaaf and Tomas Tucker) at the Mill Valley premier as “two human tripods.”

In addition to its video innovation, “Signal 7” marked Nilsson’s aesthetic about-face from his freshman feature—a leap a lesser artist would have been reluctant to take—to colorful, contemporary and aggressively-emotive films, which were largely improvised. Indeed, dialogue, actions and sometimes entire scenes were made up, after extensive exercises and backstory development using his Direct Action method.

Jazz achieved full improvisation in the early 1960s, but cinema was slow to jettison scripts in favor of free-blowing, outside of a few adventurous auteurs, like Andy Warhol and John Cassavetes—one of whom Nilsson hates, because he typifies the bloodless conceptual artist that is an anathema to a can-do, romantic Man of the West, the other whom he adores.

cineSOURCE magazine, for our part, has long advocated genre miscegenation, with one of the best mixes being the improvised film with anything else: drama, romance, comedy, cop, etc. One easy way to do this: shoot a few scripted takes—playing the head, as in jazz—and, once you have something serviceable in the can, improvise the hell out of it.

Then let the best take win in the editing room, where “the magician lets the genie out of the bottle," which can be incredibly laborious in an improvised film. First of all, dialogue and blocking vary greatly from take to take; secondly, the editing itself is extemporized, with the film often reinvented entirely anew in the editing room.

“Most of my films take over a year to edit, some two,” Nilsson informed me by email. "I’ve been on ‘Arid Cut’ now for over a year and I’ve got another year to go.”

Nilsson routinely attracts editors right out of film school, kids who’ve seen and fallen in love with his films, a system which also serves his budgets in recent years. Despite claiming that editors are the real directors, which implies introducing a second visionary, Nilsson closely oversees the entire process.

Almost all filmmakers, including those as hidebound as Hitchcock, allow ad-libbing, notably when confronted by bad lines or great actors able to inhabit characters better than some schlemiel scriptwriter.

But Nilsson reverses that ratio, rejecting the entire pretense of commercial filmmaking, while retaining many of its conventions, like cutaways, character arc and the hour-plus-some length. To get the rawest feeling and most relevant spontaneity, Nilsson recommends you prepare extensively but then take a deep breath and blow freely with all you got.

If it doesn’t gel into brilliant cinema, Nilsson doesn’t yell cut or bitch out his actors, like some dictatorial auteur. Instead, he interjects a few words, a reassuring look or even a hug (especially useful for inspiring first-time non-actors), and continues the scene. Even if a scene is bombing, he lets it dribble down to its natural demise, during which it may reanimate or deliver one last revelatory statement or expression.

And so it was that Nilsson assembled an immense body of unusual and fresh films and came to be recognized by many critics and film school professors as the foremost inheritor of the improv mantle from its great groundbreaker, Cassavetes, to whom “Signal 7” is dedicated.

Indeed, Nilsson is an aggressive innovator in his own right. He looks to poetry and mysticism much more than Cassavetes, a libertine who died of cirrhosis of the liver at 59. And he developed Direct Action, a fully immersive method, which fostered more improv. Cassavetes only used improvisation in rehearsal, after which he would edit the results into script form for traditional shooting.

Nilsson continued the discussion with an old friend, follower and some times provocateur, cineSOURCE publisher/editor Doniphan Blair at the Metrograph opening. photo: N. Blair

The first American director to win awards at both Cannes and Sundance, Nilsson has received numerous other plaudits, prizes and rave reviews; he has worked with some of America’s finest film actors (Stacy Keach in “Imbued”, 2009; Ron Perlman in “Stroke”, 2000); he’s attracted financing from Silicon Valley; and he has taught dozens of classes.

In addition to facilitating scores of Direct Action workshops around the world, Nilsson did almost a decade and a half running the Tenderloin Action/yGroup, in San Francisco; he has taught numerous classes at Emeryville's Film Acting Bay Area, which also provided actors and financing for a few films; and he held the columnist emeritus post—if only for one issue—here at cineSOURCE, in Oakland.

Alas, it's not quite the acknowledgement befitting a master of the indie, alternative or art feature—call it what you will. Indeed, Nilsson has had trouble of late raising money for his films or even covering his mortgage—apparently why he's subdividing in his home into rentals—not that Nilsson, the old Nigerian world traveller, well versed in Buddhist and poetic asceticism, complains.

The prophet's acclaim is often greater overseas, as the saying goes. And with European viewers more comfortable with complex cinema, Nilsson is in demand as a festival judge, teacher and collaborator in Russia, Armenia, Italy and elsewhere. On his peregrinations, however, he hasn’t found many people doing improv-ed films, perhaps because cinema's cost precludes leaving so much to chance.

“I bet you there are a lot more than I know,” Nilsson answered, when I asked about that absence. “I bet you because it is such a natural choice. Once you realize how difficult it is to get anyone to a realist point of view with written lines—it is like pulling teeth. Great actors can do it. But I’m not interested in acting. I’m looking for something closer to doing and being.”

Fortunately, in the course of making almost 30 Direct Action/Citizen Cinema features around the Bay, Nilsson has inspired a hard-working local group. Loosely affiliated as Bricolage, French for styles stuck together, they act in and produce each other's films, often using skills honed at Nilsson’s elbow: directing, workshopping or editing.

“Yeah, those guys are doing their best to follow that line. To me, it is a legit and possible dream,” Nilsson said, pausing. "I have a lot of respect for these filmmakers because they’re working from passion and commitment, not commerce. I hope they’ve learned things from me but they go their own way.”

And so they have. Jeff Kao, a fine artist turned filmmaker, delivered the astoundingly natural coming-of-age story, "Knowing Nothing Cold" (2016), with a completely teenage cast, including his daughter (see cineSOURCE article). Deniz Demirer, a handsome actor who turned in a strong performance in Nilsson's "Love Twice" (2015), wrote, directed and starred in “American Mongrel" (2012), an amazing, largely-improvised road trip movie. It concerns three acquaintances who, after a night of drinking and arguing, head off around the North-West.

Other Bricolagers include cinematographer Aaron Hollander, who has shot for Nilsson but is the human tripod for the prodigious output of fellow Bricolager, Daniel Kremer. Also a film scholar and historian, author of "Sidney J. Furie: Life and Films" and dozens of articles (including the above-mentioned one on Kao), Kremer is an indefatigable film worker, who has been the editor on a number of Nilsson epics.

Kremer has also directed over a half-a-dozen features, although I've only seen "Raise Your Kids on Seltzer" (2015) and “Ezer Kenegdo” (2017). A believable story of a Jew and a Pole becoming uneasy friends, “Ezer Kenegdo” follows the former, played by Kremer himself (despite a debilitating stutter growing up), as he hangs out with Orthodox Jews in New York, travels to San Francisco and connects with Demirer (who is originally Polish). Entirely improvised from that point on, they search for, find and finally drive out to the countryside to meet their favorite artist, a reclusive painter played by Nilsson.

Despite his anti-Hollywood stance, Nilsson often attracts its leading actors, like Bruce Dern, Stacey Keach or Carl Lumbly, shown here, in 'Love Twice' (2015). photo: courtesy R. Nilsson

The first time this author met Kremer and Demirer was in 2013, at one of the monthly screenings Nilsson mounted for a few years. The films were usually fantastic foreign features he selected, save one night when he presented a recent project, a 30-minute piece made with Celik Kayalar, the actor-director who runs Film Acting Bay Area, and three other accomplished thespians.

The film concerned the friends and collaborators of a deceased filmmaker (Nilsson, yet again filmed entirely in his Berkeley home), as they gather for the reading of his will. Although the lawyer never shows and they eventually disperse, his mentally-challenged daughter remains, providing a powerful indicator of the permanence of love.

The cast workshopped intensely with Nilsson and turned in excellent performances, but the production suffered longueurs, like when the pro-sumer camera iris-ed down at every window and blossomed after. When I suggested the film could better serve as a dress rehearsal to secure financing for a well-produced final version, Nilsson was outraged.

“The film was a class exercise done in a single take,” he said, “not a commercial enterprise.” Aside from criticizing the messenger, even though I thought the message was good, I wanted to muck up “an honest film” with “pretentious dolly shots” or “other Hollywood crap.”

Filmmaking in the rough is the sacrifice we have to make for Christ-like content, Nilsson seemed to say, although I also heard him opine one time that, “I think of myself more as a Judas, who has been accused of attempting to crucify Hollywood.”

“Absurd,” I retorted, as Nilsson’s small screening room went sound-stage quiet, "All film is interpreted reality. Doing a decent production would just be the logical, final step of the rehearsal process that you and the actors obviously worked very hard on."

As Nilsson clambered to his feet, he was interrupted by Demirer, who proceeded to ridicule my insane obsession with lighting, my bourgeois attachment to production values, and my suicidal devotion to death cinema, or words to that effect.

"I do recall 'interrupting' or offering my point of view," Demirer told me recently by email. Instead of my summary, however, he recalls saying, "We have to get over the forms of cinema that have been... forced on us for so long... [A] shaky camera, [an] unexpected and unusual light appearing and disappearing erratically in the frame does constitute cinema and does offer a psychological experience, whether you want to admit it or not."

"Yes, production elements, the filmmaker's tools, can sometimes draw attention to themselves, but why should this not be the case?" Demirer claims he continued, professorially, despite the fact that we were embroiled in a loud argument, which only lasted a few minutes.

"No one owes the actors anything but an honest search, a truthful approach which originally may have stemmed from a lack of resources but has long since become a conscious style that maintains integrity," he concluded. Or "something like that, the exact words are inaccessible at this point," he admitted, by email.

Alas, as anyone who was there undoubtedly recalls, things got so heated, with both Demirer and Nilsson yelling on top of each other as well as at me, I decided to perform my point—the 25 or so audience members were mostly filmmakers and actors, after all. I started crawling on all fours frantically about the room, proving what, I don't recall, save we should lighten up.

I had hoped that the master would welcome, and the acolytes would appreciate, honest feedback, but cloistered cults often have a hard time with that, a problem Nilsson himself addresses in his critiques of the Left. Indeed, Nilsson often makes an attempt to be open and curious, accepting criticism good-naturedly or suddenly switching from a self-centered monologue to inquiring about his interlocutor's opinions or affairs.

The Nilsson-inspired film group Bricolage (lf-rt, top): Daniel Kremer, Aaron Hollander, Josh Peterson and Penny Werner; (bot) Kris Caltagirone and Jeff Kao. photo: D. Blair

Equanimity returned with Nilsson giving Demirer an avuncular pat and me a forbearing nod, although I felt it prudent to exit post haste. Walking to my car, I thought I was about to be mugged, but it was just Kremer jogging after me. The film-school kid chopping away on Nilsson’s current project, I assumed, Kremer had observed the entire fracas from the back.

"Pretty wild, eh," I said, "well, you know, artists."

"Yeah, but I agree with you," he said.

That was not the only time Nilsson and I disputed the appropriate level of production. At a FABA event a year later, he screened a class production concerning a woman reuniting with the now-adult son she had given up for adoption. On top of its moving story, the actors had Direct Actioned to a fare-thee-well and delivered eerily-embodied performances. Alas, my enjoyment was again interrupted by production problems, while Nilsson was again irritated by my mention of it, although that time there was no shouting or crawling on the floor.

Thinking about that argument, however, I came to the realization that Nilsson's method is holistic, both of one piece and based on full commitment, at whatever venue or production level the situation allows. Hence, films rise rapidly from conception, come alive through Direct Action and are soon captured on film, by the shooters and cameras that are available, providing "a truthful approach," as Demirer noted in his email, if not our actual argument.

About a year after our second, friendship-threatening blow up, I had another epiphany. While I prefer to err on the side of professionalism, the more important quest is the investigation and revelation of strong feelings and inventive ideas. This makes me a Nilssonian, I realized, more devoted to a feminine-principled and visionary art than the work of macho, hyper-technical artists, who often lack innovation, honesty or soul.

Rounding out Bricolage is Josh Peterson, a true genie-releaser—he was nominated for an Emmy for editing “Soldiers of Conscience” (2009)—and the actors Kris Caltagirone, who also starred in "American Mongrel", and Penny Werner. A un-showy actress who throws herself subtly but fully into her roles, Werner stars in "Odds", a dark comedy she co-directed with Kao, as well as Kremer's "Raise Your Kids on Seltzer" and Nilsson’s “Arid Cut”.

"I think of Rob as a great inspiration in my life, even a 'mentor'—bordering on therapist!" Werner wrote me recently, by email. "I only began acting in earnest after attending one of his powerful workshops. My life has been greatly changed and enhanced from having met him."

In addition to doing a lot of extemporaneous scenes, the Bricolagers exemplify Nilsson’s notions of filmmaking as an exploratory or even shamanist quest—and not in the airy-fairy sense. Nilsson is interested in artistic vision, of course, but even more in simply seeing the basic reality of our all-too-human character and conditions.

“All the excellent acting you see on television, I can’t stand to look at it any more,” Nilsson told me. “Its excellence is excellent, but it ain’t what I am looking for.”

“The genius of the everyday people is what interests me. That is harder for people to understand or to like because you don’t have the music to go with it [although he often scores with fantastic music], the niceties, the little fillips of attraction. It is a little raw.”

“‘Why am I looking at him, he is just like my uncle?' That's why you should be looking at him,” he almost shouted, “because you NEVER looked at your uncle!”

So allergic is Nilsson to commercial film, he felt compelled to walk out in the middle of “Sorry to Bother You”, the surprise summer indie hit, written, directed and scored by Oakland rapper and activist Boots Riley. Nilsson had heard about and was impressed by Riley’s lefty family, but found his white characters “cartoonish,” despite my attempt to explain, “it was a broad farce. Weren’t the Russian ambassador or American general in 'Dr. Strangelove' cartoonish?”

Nilsson (2nd from rt) directing his crew on an early project, in the early-'80s. photo: courtesy R. NIlsson

Ironically, Nilsson seemed surprised when I mentioned that the second half of “Sorry to Bother You” featured animation, puppetry and a bio-engineering twist involving “horse cocks,” although I can just about hear his response, “Glad I missed it.”

Nilsson also didn’t like the first half of Oakland’s other summer hit, “Blindspotting”, telling me it was boring and that “the audience was laughing at not with the characters.” Again I tried to explain, this time that an elderly white guy, no matter how well-traveled or -read, could hardly expect to get jokes written by and about twenty-somethings of color.

Nilsson would have nothing of it. The individual, he insisted, is entitled to view any work of art on their own terms and render judgment.

Unlike with "Sorry to Bother You", Nilsson was forced to sit through “Blindspotting” because we went together and were grabbing a bite after. Fortunately, he was pleasantly surprised when film came alive halfway through, in its first fight sequence, which it was delivered in flashback, a trick Nilsson admitted worked well. I, in turn, thought the whole film worked well, with that fight drawing together stories nicely rendered during the more comic first half (see "Blindspotting Shows West Oakland’s Heart")

“I’m not interested in either of these films,” Nilsson wrote me by email, “and they weren’t part of our interview,” suggesting his strong opinions should be off the record. “I seldom see films I respect,” he added, by way of a conciliation prize to Oakland’s widely-acclaimed new filmmakers, although he did mention two recent ones he found to be “surprising breakthroughs.”

"Life and Nothing More" (2017), by the Spaniard Antonio Méndez Esparza, "is a terrific film,” he said. Distributed by Mark Fishkin, director of the Mill Valley Film Festival and long time Nilsson comrade-in-arms, "it is about a black single mother and her difficult son, shot in Florida.”

“The other is ‘Capernaum’ [2018, Nadine Labaki], which won a special jury award at Cannes. Shot in the slums of Beirut, [it is] about a street kid and his attempts to keep alive a young child left in his care by a prostitute. Both filmmakers—one which I’ve come to know and respect—spent years researching their films, and both films are done with non-actors, very much in my style.”

On top of eschewing commercial film's line delivery, blocking and script slavery, Nilsson had some recent run-ins with Hollywood hustlers.

“I had two people in the last couple of years whom I trusted, whom I shouldn’t have. There are so many hard chargers out there.”

In Hollywood, “‘We are making a film’ is a positive statement but in a negative context," he explained. "Most of the people who are making films aren’t doing anything. They are bullshitting with the hope that one of their lies will stick to another and actually [become] a film. Never, in my experience, is there ever a film when people talk that way. I got snookered and paid the price.”

Nilsson’s insistence on absolute artistic freedom also compelled him to end his columnist-muse position at cineSOURCE. That was after his second article went way long and the editor politely proposed a few cuts (we were still a paper magazine back then, with limited space), not to mention he spent a third of his piece trashing Warhol (whom we liked, as a filmmaker as well as an artist).

Nilsson’s first and only cineSOURCE article "Survival of Imbued" (2008), however, still rings loud and clear, perhaps enough to last us through the ages:

"The nature of film is that its disasters begin early and stay late,” it opens archly. “The film 'Imbued' is an example... The film was dead, and its death almost a relief.”

“Too much to do. Resources inadequate to the task. Bills piling up. Nerves stretched to slingshot mayhem into the retreating behinds of the routed... All that remained was the coffin, lugged to the boneyard by a cortege of spavined nags."

But “[y]ou can’t give in to Mother Chaos," Nilsson insists. "You’ll be swallowed up, yes; but the question is when. ‘Not yet,’ was the answer. And so two letters went out into the gloom. One was ignored. The other was answered: Stacy Keach was interested."

An edgy as well as accomplished Hollywood actor, Keach fell in with Nilsson like two peas in a pod of grizzled bohemians, rendering a nuanced performance as an old gambler obsessed with a young call girl. Played luminescently by Liz Sklar, she accidentally appears at the gambler's unfinished, luxury condo, where he’s camping out.

“A light bulb goes on which would otherwise have remained off,” Nilsson concludes about his characters, which he would probably admit were well-worn archetypes. In the end, Sklar’s character hits the down button but the elevator goes up, gracefully implying her new trajectory.

Nilsson did finally drop cineSOURCE a line eight years later, in 2016. He wanted to inquire if we would be so kind as to publish an essay, “yGroup Manifesto”, written 30 years earlier by him and his much-laurelled Tenderloin workshop. It would pair nicely, he said, with the about-to-be-released “Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics”, which included his article “The Way of Seeming”.

We were overjoyed: it had been four years since our last article (“Nilsson Not Slowing”); the cinema community needed an injection of Vitamin N; and cineSOURCE specializes in manifestos—in fact, we are the world leader, having published five of the eleven manifestos listed on Wikipedia's "Film Manifesto" page.

Not to mention the “yGroup Manifesto” provided a picture window into the famous film group, which had influenced so many filmmakers as well as viewers through its workshops as well as films.

The Tenderloin Action Group’s freshman outing, "Chalk" (1996), a pool hall story featuring members of the Action Group and some of the world’s top nine-ball pool players, was voted one of that year’s top ten films by New York’s Village Voice.

The Action Group and its subsequent iteration, the yGroup, went on to produce nine "9 @ Night" films, oddly paralleling the name of the pool game but so-called because their stories all start at nine in the evening. In the course of nine features, many of them also acclaimed, the "9 @ Night" series examines almost fifty characters on the rough edges of America.

“Driving through the Tenderloin,” San Francisco’s not-so-soft center, where Nilsson was editing “Heat and Sunlight” in 1987, “got me interested in making features right on the street,” Nilsson told cineSOURCE in 2008. “My brother Greg was mentally ill and had been missing for ten years. I didn’t know where he was, but I hoped to find some clues.”

Article continues at Rob Nilsson: Old Master of the Indie, Part II

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Feb 08, 2019 - 07:01 PM
Oakland’s Year of Living Revolutionarily
by Steven Middlestein

Nine Faces of Oakland's 2018 Cultural Revolution (starting with left column): Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, writer/actors 'Blindspotting', Boots Riley, writer/director 'Sorry to Bother You', Ryan Coogler, director 'Black Panther'; (middle) Rob Nilsson, 'Heat and Sunlight' plus 50 more features, Jamie DeWolf, the very-Oakland 'Smoked', Cheryl Fabio, Oakland blues documentary; (right) Japanese romance, modern tribals, George Soros. photo: various

2018 WAS A REVOLUTIONARY YEAR FOR
Oakland film, filmmakers and fans but also its film magazine, cineSOURCE, now starting its eleventh year (subscribe here).

2018 was so ginormous cinematographically, in fact, it will go down historically as a cultural watershed, not only in Oakland but among cineastes of color nation- and world-wide:

You’re now free to do commercial blockbusters, over-the-top satires, political rom-coms, even.

The only downside: 2018 will be a VERY hard act to follow—unless, of course, Oakland can quickly evolve into a mature as well as visionary film and art center.

For that reason, cineSOURCE devoted 2018 not just to covering Oakland's three hit films and their fascinating auteurs, messrs. Coogler, Riley and Diggs and Casal in "Black Panther Rules Cinema Earth", "Sorry to Bother Busts Wide Open Oakland Cine" and "Blindspotting Shows the Heart of West Oakland", but three East Bay indies AND three socio-political problems of note.

We kicked off the year with “The Perils of Production, Indie Style”, about the ill-fated filming of "Quest" (2017), before turning to three amazing filmmakers: one with only one feature under his belt, the other with over fifty, the third, a woman of color, who made a great documentary about the blues.

After years of activism and film study, Cheryl Fabio joined with Oakland's community TV station, KTOP, to make a detail- and music-filled epic about the blues scene which blew up West Oakland after Saunders Samuel King hit his first number one in 1942 (see "Cheryl Fabio Makes a Masterful Oakland Blues Movie” by Jerry McDaniel).

Indeed, West Oakland flourished for a few decades with supper clubs, fashionable boutiques and record labels, as well as blues men and women, the likes of which we're only now seeing again in Telegraph Avenue's monthly gallery-pub crawl (see "Can Oakland Save the World?"), or Fantastic Negrito's taking the award for Best Contemporary Blues Album Award at the recent Grammys.

“Smoked”, Jamie DeWolf's only feature thus far starts with a stunning introduction to Oakland and Shank, a charismatic OG (old gangster) played by L. Abdul Kenyatta, before turning to three hapless hipsters (one well rendered by DeWolf), who attempt to rob his medical marijuana dispensary. Given Shank's flamboyant thug crew, the three are obliged to flee for their lives while spitting out a stream of film-noir bon mots.

Rupert Estanislau, an actor with actual gang experience, doing the dispensary robbery that kicks off 'Smoked''s long chase sequences. photo: courtesy J. DeWolf

Since releasing “Smoked” in 2012, DeWolf became the director, writer, shooter and actor behind a slew of provocative shorts, see his hairpin-turn-filled story here.

In "Rob Nilsson: Enfant Terrible, Old Master of the Indie" cineSOURCE finally answered the journalistic query first posed a decade ago:

How does one tell the story of an internationally-known indie, now 79, who won at Cannes with his first feature, at Sundance with his fourth, just finished touring the US with a revival of his second, and is hard at work on 52-54, collectively called "Nomad Trilogy"?

Answer: Subject him to a tour-de-force investigation, so revealing it shocked the lunch out of some of his colleagues, simply because Nilsson is THE OG of the improvised, edge-pushing feature, AND honesty and creativity are the beating heart of any art scene.

2018 marked a climax in Oaklandish art, from the stellar cinema—“Black Panther" is one of the top-ten grossing films of ALL TIME!—to achievements in its people-of-color, First Friday, Burning Man or sui generis as well as indie film communities.

But, to inform that work, to keep it at the cutting edge of insight and analysis, we need fresh perspectives and radical understandings.

For this reason, cineSOURCE started long-form, investigative journalism five years ago, kicking off with two media mysteries nagging the East Bay for decades: “The Jew and the Cowboy: Saul Zaentz and Creedence Clearwater" (2014) and “The Black Panther Filmography" (2015). We soon expanded to San Francisco and world history with “Summer of Love Shows, Movies & Festivals Beg Question: What Went Wrong with Hippie Intellectuals?" and “Holocaust Films/Books: What’s Been Achieved/Missed" (both 2016).

"Elevated insight is required for art scenes to lead civilizations," noted Doniphan Blair, cineSOURCE's publisher/editor, who wrote the above four articles, with research assistance from his associates. "This has never more necessary than in today's Bay Area. We're oversaturated with culture and convenience, making us lethargic in that regard, while leading computer and social media companies have fallen prey to fake news, ersatz accounts and false flag operations—meaning we need alternative press."

Blair began 2018 with an essay about the Me Too movement and its unrecognized unintended consequences, “When Flawed Men Make Awed Art", before turning to three even more misunderstood and, therefore, dangerous socio-political problems.

Twenty-five years after Blair concocted 'Abstract Aborigine'—"we are all abstract thinkers native to this planet"—he met a tribal girl in Brazil, who liked photography and image making. photo: D. Blair

Although Barack Obama once proclaimed, "There's not a black America and white America... there's the United States of America," many Americans, including many Obama supporters, rejected that in favor of tribal identities, which empowered both Trump and DNA-based affinity groups.

A less racial lens through which to examine this phenomena, however, is tribe versus civilization, a tension ravaging the globe for five thousand years, according to Blair in his “Tribe Versus Civilization Manifesto".

One big misconception: While we claim to adore our tribes, we're constantly voting with our feet for civilization, notably its tools for communication, war, medicine and travel, which the Islamic radicals worship, but also diversity, which they don't. If nothing else, we all love to eat out foreign cuisine.

Fortunately, the universality of tribe versus civilization makes comparative analysis easy. Blair initiated his own investigation by hitchhiking and busing from Europe to India, while periodically staying with tribal people. A few years later, he did a longer stint across South America, ultimately befriending the unorthodox anthropologist, Tobias Schneebaum (see "Interview with Tobias Schneebaum: Artist, Author, Cannibal?".

In "Romanticism and Its Discontents, East & West", Blair builds on an issue raised in his Me Too article, which is one of the central dilemmas of modern civilization: our desperate need for love and intimacy but our increasing inability to find it.

Surveying the love traditions of the ancients, he focuses on Japan, where the earth's first romantic novel, "The Tales of Gengi," was written by a women in the 11th century. The subsequent romantic movement liberated woman, poetry and dreams and led to samurais, geishas and the sensuous “floating worlds”, but also the messianic machismo of Imperial Japan, much as German romanticism was perverted by the Nazis.

Even so, the main deity and head priests of Japan's traditional faith, Shintoism, are female, while the home continued to be controlled by women. Naturally, the romantic ones were shocked by World War II, stupefied by the annihilation of their cities, and sickened by the phallocentrism, turning post-war to a readily-available means of opposing this: romance and sex.

A few academics, Asians and/or feminists have questioned Blair's capacity or right, as a Caucasian-looking cis male who hasn't toured East Asia or obtained relevant degrees, to address such a complex cultural enigma.

As with tribe versus civilization, romanticism is not unique to Japan and comparative research often uncovers insights inaccessible to more siloed students. Moreover, Japan's low sex, birth and romance crisis have been all over the news, as well as research journals, for decades.

Hillary Clinton was portrayed with a Jewish star and money illustration in a tweet by Trump, October 2016. image: D. Trump

As if tribe vs civilization and Japanese romantic problems were not hard enough, by the end of 2018, Blair felt compelled to expose yet another ancient taboo and mystery:

What's with the Jews and moneylending?

Of course, if you're sick of such provocative or problematic investigations, cineSOURCE's 2018 had plenty of other interesting news:

• Lauren Jiang's articles about Korea: notably "South Korea: Where’s the Romance?" or "The Story of K-Pop and Its Biggest Hits"
• Joanne Butcher's exploration of "Christian Films"
• Poetic perspectives on the tragedy of the California's fires: Tiny Gray-Garcia and Don Schwartz

Or pieces on Bay Area film and media production:

• "Cohen’s Cartoon Corner"
• "Make Films for Under 100K That Sell!"
• "The Harkness Ballet Was Camelot!" by yours truly

Not to forget the obituaries:

Stephen Parr, Bud Luckey and Hank Wessel

But, if you believe an advanced culture needs even more advanced film, art and ideas, and you’re familiar with rumors about Jews and money but never looked into it, Blair's Soros, Jewish Bankers and Interest Explained is for you. Sadly, it is a history so fraught with stereotypes, anti-Semitism and outright psychological disease as well as historical misunderstanding, it is almost never noted by the establishment press or even Jewish history scholars.

Fortunately, Blair has the DNA as well as research to back up his claims. The son of a Holocaust survivor mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, he started studying Jewish history in 1983 and produced the film "Our Holocaust Vacation" in 2007.

He returned to the subject three years ago, in the cineSOURCE article "Holocaust Films/Books: What’s Been Achieved/Missed". It features groundbreaking analysis of how Jews were represented in early-twentieth-century literature, the symbolic meaning of Nazis in film noir, AND an answer to that troubling question "What's with the Jews and moneylending?"

Moreover, Blair is about publish "Love at the End of the World", his mother's collection of elegant and elegiac stories about another un-examined subject: enduring the Holocaust while remaining a loving and romantic teen. The book also includes one of Blair’s most important essays to date, “Darwin and Love: What I Learned Making a Holocaust Movie".

Although Blair's iconoclast Holocaust oeuvre has generated accusations of cultural insensitivity and anti-Semitism, with the massacre at the Pennsylvania synagogue in October 2018, he felt obliged to offer an explanation of Jewish involvement in moneylending over the millennia, to finally begin developing an honest historical understanding.

The cover of 'Love at the End of the World', by Tonia Rotkopf Blair, published by A Media Press. image: D. Blair

Heady notions to be sure, but what do they have to do with Oakland filmmakers and artists?

While a majority of Oakland's intelligentsia is understandably addressing race, identity and gentrification, if you get a flat tire in West Oakland, you are just as likely to be assisted by an artist as an ex-gang member. This highlights our obligation to elucidate our shared humanity and our hidden histories, which are stereotype manufacturing machines.

As it happens, Oakland is testament to people of all colors and income levels coming together to cohabit. Indeed, the recently-passed Frankie Robinson, the storied baseball player and first African-American manager, used to claim that growing up in Oakland the 1940s, he didn't experience racism and his family never even mentioned it.

After flipping between black and white majorities twice in the last fifty years, Oakland is now one of the world's most racially-balanced cities, with black, white and Latino having a quarter each, and Asians, First Peoples and others splitting the remainder (again see "Can Oakland Save the World?").

If Oakland fails in the fresh ideas department, our activists will founder fighting the tribalism of the Trump Era, our filmmakers will flee south to Hollywood and our artists will preach, but not sell, to the converted. Indeed, Oakland's grand multicultural experiment, which the Black Panther Party depended on for financial support, rallies and acquittals, will come to little without cutting edge consciousness.

When a tribe wishes to influence a civilization, the trick is not replacing the ruling cabal with another tribe, either through violence or defamation, but becoming that civilization's most creative and attractive cohort.

That is what Bob Dylan did, when he shifted from his radical early '60s' style to country music, or what Lin-Manuel Miranda achieved by retelling the founding fathers' story in his monster musical hit "Hamilton".

Indeed, creating a cool new American identity is precisely what Oakland was born to do, as Robinson noted. But biology and birth right are of little use when it comes to concocting brilliant new film, art and ideas. What is required is, well, brilliant new film, art and ideas.

Since we already have the brilliant new film and art, help us pursue brilliant new ideas by subscribing, or addressing our 50,000 monthly readers (average) with an ad, or making a comment at the bottom of an article.

Steven Middlestein is a writer, editor and movie fanatic who can be reached . Posted on Feb 08, 2019 - 05:56 PM
Kamala Harris—Oakland Multiculturalist or Establishment Centrist—for President
by Doniphan Blair

At her presidential campaign kickoff rally, Kamala Harris jumbotrons to a diverse Oakland crowd. photo: D. Blair

“We are a diverse country,” noted California Senator Kamala Harris, when she announced her presidential run on Martin Luther King Day (January 21st) via ABC’s “Good Morning America”, “and some people would say that when there is a diverse population one can not achieve unity."

“I reject that notion,” she said pointedly, both her prosecutorial abilities and relaxed nature on full display. Indeed, Harris not only served the law but rocketed to its top, becoming a deputy district attorney in Oakland when she was 26, district attorney in San Francisco at 40 and California Attorney General at 47, mostly without breaking a sweat, due to her dedication to prep.

“When we emphasize commonality, we will achieve greater unity,” Harris continued on ABC. “We need a president who has vision of the future where everyone can see themselves... You see, our United States of America is not about 'us versus them,' it is about 'we the people.'”

While this suggests a pan-partisan strategy based on Harris's biracial heritage, diverse professional interactions, interfaith marriage and extensive globetrotting, as well as Oakland roots, it’s not going to be all “Kumbaya” choruses.

“I want to be perfectly clear, I am not talking of unity for the sake of unity. I'm not talking about some facade of unity,” Harris elaborated the following Sunday at her campaign's kickoff rally, which she held in Oakland.

Although Harris was born in Oakland, on October 20th, 1964, she gave a shout out to only Kaiser Hospital, which appears to make her more of a Berkeley brat (wouldn't she have mentioned a neighborhood, if she’d lived in one?).

Neighboring Berkeley—that famously free-wheeling center of the ‘60s—was where her Indian mother, a cancer researcher, and her Jamaican father, an economist, attended university, fell in love, marched for civil rights and transcended enormous obstacles, save their own interpersonal ones.

When they divorced, mom moved to Montreal to take a job at Jewish General Hospital, bringing with seven-year-old Kamala and younger sis Maya. While Canada is famously white, especially in winter, Montreal is the capital of a secessionist French state, Quebec, and a legendary Jewish community. Indeed, Harris attended Westmount High, alma mater of their poet-saint, Leonard Cohen, as she may have noted to her future husband, Douglas Emhoff, on their first date.

Kamala Harris in a crush of overjoyed supporters, post-rally Oakland . photo: D. Blair

Of Jewish as well as white extraction, Emhoff is a partner at the global law firm DLA Piper and specializes in intellectual property, including his vigorous defense of a cartoon character's trademark. Upon marrying without ceremony at the San Francisco courthouse in 2014, Harris became a mother of two late-teen step-kids, probably a bit of a shock for both parties.

As if that wasn’t crosscultural enough, Harris has regularly flown twelve time zones east to be with her mother’s family in central India, including a grandfather who served in India’s diplomatic corps and impressed her deeply.

Despite Montreal’s attractive European vibe or attending Howard University in Washington DC, Harris remained smitten with the Bay Area and returned to attend SF’s Hastings Law School. Graduating with honors, she was a shoe-in for deputy district attorney in Alameda County, where the Oakland courthouse was made famous by the political performance art of the Black Panthers.

Fortunately, Oakland welcomes back its own, as well as impoverished immigrants and wealthy cosmopolitans, despite the aggressive anti-gentrifier movement, spotlighted by this summer’s hit films “Sorry to Bother You” and “Blindspotting”.

About 20,000 Oaklanders, mostly of the newly-arrived white persuasion but with a strong people-of-color presence, showed up to evaluate and cheer Harris at her unprecedented presidential campaign’s kickoff rally in front of the mayor’s office, which is occupied by her childhood friend, Libby Schaaf.

Getting into the rally looked hard, with people lining up for blocks and Oakland failing to provide enough security, but the line moved quickly, Harris held off starting until most had arrived and it was an almost-entirely friendly affair.

There were a few naysayers, including a Mayan-looking and -dressed woman rebuking Harris’s record on immigration and a track-suited African-American man with a sign saying, “Do your research; find the truth; she is not for you or me.” Indeed, some Oakland radicals call her Kamala the Cop, or a “politrickster for the aristokkkrazy,” as poet, homeless activist and cineSOURCE contributor Tiny Gray-Garcia put it.

Of course, Harris needs more than the poet vote to get elected and a career in law enforcement does bring establishment cred. Harris parses critiques of her profession’s conservative slant by saying, “My whole life I had only had one client: the people.”

Fathers and daughters, probably of Oakland's new techie elite, enthusiastically support Harris. photo: D. Blair

Harris dedicated herself to the law just like Barack Obama, with whom she shares running for president in the middle of a first US Senate term and Asian-African intermingling (Obama’s step-father was from Indonesia and he lived there for four years). But instead of Obama’s elevated jurisprudence—constitutional law, Harvard law review editing and teaching—Harris went into the trenches of prosecuting criminals.

“I want a seat at that table,” is how she explained her strategy to San Francisco’s public defender Jeff Adachi, a courtroom opponent was well as a friend, “I want to change the world.”

While a failure to push progressive judicial initiatives belies that, according to her critics, Harris countered at her rally by claiming, “At a time when prevention or redemption were not in the vocabulary or mind set of most district attorneys, we created an initiative to give skills and job training instead of jail time for young people arrested for drugs.”

Go here for full transcript of Harris's Oakland rally speech.

Rejecting old school drug wars, Attorney General Harris focused on gangs trafficking people and firearms, as well as drugs, and her department authored an innovative study of transnational organizations. She also prosecuted hate crimes against LGBTQ teens and advocated for California's marriage equality law, establishing precedents that influenced the Supreme Court’s “Same-Sex Marriage” decision in 2015.

Harris is not quite a writer like Obama, who considered becoming a novelist after his autobiography, “Dreams from My Father” (1995) turned bestseller, but her speech featured some pithy politi-speak, notably: “People in power are trying to convince us that the villain in our American story is each other but that is not our story… that is not our America!” and, “In this moment, we must speak truth about what is happening: seek truth, speak truth and fight for the truth.”

One truth that may prove problematic is that the young, ambitious and extremely attractive woman-of-color attorney inevitably encountered one of California’s most powerful men of any color, Willie Brown, also an attorney, as he was finishing fifteen prodigious years as the powerful Speaker of the California Assembly and about start two terms as San Francisco’s “da mayor” (his term).

Dating Brown, who was 30 years her senior and still married, presumably no longer offends anyone in America, now that conservative Bible-belters have converted to Trumpism, but some of his gifts might.

The deluxe BMW can be written off as something any rich guy would give a beloved girlfriend, but Brown’s facilitation of Harris’s appointment to state-wide insurance and medical oversight boards, with $400,000 remuneration over five years, might raise eyebrows on both sides of the aisle, even as it's dismissed as minimal compared to Trump’s philandering, fishy deals or felonies.

Although Brown broke with Harris to return to his wife, the California kingmaker continued to honor their friendship. Hence, it was not that hard for Harris to BART across the Bay and snatch the San Francisco district attorney’s office from the popular, if increasingly ineffective, Terence Hallinan, doyen of a famous local family of lawyers and liberals, in 2004.

Kamala Harris and one of her opponents for the Democratic presidential nomination, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (2013-), who is hewing to a more conciliatory position. photo: unknown

With San Francisco dominating state-wide and national politics—from Governor Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom to Senator Diane Feinstein, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and ex-Senator Barbara Boxer (although she’s a Mariner)—Harris naturally jumped to California Attorney General in 2011. For her Senate race in 2016, Brown petitioned LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a powerful southern California challenger, to recuse himself. Harris won handily with 61% of the vote.

Brown’s patronage may come back to haunt Harris, especially in a presidential debate with a master of disaster, expert at smut, scandal and rabbit-punch jibes—unless Harris has an equally slicing rejoinder and sufficient equanimity. Fortunately, she’s disciplined and determined and undoubtedly has an answer to the Brown question that's as effortless as it is understandable, if not squeaky clean.

“Lord knows I am not perfect,” is how she put it at the Oakland rally. “But I will always speak with decency and moral clarity and treat all people with dignity and respect,” which may prove difficult duking it out in the bare-knuckled ring of American politics.

“Of course, we know this is not going to be easy guys,” Harris admitted. “And we know what the doubters will say… ‘It is not your time’… ‘The odds are long’… ‘It can’t be done.’” “But,” she concluded, “America’s story has always been written by people who can see what can be, unburdened by what has been.”

Despite her sometimes bubbly demeanor—she laughed a lot during her speech—she's obviously able to debate and destroy with the best of them, given she spend six years as the top prosecutor in California, the world's MOST litigious state.

Overruling staff and prudence, Harris pulled out of a settlement for Californian homeowners injured by the Great Recession, and personally called J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon. After arguing with him "like dogs in a fight," according to her just-released autobiography, "The Truths We Hold: An American Journey" (2019), she negotiated a ten-fold settlement increase from the five major loan companies to $25 billion.

An opponent of for-profit colleges, she also extracted over a billion from the now-closed Corinthian Colleges, although her office passed on similar charges against Trump University, perhaps because of its donations to her office, an allegation she dismissed. Later in the Senate, she supported refinancing students in debt.

As usual, Harris has been hard at work. In addition to serving as senator, where she became famous for grilling US Attorney General Jeff Sessions about Russia in 2017, and publishing the now-obligatory autobiography, she put out a children’s book. “Superheroes Are Everywhere” (2019) emphasizes innovation, disregarding slogans and learning how to do detail, in a chapter entitled “Embrace the Mundane”.

African-American protestor holds up sign at Senator Kamala Harris's Oakland kickoff rally. photo: D. Blair

The main critique of Harris around California is that she was both a cop AND not cop enough. Hence, she failed to aggressively prosecute criminals —notably not going for the death penalty with a gang member who killed a cop—or, conversely, to rapidly reverse the disastrous Three Strikes Laws of the 1990s, although she strongly supported Governor Brown’s prison reform in 2016.

Harris’s record is conspicuously middle of the road, suggesting timidity to her critics, real politic to her supporters, or an eye on higher office, as public defender Adachi noted. Obviously, Harris has immense experience negotiating between the power centers of California's diverse bases, including across the critical economic divide.

While Harris was born to elite professionals, has hung with upper middle classers most of her entire life and spent the last 30 years among California’s wealthiest—sister Maya’s boyfriend is Tony West, general counsel of Uber, for example—she is also a person of color, who attended a traditional African-American university and has defended and spent time with people at the other end of the social pecking order or law.

Naturally, she supports Medicare for all, reversing Trump's tax giveaway to the rich and most progressive positions. Despite this being her first senate term, hence her first experience with legislative politics, she obviously feels capable, qualified and prepared enough.

“I love my country,” was how Harris explained her bold decision to run, on ABC. “I feel a sense of responsibility to stand up and fight for the best of who we are. I am prepared to fight and I know how to fight.”

Indeed, “Oakland street fighter” is what David Brooks, the conservative but anti-Trump columnist, called her, even lauding her as the best candidate thus far (see his “Kamala Harris, Call-Out Star”).

If Harris garners the nomination, and Trump does as well, he will resort to his patented blend of tribalism, cynicism and lowbrowism, as well as covert racism and misogyny, although he did take note of her candidacy and admitted she may be the one to beat.

Before that beauty-and-the-beast match up, Harris will have to out-maneuver and -debate a vast field of Democratic candidates, which now numbers seven and will include up to a half-a-dozen more, some of whom have also noted she's a serious contender.

Kamala Harris is a woman in a hurry, both here coming into the US Senate and up her career ladder. photo: unknown

If Harris can maintain Oakland’s tolerant street multiculturalism and Michelle Obama's doctrine of staying high, while going low enough to confront the tough issues, she may have the right balance of court room wit and celebrity charm, multicultural chops and centrist inclusiveness to beat a sitting president who is almost her exact opposite: no legal experience, aside from being charged with crimes, anti-intellectual, uncouth and ugly.

“We are here knowing we are at an inflection in the history of our world, we are at an inflection point in the history of our nation,” Harris concluded at her opening rally. "We are here because the American dream and our American democracy are under attack and on the line like never before."

With Brexit and rightist takeovers across Europe prompting 30 prominent intellectuals to post the surprisingly desperate "Fight for Europe Manifesto", and pending or impending environmental, economic, digital, espionage or foreign war catastrophes, Harris is hardly exaggerating.

"And we are here at this moment in time because we must answer a fundamental question: Who are we? Who are we as Americans? So, let’s answer that question, to the world, and each other, right here and right now: America, we are better than this," Harris said, pausing for a long sustained cheer.

"We are better than this,” were her final words, which she repeated three times, articulating an ambitious challenge which she herself just may be able to prove to a majority of the American people.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Feb 06, 2019 - 02:20 PM
Kamala Harris’s Kickoff Rally Speech
trancribed by cineSOURCE

Kamala Harris walking the halls of the Congress along with fellow senator and presidential candidate, Elizabeth Warren. photo: unknown

In keeping with cineSOURCE's coverage of cutting-edge Oakland culture and politics, and since we couldn't find online the transcript of Candidate Kamala Harris's campaign kickof rally speech at Oakland City Hall, we had it transcribed.

Kamala Harris's Campaign Kickoff Speech, 1/27/2019

Oh my goodness. Thank you thank you, thank you, thank you [laughs]. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Oh my heart is full right now, thank you everyone.

I want to thank Libby Schaaf, the great mayor of the City of Oakland, for that incredible introduction and our longstanding friendship. You know, our mothers were friends also, together here in Oakland, and I can’t thank you enough Libby for your leadership and your friendship.

So here we are—here we are [cheers].

Well, let me tell you, I am so proud to be a daughter of Oakland, California [cheers]. And as most of you know, I was born just up the road at Kaiser Hospital.

And it was just a few miles away where my parents met as graduate students at UC Berkeley [cheers], where they were active in the civil rights movement. And they were born half a world apart from each other: My father Donald came from Jamaica to study economics my mother Shamala came from India to study the science of fighting disease [cheers].

They came her in pursuit of more then just knowledge. Like so many others they came in pursuit of a dream, and that dream was a dream for themselves, for me and for my sister Maya As children growing up here in the East Bay, we were raised by a community with a deep belief in the promise of our country, and deep understanding of the parts of that promise that still remain unfulfilled.

We were raised in a community where we were taught to see a world beyond just ourselves, to be conscious and compassionate about the struggles of all people. We were raised to believe public service is noble cause and the fight for justice is everyone’s responsibility [cheers].

In fact, my mother used to say, ‘Don’t sit around complain about things, do something.’ I think she was basically saying, ‘You've got to get up and stand up and don’t give up the fight.’ [cheers] [Harris laughs]

And it is this deep rooted belief that inspired me to become a lawyer and a prosecutor. It was just a couple of blocks from this very spot nearly thirty years ago as a young district attorney I walked into the courtroom and for the first time and said the five words that would guide my life’s work: ‘Kamala Harris for the people.’ [sustained cheers]

Now, I knew our criminal justice system was deeply flawed. But I also knew the profound impact law enforcement had on people's lives and its responsibility to give them safety AND dignity. I knew I wanted to protect people. And I knew that the people in our society, who are most often targeted by predators are also most often the voiceless and vulnerable. [cheering, breaking into 'Ka-ma-la']

Kamala Harris greets enthusiastic supporters as she exits her January 27 rally in front of Oakland City Hall. photo: D. Blair

I believe then, as I do now, no one should be left to fight alone. Because you see in our system of justice, we believe that a harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us. That is why when a case is filed, it doesn’t read the name of the victim, it reads ‘the people.’

And this is a point I have often explained to console and council survivors of crime, people who face great harm, often at the hands of someone they trust, be it a relative or a bank or a big corporation. I would remind them, ‘You are not invisible. We all stand together.’ Because that is the power of the people.

And my whole life I had only had one client: The people [cheering]. And fighting for the people meant fighting on behalf of survivors of sexual assault, a fight not just against predators but a fight against silence and stigma.

‘For the people’ meant fighting for a more fair criminal justice system. At a time when prevention or redemption were not in the vocabulary or mind set of most district attorneys, we created an initiative to give skills and job training instead of jail time for young people arrested for drugs.

‘For the people’ meant fighting for middle class families who had been defrauded by banks and were losing their homes by millions in the Great Recession. And I’ll tell you, sitting across the table from the big banks, I witnessed the arrogance of power. Wealthy bankers accusing innocent homeowners of fault as if this Wall Street mess was of The Peoples makings.

So we went after the biggest five banks in the United States; we won twenty billion dollars for California’s homeowners; [cheers] and together we passed the strongest anti-foreclosure law in the United States of America. We did that together [cheers] .

For the people meant fighting transnational gangs who traffic in drugs and guns and human beings, and I saw their sophistication and their persistence and their ruthlessness. On the subject transnational gangs, let’s be perfectly clear: The president’s medieval vanity protect is not going to stop them [cheering].

During the fight for the people to hold this administration accountable, I have seen the amazing spirit of the American people. During the health care fight, I saw parents of children with grave illnesses walk the halls of the United States Congress. Families who had traveled across the country at incredible sacrifice. They came to our nation's capital believing that if their stories were heard and if they were seen their leaders would do the right thing.

I saw the same thing with our dreamers. They came by the thousands by plane, train, automobile, on shore—they were sleeping ten deep on someone living room floor. And they came because they believe in our democracy and the only country they have ever know as home [cheering].

I met survivors who shared their deepest and most painful experiences, who told stories they had never before revealed, even to their closest loved ones, because they believed that if they were seen their leaders would do the right thing and protect the highest court in our land.

And together we took on these battles. And to be sure, we won and we’ve lost but we have never stopped fighting [cheers]. We have never stopped fighting, and that is why we are here today. And that is why we are here today.

Kamala Harris's ebullience on full display at the end of her meeting with her base's base, Oaklanders. photo: D. Blair

We are here knowing we are at an inflection in the history of our world, we are at an inflection point in the history of our nation. We are here because the American dream and our American democracy are under attack and on the line like never before [cheering].

And we are here at this moment in time because we must answer a fundamental question: Who are we? Who are we as Americans?

So, let’s answer that question, to the world, and each other, right here and right: America, we are better than this, we are better than this. [long cheering]. We are better than this.

When we have leaders who bully and attack a free press and undermine our democratic institutions, that’s not our America!

When white supremacists march and murder in Charlottesville, or massacre innocent worshipers in a Pittsburg synagogue, that’s not our America!

When we have children in cages crying for their mothers and fathers—don’t you dare call that border security, that’s a human rights abuse—[cheers] AND that’s not OUR America!

When we have leaders who attack public schools and vilify public school teachers, that is not our America! [cheers]

When bankers who cracked our economy get bonuses but the workers who brought our country back can’t even get a raise, that’s not our America! [cheers]

And when American families are barely living paycheck to paycheck, what is this administration’s response? Their response is to try and take health care away from millions of families [boos]; their response is give away a trillion dollars to the biggest corporations in this country [boos]; and their response is to blame immigrants as the source of all our problems [boos].

And guys let’s understand what is happening here: People in power are trying to convince us that the villain in our American story is each other. But that is not OUR story; that is not WHO WE ARE; that is not our America! [cheers]

You see, our United States of America is not about us versus them, it is about ‘We the People.’ [cheers]. And in this moment we must all speak truth about what is happening. We must seek truth, speak truth and fight for the truth [cheers].

So let’s speak some truth [cheers] [Harris sees someone in the crowd and laughs]. Let’s speak truth about our economy. So let’s speak some truth bout our economy: Today our economy is not working for working people. The cost of living is going up but paychecks aren’t keeping up. For so many Americans a decent retirement feels out of reach and the America dream feels out of touch.

The truth is our people are drowning in debt: record student debt, car loan debt, credit card debt, resorting to payday lenders because you can’t keep up with the bills. People are drowning in America. We have a whole generation of Americans living with the sinking fear that they won’t do as well as their parents.

And let’s speak another truth about our economy: Women are paid on average 80 cents on the dollar, black women 63 cents, Latinas 53 cents [boos]. And here’s the thing, here’s the thing: when we lift up the women of our country, we lift up the children of country [cheers], we lift up the families of our country [cheers], and the whole of society benefits [cheers].

Let’s speak another truth: Big pharmaceutical companies have unleashed an opioid crisis from the California coast to the mountains of West Virginia. And people, once and for all, we have got to call drug addiction what it is: a national public health emergency [cheers]. And what we don’t need is another war on drugs [cheers].

Let’s speak truth: Climate change in real [cheers] and it’s happening now [cheers]. Every one here knows from wild fires in the west to hurricanes in the east, to floods and droughts in the heartland, but we are not going to buy the lie. We’re going to act, based on science fact not science fiction [cheers].

Let’s speak an uncomfortable but honest truth with one an other: racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia are real in this country, and they are age-old forms of hate with new fuel. And we need to speak that truth so we can deal with it [cheers].

Let’s also speak the truth that too many unarmed black men and women are killed in America. Too many black and brown Americans are being locked up, from mass incarceration to cash bail to policing our criminal justice systems needs drastic repair—let’s speak that truth.

And let’s speak truth: Under this administration America’s position in the world has never been weaker. When democratic values under attack around the globe, when authoritarianism is on the march, when nuclear proliferation is on the rise, when we have foreign power infecting the White House like malware [sustained cheers].

[Yells] Let’s speak that truth!

Let’s speak truth about what are clear and present dangers, and let’s speak the biggest truth of all: in the face of powerful forces trying to sow hate and division amongst us, the truth is that as Americans we have so much more in common than what separates [cheers]. Let’s speak that truth. Let’s not buy that stuff that some folks are trying to peddle. Lets not ever forget that on the fundamental issues, we all have so much more in common then what separates us.

And you know, some will say, ‘We need to search to find that common ground.’ [cheers] Here is what I say, ‘We need to recognize that we are already standing on common ground.’ I say, ‘We rise together or we fall together as one nation indivisible.’ [cheers]

And I want to be perfectly I am not talking of unity for the sake of unity. So hear me out, I'm not talking of unity for the sake of unity. I'm not talking about some façade of unity, and I believe we must acknowledge that the word unity has often been used to shut people up or to preserve the status quo [cheers].

After all let’s remember, when women fought for suffrage those in power said, ‘They were dividing the sexes and disturbing the peace.’ Let’s remember, when abolitionists spoke out and civil right workers marched, their oppressors said, ‘They were dividing the races and violating the word of god.’ But Frederick Douglas said it best—and Harriet Tubman and Dr. King knew—to love the religion of Jesus is to hate the religion of the slave master [cheers].

When we have a true unity, no one will be subjugated for others. It is about fighting for a country with equal treatment, collective purpose and freedom for all [cheers]. That’s who we are—that’s who we are.

And so, I stand before today [cheers], I stand before you today, clear-eyed about the fight ahead and what has to be done, with faith in god, with fidelity to country, and with the fighting spirit I got from my mother [cheers], I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States.

[sustained cheering, then chants of ‘Ka-ma-la’]

Thank you, thank you. And I will tell you, I am running for president because I love my country—I love my country [cheers].

I am running to be president of the people, by the people and for ALL people. I am running to fight for an America where the economy works for working people, for an America where you only have to work one job to pay the bills [cheers], where hard work is rewarded and where any worker can join a union [cheers].

I am running to declare, once and for all, that health care is a fundamental right [cheers] and we will deliver that right with Medicare for all [cheers].

I am running to declare education is a fundamental right [cheers], and we will guarantee that right with universal pre-K and debt-free college [cheers].

I am running to guarantee working and middle class families an overdue pay increase. We will deliver the largest working and middle class tax cut in a generation—up to $500 a month to help America’s families make ends meet [cheers]. And we’ll pay for it, we’ll pay for it, by reversing this administration’s giveaway to the top corporations and the top one percent.

I am running to fight for an America where our democracy and its institutions are protected against all enemies foreign AND domestic [cheers]. Which is why I will defend this nation against all threats against our cyber-security [cheers]. We will secure our elections and critical infrastructure to protect OUR democracy [cheers].

And we will honor our service members and veterans so no one who has served this country has to wait in line for weeks and months to get what they are owed, when they return home on first day [cheers].

I’m running to fight for America where no mother or father has to teach their young son that people may stop him, arrest him, chase or kill him because of his race [cheers]. An America where every parent can send their children to school without being haunted by the horror of yet another killing spree.

Where we treat attacks on voting rights, and civil rights and women’s rights and immigrants rights, as attacks on our country itself [cheers]. An America where we welcome refugees and bring people out of the shadows and provide a pathway to citizenship [sustained cheers].

An America where our daughters, and our sisters and our mothers and our grandmothers, are respected where they live and work [cheers]. Where reproductive rights are not just protected by the constitution of the United States but guaranteed in every state.

I’ll fight for an America where we keep our word and where we honor our promises, because that’s our America. And that’s the America I believe, that’s the America I know we believe in.

And as we embark on this campaign, I will tell you this, I am not perfect, lord knows I am not perfect, but I will always speak with decency and moral clarity and treat all people with dignity and respect [cheers]. I will lead with integrity and I will speak the truth.

And of course, we know this is not going to be easy guys, this is not going to be easy. And we know what the doubters will say. It is the same thing they have always said. They’ll say, ‘It is not your time;’ they’ll say, ‘It’s not your turn;’ they’ll say, ‘The odds are long;’ they’ll say, ‘It can’t be done.’

But, but America’s story has always been written by people who can see what can be unburdened by what has been [cheers].

That is our story, that is our story. And as Robert Kennedy many years ago said, ‘Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.’ [cheers] He also said, ‘I do not lightly dismiss the dangers and the difficulties of challenging an incumbent president but these are not ordinary time and this is not ordinary election.’ He said, ‘At stake is not simply the leadership of our party and even our country, it is our right to the moral leadership of this planet.’ [cheers]

So today I say to you my friends, these are not ordinary times, and this will not be ordinary election. But this is OUR America [cheers]. So here's the thing: It is up to us, it up to us—each and every one of us. So let’s remember, in this fight, we have the power of the people.

We can achieve the dreams of our parents and grandparents; we can heal our nation,; we can give our children the future they deserve; we CAN reclaim the American dream for every single person in our country [cheers]; and we can restore America’s moral leadership on this planet [cheers]

So let's do this [laughs].

Posted on Feb 01, 2019 - 09:03 PM
Fight for Europe Manifesto
by Bernard-Henri Lévy

(clockwise from upper left) French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and the Czech, Indian-English-American and Turkish novelists Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk, respectively. photo courtesy City of Munich

On January 25th, 2019, Bernard-Henri Levy wrote, and Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, Orhan Pamuk and other European intellectuals cosigned, the manifesto "Fight for Europe—or the Wreckers Will Destroy It". It was published in various periodicals, including London's The Guardian.

cineSOURCE is honored to join this effort, given 'Fight for Europe' is one of the most important appeals for multiculturalism and civilization of our day; Oakland is at the forefront of the multicultural civilizational struggle; cineSOURCE has a ten-year track record of advocating for radical multiculturalism; and—last but not least—we are the WORLD RECORD HOLDER in number of published manifestos: five (see Wikipedia page Film Manifestos).

Fight for Europe—or the Wreckers Will Destroy It

The idea of Europe is in peril.

From all sides there are criticisms, insults and desertions from the cause.

“Enough of ‘building Europe’!” is the cry. Let’s reconnect instead with our “national soul”! Let’s rediscover our “lost identity”! This is the agenda shared by the populist forces washing over the continent. Never mind that abstractions such as “soul” and “identity” often exist only in the imagination of demagogues.

Europe is being attacked by false prophets who are drunk on resentment, and delirious at their opportunity to seize the limelight. It has been abandoned by the two great allies who in the previous century twice saved it from suicide; one across the Channel and the other across the Atlantic. The continent is vulnerable to the increasingly brazen meddling by the occupant of the Kremlin. Europe as an idea is falling apart before our eyes.

This is the noxious climate in which Europe’s parliamentary elections will take place in May. Unless something changes; unless something comes along to turn back the rising, swelling, insistent tide; unless a new spirit of resistance emerges, these elections promise to be the most calamitous that we have known. They will give a victory to the wreckers.

For those who still believe in the legacy of Erasmus, Dante, Goethe and Comenius there will be only ignominious defeat. A politics of disdain for intelligence and culture will have triumphed. There will be explosions of xenophobia and antisemitism. Disaster will have befallen us.

We, the undersigned, are among those who refuse to resign themselves to this looming catastrophe. We count ourselves among the European patriots (a group more numerous than is commonly thought, but that is often too quiet and too resigned), who understand what is at stake here. Three-quarters of a century after the defeat of fascism and 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall there is a new battle for civilization.

Our faith is in the great idea that we inherited, which we believe to have been the one force powerful enough to lift Europe’s peoples above themselves and their warring past. We believe it remains the one force today virtuous enough to ward off the new signs of totalitarianism that drag in their wake the old miseries of the dark ages. What is at stake forbids us from giving up.

Hence this invitation to join in a new surge.

Hence this appeal to action on the eve of an election that we refuse to abandon to the gravediggers of the European idea.

Hence this exhortation to carry once more the torch of a Europe that, despite its mistakes, its lapses, and its occasional acts of cowardice, remains a beacon for every free man and woman on the planet.

Our generation got it wrong. Like Garibaldi’s followers in the 19th century, who repeated, like a mantra, “Italia se farà da sè” (Italy will make herself by herself), we believed that the continent would come together on its own, without our needing to fight for it, or to work for it. This, we told ourselves, was “the direction of history.”

We must make a clean break with that old conviction. We don’t have a choice. We must now fight for the idea of Europe or see it perish beneath the waves of populism.

In response to the nationalist and identitarian onslaught, we must rediscover the spirit of activism or accept that resentment and hatred will surround and submerge us. Urgently, we need to sound the alarm against these arsonists of soul and spirit who, from Paris to Rome, with stops along the way in Barcelona, Budapest, Dresden, Vienna and Warsaw, want to make a bonfire of our freedoms.

In this strange defeat of “Europe” that looms on the horizon; this new crisis of the European conscience that promises to tear down everything that made our societies great, honorable, and prosperous, there is a challenge greater than any since the 1930s: a challenge to liberal democracy and its values.

Signatories

Author Bernard-Henri Lévy (Paris), principals Milan Kundera (Prague), Salman Rushdie (New York), Elfriede Jelinek (Vienna) and Orhan Pamuk (Istanbul), and additionals: Vassilis Alexakis (Athens), Svetlana Alexievich (Minsk), Anne Applebaum (Warsaw), Jens Christian Grøndahl (Copenhagen), David Grossman (Jerusalem), Ágnes Heller (Budapest), Ismaïl Kadaré (Tirana), György Konrád (Debrecen), António Lobo Antunes (Lisbon), Claudio Magris (Trieste), Ian McEwan (London), Adam Michnik (Warsaw), Herta Müller (Berlin), Ludmila Oulitskaïa (Moscow), Rob Riemen (Amsterdam), Fernando Savater (San Sebastián), Roberto Saviano (Naples), Eugenio Scalfari (Rome), Simon Schama (London), Peter Schneider (Berlin), Abdulah Sidran (Sarajevo), Leïla Slimani (Paris), Colm Tóibín (Dublin), Mario Vargas Llosa (Madrid), Adam Zagajewski (Cracow).
Posted on Jan 30, 2019 - 07:52 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner: Feb 2019
by Karl Cohen

Lee Unkrich takes an Oscar for 'Coco' in 2017. photo courtesy Pixae

Unkrich Retires from Pixar

Lee Unkrich, the Oscar-winning director behind “Toy Story 3” and “Coco”, is leaving Pixar Animation Studios, marking the end of an era.

He joined the Emeryville, California-based studio 25 years ago, when it was making its inaugural feature, “Toy Story”, on which he served as an editor.

He went on to co-direct some of the company’s early outings—“Toy Story 2”, “Monsters, Inc. and “Finding Nemo”—now considered classics before taking the reins solo with the billion dollar-grossing “Toy Story 3”.

"I'm not leaving to make films at another studio,” Lee told Pixar employees. “Instead, I look forward to spending much-needed time with my family and pursuing interests that have long been on the back burner."

Unkrich is leaving on a high note: “Coco” made over $807 million worldwide and won the best animated feature Academy Award at the 2018 Oscar ceremonies. He is said not to have started on any new projects.

San Francisco’s Animated February

For a great annual survey of new animation, check out “Drawn, Painted, and Pixelated” (93 min) at SF Indie Fest on February 10th or 11th, 12:30 pm or 7:15 pm, respectively.

“D, P, and P” features new animation from around the world, with a wide range of styles and content, and titles like “Trump Bites”, “1 Beehive Street”, “Gissando”, “Dahlia”, “God I Need A Girlfriend”, “Kevin Kline Live #3”, “I Can't Bring You Away” and more.

I’ve seen several. Favorites include “Gissando”, an impressive stop-/slow- motion study using real objects by a USC student, Bill Plympton’s “Trump Bites”, which includes his “Trump and Putin: a Love…” You will be surprised, perhaps even shocked.

“I Had Too Much To Think Last Night” is a one-minute crazy journey into the artist’s mind—a tad too much LSD, perhaps?—while “1 Beehive Street” is probably a prize winner from Eastern Europe. About unusual activities in an apartment complex, it delighted me with all of its surprises.

Some of the other films, like “Dahlia” and “Subway Commute”, were probably selected for sheer sexy artwork-appeal, while “God I Need A Girlfriend” shows animation can also be unsettling.

The real red-headed girl from Peanuts revealed. photo courtesy C Schultz

Schulz’s Red Head Girl Solved

A new exhibit at the Charles M. Schulz Museum, “Behind Peanuts: The Little Red-Haired Girl” (January 31-August 4, 2019), explores the real-life story behind Charlie Brown’s unrequited love. In point of fact, it reflects Schulz’s own one-sided romance from 1959 which ended when Carol Johnston Wood rejected his marriage proposal.

Although Wood was mentioned many times in Schulz’s strip, she appeared only once, as a simple silhouette. On Valentine’s Day (February 14), admission to the museum, in Santa Rosa, is free for red-headed people.

Cartoon Art Museum Shows Rare Animation

From the earliest hand-drawn cartoons to today’s blockbuster CGI features, all animation begins with an artist and an idea. “A Treasury of Animation”, the new show at the Cartoon Art Museum (781 Beach Street, SF), features original production art and follows the evolution of animation from the 1920s onward.

Little known is that “Crusader Rabbit”, the first animated series screened on TV, in 1950, was made in Berkeley by J. Ward and Alex Anderson.

Crusader Rabbit was made in Berkeley by J. Ward and Alex Anderson. drawings: courtesy Cartoon Museum

The pioneering series was still in reruns in ‘60s, when many boomers rose at dawn on Saturdays to catch episodes. Each was an adventure with the intrepid rabbit and his friend, Ragland T. Tiger; once they went boating on the Bay but after the fog rolled in, got lost and ended up on a South Sea Island: Nothing Atoll.

A nephew of Mighty Mouse producer Paul Terry, Anderson started working at his uncle's Terrytoons studio in 1938. Having grow up with Jay Ward in Berkeley, they joined to create and pitch cartoons, including “Crusader Rabbit”, “Rocky and Bullwinkle”, and “Dudley Do-Right”, although only the former sold. Ward eventually moved to Los Angeles to sell the other series, while Anderson retired to advertising.

The Wild Weird Watts Towers

No tour of Cali culture is complete without a visit to Watts Towers, a rather tall—90 feet—and mosaic-incrusted series of towers by Sabato Rodia. An Italian immigrant and untrained artist, Rodia built it entirely on his own, between 1925 and 1955, on his property in the Watts neighborhood (1765 E. 107th Street).

The Watts Tower is one of the greatest achievements of 'outsider art.' drawings: courtesy Watts Tower

I first discovered this is a wonderful monument on the cover of “Wide Weird World”, a record album my uncle Kenny gave me around 1957. Within a few years. I got to visit them twice and photograph them, by which point much had been destroyed.

They used to have bowling trophy figures at the top, but kids tossing rocks knocked them off. Rumors off treasure hidden under the ceramics stuck on the walls and towers inspired a lot of digging.

While studying at Berkeley I attended a wonderful slide lecture on The Towers, which were designated national, California and LA historic landmarks in 1990, one of only nine registered folk art sites listed in Los Angeles.

Interestingly, one obsession begets another. The marine biologist Bruno Pernet has become fascinated with the many sea shells Rodia used to adorned his life/master work. According to Pernet, they include many species now extinct in the LA area, which Rodia collected, and provide a biological snap shot of the region, see LA Times article.

Collins’s Last Magic Show

Vince Collins presented his animated psychedelic “last magic show,” in January. Live action films of magic shows never look great, since you know they can be faked. But Vince’s show is so unreal, you know he is going to show you something bizarre. And he does, see here.

Karl Cohen is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Jan 29, 2019 - 05:39 PM
How John Lasseter Got His New Gig
by Karl Cohen

The founder and head of Pixar, John Lasseter, felt from grace for sexualized hugging. photo: courtesy Pixar

SURPRISE, SURPRISE: IT TURNS
out getting hired is often a matter of whom you know. In John Lasseter’s case it was Skip Brittenham, a Hollywood deal maker and a close friend of the Ellison family, of Oracle and World Cup fame.

Skip was also one of the guys who brokered the deal in 1991 to get a young startup company in the Bay Area a feature contract with Disney. That startup was called Pixar.

Skip was delivered to Pixar by Steve Jobs, who offered him a seat on the board because of his Hollywood connections. It turns out Skip also represents David Ellison, who is Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s son, and David owns a startup animation studio, Skydance.

Indeed, there is yet another close connection: Skip’s daughter Kristina is marred to Jesse Sisgold, president of Skydance.

Rebecca Keegan, from The Hollywood Reporter’s staff pieced this puzzle together and uncovered additional information. To independently investigate sexual abuse claims by Pixar’s women, Skydance hired two lawyers from the firm Venable, but Keegan found scant evidence for a thorough investigation.

Rebecca located one person who described his interview with the lawyers as “a perfunctory conversation,” and she said that other people familiar with the allegations had not been contacted.

Rebecca also noted Skydance was a privately owned company so there wouldn’t be a troublesome board members objecting to the Lasseter hire. So as long as John doesn’t do anything controversial, like hug someone, he has the full support of Skydance’s owners and executives.

John is 62. If he wishes to stay active as a creative person, he can have a solid career ahead of him. If he gets bored or screws up he can always retire and enjoy being a gentleman wine maker if he keeps his property in the Bay Area.

And don’t forget as the creative head of Pixar he became a multi-millionaire many times over.

Karl Cohen is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Jan 26, 2019 - 03:38 AM
People’s Park Rejects University Takeover
by Doniphan Blair

A girl enjoying a concert at the 45th anniversary of People's Park, Berkeley, 2014. photo: D. Blair

PEOPLE'S PARK, A COLORFUL AND
contentious symbol of Berkeley radicalism, is being re-claimed yet again by the University of California, after 49 years of enjoyment by local families, homeless people, Frisbee players and dog walkers.

About a dozen protesters and quadruple that number of police, according to eyewitness accounts, confronted each other on the rainy morning of Tuesday, January 15th, as crews removed "five diseased trees," on top of almost 50 culled in December. On January 7th, a large eucalyptus tree, about a half a mile away and not tagged for removal, came down during a storm, killing 32-year-old Alexander Grant, from Novato, California.

In addition to tree clearing, UC Berkeley has a plan, announced last year, to build housing for about one thousand students on the site. Indeed, little has changed since 1969, when UC student James Rector was shot and killed by police in a similar protest. There were also protests in 1991.

Although the University claims the new building, which they hope to complete by late 2020, will have some housing for the homeless and veterans, and a monument to the park’s history, protestors feel that is patently unfair.

Diana Soline, one of the eight camping protestors trying to save People's Park, and her dog, Pancho Villa. photo: D. Soline

“For me occupying People’s Park was not just about saving trees, or the park,” I was told by Diana Soline Chornenkaya, 47, one of the protestors camping out, who had her possessions, including her hundred-year-old violin, confiscated. “It was about saving our humanity.”

Given the grassy, tree-dotted space is only a half a block from Telegraph Avenue, the main shopping drag next to campus, it remains an important resting or play place for homeless, students and other residents.

Moreover, it features a stage, where there are periodic shows, a basketball court and a toilet. It is also used for food distribution by restaurants, which donate leftover food, or the organization Food Not Bombs.

“I am a UC Berkeley graduate, I have a bachelors in Computer Science,” continued Soline, who was born in Russia and moved to the US in her teens. “I used to make over $100K [a year] consulting for Charles Schwab. Then I became disabled by PTSD—I was the victim of a crime. Combined with depression from several deaths in my family, divorce, bankruptcy and the loss of my home, that left me unable to provide for myself.”

“There are many homeless women in Berkeley who do not have access to shelters, they are forced to sleep on the streets by our inhumane system,” Soline said. “Some of them get raped. That’s why I put a women-only tent at People’s Park.”

Another protestor, who was arrested Tuesday morning around 6 am and held overnight, is Jesse Timms, AKA Cactus WildCat, 36 and a member of the Cherokee Nation.

A lot of people joined in building the original People's Park, back in the more activist days of 1969. photo: Clay Gerdees

According to Soline, a Berkeley cop by the name of Sean Aranas (badge number 76), “came up to Cactus, while he was lying on the ground in handcuffs, squeezed his testicles, twisted his arm and said, if he tells anybody, he will break his arm. [Cactus] screamed loudly, and the cop let go.”

A US Navy veteran, Timms served on a nuclear submarine in Middle East war zones and, as a result, also suffers from PTSD. After several years homeless and three applying for disability, Social Security and Veteran Services officials are denying him assistance, claiming he is not disabled, or his PTSD is not service-related.

“There is a reason why twenty veterans commit suicide in the US every day,” Soline told me. “Cactus WildCat is determined to speak up and protest for those who no longer can. For a Native American, Cactus being denied a right for housing is a double insult. ‘No Bread! No Land! No Peace!’ was one of his slogans during this occupation.”

Timms has been arrested multiple times, including in St. Paul, Minnesota, during protests of the murder of Philando Castile, the Montessori school nutritionist shot in front of his fiancé and her 5-year-old daughter.

“[Timms] has lost all of his belonging many times already,” noted Soline, “that’s part of being homeless.”

“Following the arrests and clearance of our personal belongings,” Soline continued, “I went to UC Berkeley police to file a formal complaint and request my property back. Then I saw Officer Aranas, who participated in the raid.”

Jesse Timms, AKA Cactus WildCat, after arrest and booking by the UC Berkeley police. photo: D. Soline

“Why did you do it? Don’t you see, it’s inhumane?” she asked him.

“‘I was just doing my job,’ he answered," Soline said. "‘But that’s what Nazis were saying when they killed 6 million Jews!’ I said. The officer didn’t appreciate being compared to a Nazi.”

“We said we are going to cut the trees and we did it,” was his explanation.

Attempts to build at People’s Park will "inevitably be met with incandescent violence," Wikipedia quoted an unnamed Berkeley radical as saying, "a shit show that will make the 1969 and 1991 riots look like an afternoon soiree of tea and crumpets."

But the small number of protesters, compared with one and two generations ago, and the massive number of striving, often overseas, students not that interested in activism, suggest otherwise.

The Counsel of People’s Park, the ad hoc group overseeing the protest, recommends remaining peaceful. Its demands include: no buildings on this land ever, amnesty for those arrested, the planting of two trees for every one removed, the dishonorable discharge of Officer Aranas, upgraded restrooms, a fire pit for sacred rituals, solar and wind harnessing equipment to power the park, and an "unregulated" community garden.

“Just hours before UC Berkeley police did its arrests, I was playing J.S. Bach on my violin," Soline recounted. "A couple of folks asked if they can play, and I let them. There was laughter and joy.”

“UC Berkeley has plenty of land to build new dorms,” she said. “Yet they insist on getting rid of People’s Park, a refuge, and a source of clothes and food for the homeless, for decades. For those of us who are on the bottom of our society, the richest society in the world, such treatment feels inhumane. And what about you?”

Sadly, Timms was feeling suicidal, so Soline took him by BART to the Veterans Hospital in SF.

“Many people supported our occupation,” Soline said, at the end of our conversation, “bringing us food, clothes, camping gear and some cash, I want to say a personal ‘Thank You,’ to all who acted out of their humanity to help us.”

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .

Posted on Jan 17, 2019 - 01:23 AM
Lasseter New Animation Head of Skydance Media
by Karl Cohen

John Lasseter, the founder and ex-head of Pixar, in happier times before he was let go for sexualized hugging. photo: courtesy Pixar

MOST PEOPLE BY NOW KNOW THAT JOHN
Lasseter, the recently-disgraced head of Pixar, accused of multiple times of excessive hugging and more, is the new chief of animation at Skydance Media in Los Angeles. He will report directly to Skydance's CEO David Ellison, who wants to give him a second chance.

The head of one Hollywood woman’s group, however, has already spoken out, saying this is the wrong message to send women.

“Lasseter has been forthright in taking ownership of his behavior, apologized for his actions and has spent the past year on sabbatical analyzing and improving his workplace behavior," Skydance's Ellison told Variety.

"We did not enter into this decision lightly. John has acknowledged and apologized for his mistakes and, during the past year away from the workplace, has endeavored to address and reform them.”

Mr. Ellison did not specify how, nor does his explain what saying that Skydance “employed outside counsel to investigate the allegations” means.

A representative of Women in Film told the press that hiring Lassater, “endorses and perpetuates a broken system.”

Another woman media worker familiar with the situation told me, “I find this thoroughly disgusting and a slap in the face to the women that had the courage to speak out about his behavior.”

David’s father, Larry Ellison, is the CEO of Oracle Computers and one of the nation’s richest billionaires (he's largely responsible for bringing the America's Cup boat race to the Bay area, see "Steady as She Films: Panzica’s America’s Cup Doc”)

There is no easy solution as long as power brokers like Ellison feels hiring people like Lasseter is what his son’s company needs to compete.

“Skydance Animation is a small, untested player," noted The Hollywood Reporter. "It relies on a partnership with Madrid-based Ilion Animation Studios, a Los Angeles-based staff of 65 people and a distribution deal with Paramount Pictures."

"One of the projects in Skydance's pipeline, set up under the company's previous chief, Bill Damaschke, is a fantasy with a female protagonist, led by two of the most important female creative figures in feature animation: Shrek director Vicky Jenson and Beauty and the Beast and Lion King screenwriter Linda Woolverton."

Lasseter being accepted back by people in the industry will probably be seriously debated for some time to come.

One friend of mine, a retired Navy officer, says she believes, “some folks do deserve a second chance. I’ve worked for and with many men in private and military organizations. If we removed all the men who never learned to control their hormones, how many men would we honestly have in jobs?"

"Yes, I could have said, ‘Me, too,’ but I moved on several times over the past decades.”

Karl Cohen is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Jan 11, 2019 - 07:39 PM
Frida and Diego in Love
by Doniphan Blair

'Frida and Diego with Gas Mask' was taken in 1938 by Nickolas Muray, a very handsome Hungarian photographer who soon became Frida's lover. photo: N. Muray

SAN FRANCISCO LOOMS LARGE IN THE
serpentine saga of Mexican artists Diego Rivera (1886-1957) and Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), due to the gorgeous murals he painted here in the 1930s, her accompaniment on all three, including the one after their divorce, and their embodiment of titanic creatives in love. Indeed, they remarried here in 1940 and the city just renamed the avenue leading to City College, site of Rivera's biggest Bay Area mural, Frida Kahlo Way.

Amidst our monumental MeToo realignment, it may be instructive to note that the petite Frida, shrunken further by childhood polio and a terrible street car accident, was obsessed with the 20-years older, 200-pounds fatter and macho—he used to carry a pistol and once shot the record player at a party because he didn't like the song it was playing—as well as brilliant Diego.

This generated Frida's observation that “There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.” But also her recommendation to: “Make love, take a shower, make love again.”

Frida became infatuated with Diego at fifteen, while watching him paint a mural at her high school. While he noticed her and her fiery demeanor, he thought she was only about eleven. Undeterred, Frida returned a few years later with a sheaf of paintings under her arm and proceeded to conquer the already-married and notorious womanizer’s mind as well as heart, suggesting that an empowered male needs an equally intense female—AND vice versa.

'Frida and Diego' by Frida from 1937. image: F. Kahlo

Mexico City was scandalized. Frida’s family rejected Diego, even though he was from a wealthy, old crypto-Jewish family and her father was a Jewish immigrant, calling them "La Ballena y La Paloma" (the whale and the dove), or alternatively the elephant and the dove. (Research indicates Frida's father was, in fact, Lutheran but her proclivity for claiming he was of Hungarian-Jewish descent, through the entire Nazi era, makes her an honorary Jew.)

Frida persevered, drawing on Diego’s ideas, encouragement and artistic friends not only to become his flamboyant very-Mexican wife but to excel at painting, almost single handedly inventing the aggressively self-examined female form, becoming art history's undisputed master of the self-portrait and ultimately eclipsing him.

Some paint snobs reject Frida for “unpainterly” brushstrokes, some Mexican nationalists for being half Jewish, and some feminists for sleeping with the enemy—not just Diego but quite a few powerful men, starting with Leon Trotsky.

But Frida’s spirit, images and ideas of what it was to be a woman, an obsessively-honest artist and a dedicated Mexican were fantastically innovative and powerful, which is why Diego adored her and probably would not be upset by her star-is-born turn.

Diego's 'Allegory of California', at the SF Stock Exchange, was his first US commission, 1931—note the pressure gauge on lower left edge, behind the tree stump. image: D. Rivera

Deigo was a man of many talents as well as appetites. Despite his communist convictions, he convinced capitalists across the United States to let him paint large murals in their buildings, by balancing fine art, illustration and a respect for both working people and, to a degree, the businesses that hired them.

His first triumph was the San Francisco Stock Exchange in 1930. Although now the City Club and not open to the public, the mural is well worth the effort of signing up for the informative short tour (go here).

Called “The Allegory of California”, the smallish mural features lush colors and a floor-to-ceiling goddess, modeled on the tennis star Helen Wills Moody and derived from the matriarchal Califia, the mythical Muslim queen, which also provided California’s name. The overall theme is Californian industry, although he snuck in a couple of contrarian messages, like a sequoia tree stump or the pressure gauge, with its arrow in the red, in typical Rivera fashion (Frida was also a prankster).

Diego’s companion patriarchal mural, two miles away at the San Francisco Art Institute (800 Chestnut Street), is more accessible, both to the public (the hours are 9 to 6 and the room is often open at night) and as metaphor. It consists not only of a giant laborer in overalls but Diego himself, hard at work on the scaffold in front of the painting, his enormous butt looking back at the viewer.

Frida's 'The Broken Column', 1944, exposes her pain, body and vision, in equal measure. image: F. Kahlo

Alas, that was as self-reflective as Diego got, even as Frida was getting known for her tell-all canvases, one third of which are self-portraits, often nudes. Indeed, she garnered a New York show in 1938, where actor Edward G. Robinson bought four paintings, and great acclaim in Paris, where Andre Breton hailed her as a surrealist, a laurel she rejected.

“They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”

Her first Mexico show was only in 1954, just before she died, although she was able to attend in her hospital bed, receiving art lovers, regular lovers and courtiers, an experience she enjoyed immensely, undoubtedly due to her infatuation with doctors, disease and death.

“I hope the leaving is joyful,” Frida remarked, “and I hope never to return.” Diego passed three years later.

And so it was that Frida Kahlo, a slight slip of a half-Jewess—albeit in her mind only—was crowned queen of Mexican art. She remained a local treasure until, about twenty years later, ka-boom: Frida-mania.

A Frida nude, photographer unknown but undoubtedly her lover Nickolas Muray, around 1939. photo: unknown

It started in San Francisco, among art professors like the Art Institute’s brilliant Raymond Mondini, painters like the Mission District's dedicated René Yañez and the few collectors with Frida canvases, as well as a public familiar with the city's three Rivera murals and the romantic story of his remarriage to Frida here in 1940.

Finally, after the Mexican Museum opened by the Bay in Fort Mason in 1975, it mounted a massive show, famous for its striking poster featuring a life-size photo of Frida in a blood-red scarf, taken by her lover, the extremely handsome Hungarian photographer Nickolas Muray.

Fridamania continued to expand inexorably in the ‘80s and ‘90s, mostly among women and Latinos, but also gays, the disabled and other oppressed groups. It culminated with the excellent 2002 film “Frida” by Julie Taymor and starring Selma Hyack (who is hardly a small-chested waif embodying Frida's body type but was great otherwise). The massive SF Museum of Modern Art retrospective was organized here in 2008, and went on international tour.

A force of nature, like the artist herself, Fridamania continues apace today.

While Diego's City Club and Art Institute murals show nothing of Frida or their tumultuous marriages, the interested viewer will be pleasantly surprised by San Francisco’s third mural. At City College’s Diego Rivera Theater (50 Phelan Ave—now Frida Khalo Way) and nominally open to the public, “Pan American Unity” (1940) is arguably Rivera's most spectacular project outside of Mexico, both in size, 22-feet tall and 75-feet wide, and cast of characters, including a regally-attired Frida painting at her easel.

A Frida nude by Diego, 1930, note the high heels. image: D. Rivera

Unfortunately, right behind Frida, Diego painted himself planting a magical white tree with Hollywood film goddess Paulette Goddard. While Diego may have compared sex to urination and relieved himself with Frida’s sister, which precipitated their divorce in 1939, he was also extremely compelling to some women. Goddard, who first met Rivera in the US, moved for a period to Mexico City, settling in a hotel across the street from his studio.

By that time, Frida had already taken up with Trotsky, who arrived in Mexico in 1936, making the “Pan American Unity” mural another chapter in the Riveras' favorite parlor game: psychosexual brinksmanship. As for their community's political brinksmanship, Trotsy was attacked in May, 1940, by Frida and Diego's friend, the Mexican painter, muralist and Stalinist David Siqueiros, and killed three months later by a less effeminate assassin (Siqueiros was gay).

Getting back to the Rivera bedroom, Frida liked to torture Diego with her affairs with men, while he liked to brag to his buddies about her female conquests. Those included the other great woman painter of the day, Georgia O’Keefe, a seemingly-modest Midwestern modernist, who was also Frida’s artistic rival. In addition, Frida was said to enjoy Diego's bedtime stories about his many romantic escapades.

Aside from the subterfuge and sneaking around, there was the obvious overwhelming honesty portrayed in both artists' imagery and symbolism, especially their use of the naked female body, which stands in stark contrast to today's new Puritanism.

SF City College's mural features Frida (center) but also Diego and film star Paulette Goddard (to right). photo: courtesy City College

Despite a conservative Catholic culture, Mexico rates very high on international surveys of male and female sexual excitement and satisfaction (notably the Durex Sexual Wellbeing Survey, 2006). Frida, for example, had her first lover at sixteen. Of course, Mexico City in the ‘20s was a place of revolutionaries, of both the political and artistic kind, the perfect stage for Frida’s self-invention, sexuality and fantasy.

Here’s how Amy Fine Collins summed up Fridamania in Vanity Fair, after the publication of her very revealing diaries in 2013:

“Most pertinent to the diaries is an understanding of how the daughter of a lower-middle-class German-Jewish photographer and a hysterically Catholic Spanish-Indian mother became a celebrated painter, Communist, promiscuous temptress, and, later (during the diary years), a narcotic-addicted, dykish, suicidal amputee afflicted with a bizarre pathology known as Munchausen syndrome—the compulsion to be hospitalized and, in extreme cases, mutilated unnecessarily by surgery.”

Frida enjoying a last laugh with her pet hawk at her home, the Blue House, Mexico City, circa 1941. photo: N. Muray

Who said love, obsession and great art would be simple? When you consider how much Frida suffered through her injuries and dozens of surgeries, you multiply that by her rampant imagination and the experimentalism of the ‘30s, and lean the whole "mishigas" (Yiddish for craziness) against the gargantuan Diego, Frida as one of the first truly feminist artists never ceases to astound.

For more indepth analysis, see "Frida" (1983) by Hayden Herrera, or "The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera" (1963) by Bertram Wolfe.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .

Posted on Dec 19, 2018 - 08:37 PM
‘Blindspotting’ Shows Heart of West Oakland
by Doniphan Blair

'Blindspotting' stars and was written by Oakland-native Daveed Diggs (lft) and Berkeley-boy Rafael Casal. photo: courtesy C. López Estrada

THE FIRST TO HAIL 'BLINDSPOTTING',
this summer's indie hit by freshman feature maker AND Mexican immigrant Carlos López Estrada, starring and written by two East Bay buddies, was the Sundance Film Festival, where it world premiered last February on opening night.

Then came The New York Times. “The actual core of the movie is so pertinent,” its reviewer gushed about the film, which is simultaneously a rom-com, a race-baiter, a drama AND a musical, “'Blindspotting’ ought to be seen by the widest audience possible.”

And Variety: “'Blindspotting’ encourages audiences to look beyond surface prejudices and really see their fellow citizens for the first time… If ever there was a film to open America’s eyes, this is it.”

The only fly in the ointment was the perennially-snobby New Yorker, which sniffed, “the conflicts are schematic, the characters are thinly sketched.”

Now that big media has pronounced on “Blindspotting”, which is set in West Oakland and was written by and stars Oakland-native Daveed Diggs, fresh from his award-winning roles in the decade's biggest musical, “Hamilton”, and Rafael Casal, a spoken-word artist renown around Berkeley and Hollywood, perhaps it’s time to hear from a West Oakland media outlet, yours truly.

Apologies for running late. Alas, we heard nothing about “Blindspotting”, even as it was being shot all around our studio in the fall of 2017, mostly with an out-of-town crew. And we didn’t see it until a month after it hit theaters in July.

Totally understandable, the “Blindspotting” media team probably never heard of cineSOURCE, despite this being our tenth year, replete with our tenth annual Oakland report (“Can Oakland Save the World?”).

I’m not saying they’re the dreaded “G” word (gentrifiers), especially since I oppose gentry-shaming. They're probably just downstaters.

Moreover, The New Yorker couldn’t have been more wrong. “Blindspotting” is a masterpiece, so good, it could have been directed by Prince Charles, for all its creators' home address would matter, not to mention its insightful, race-reversing take on gentrification, which writers Diggs and Casal obviously derived from regarding the issue from all sides.

Collin and Miles suit up to work as movers, which brings them into people's houses and problems, including with gentrification. photo: courtesy C. López Estrada

Among other things, Diggs's mother is Jewish and he first met Casal at Berkeley High, an international university masquerading as a local high school. Diggs eventually joined Clipping, a well-known if avant-garde Berkeley-based rap group, and Casal did poetry slams as well as rap. Eventually, Diggs caught the ear of "Hamilton"-creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and was invited to audition. He ended up performing dual roles, the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, and taking a Tony Award in 2016.

“Blindspotting” features sharp satires of Oakland slang, food fanaticism, corner stores and, of course, the white yuppie scum, who’ve destroyed the city of late, as well as—thankfully—black culture, to keep the sides even. I particularly liked when a dashiki-dressed matriarch admits she's overjoyed to have haute hipster cuisine in the ‘hood.

They missed a few obvious Oaklandisms, however, like the men who wear their pants around their thighs or lower, displaying their designer undies (if you're lucky), or the mixed-race love fests, like Lake Merritt on Sundays (despite the one notorious white woman narcing on black families BBQing) or at the hundreds of burrito trucks nightly.

Not including a burrito truck was an infield error for Estrada, who moved from Mexico City to LA when he was 12 and probably became famous too young to know how they save single men's lives. He redeems himself with a lovely mis-en-scene opener featuring documentary footage of “side shows” (drivers doing tricks with cars), BART fights and other Oakland esoterica, before jumping feet first into Riggs and Casal's story.

It starts with Collin (Diggs), a sweet-tempered black guy, who gets out of jail (for an unrevealed reason) and is attempting to stay clean for his probation, despite provocations from his best friend Miles (Casal), a thuggy white guy, who's the life of the party. Aside from one edge-of-the-seat moment, when the son of Miles's girlfriend stumbles upon his gun, “Blindspotting” meanders through its first half, building characters and themes so they can roar to life later.

As it happened, I saw “Blindspotting” with filmmaker Rob Nilsson (see the epic article "Infant Terrible, Old Master of the Indie"). He laughed in my face when I remarked, as we left the theater, that it was like a Russian film, starting slow until it suddenly explodes.

“The first half was boring,” retorted Nilsson. “The audience was laughing at, not with, the characters.”

I tried to explain to Nilsson, who is white and just turned 79, that he might not quite cognize spot-on humor penned by and for twenty-somethings, often of color.

Collin doesn't get the joke when best-bud Miles picks out weapons from a happily-go-lucky thug—who is also an Uber driver, using a Mexican-American low rider car. photo: courtesy C. López Estrada

Regardless of Nilsson’s or The New Yorker's critique, the film's first half masterfully sets up the many subplots, which can be suddenly picked up, like a gun off of Chekhov’s mantle, and fired in the second half.

For that simple reason, "Blindspotting" is able to seamlessly blow up AND switch genres, from homoerotic as well as straight rom-com—Collin's relationship with his childhood buddy AND the girl who dumped him after his incarceration—to serious drama.

As if out of nowhere, from an anecdote told in passing, “Blindspotting” fills in its backstory blanks and rips out our hearts, only to shift gears yet again—as hard as it may be to believe—to a romantic musical!

Even Nilsson, with his anaphylactic allergy to anything Hollywood, had to confess the extended flashback was a deft cinematic trope. And, once the fights started, first in front of a bar, then in the middle of a typical Oakland party, flush with all conceivable socio-economic and racial types, he confessed his interest had been piqued.

And so, since it doesn't matter how flashy your film starts, which is the American system, but where you finish, which is the Russian cinematic philosophy, “Blindspotting” is fantastic: well-written, -motivated and -acted, as well as nicely shot, with some striking hard edits.

No wonder “Blindspotting” earned $4.3 million nationally by September, decent for an indie, given it probably only cost two-thirds that, while international box office and streaming brought in almost $400,000 by December (according to The Numbers).

More heartfelt than the blockbuster fantasy, “Black Panther”, which failed to fulfill its promise of a mythical allegory about the Black Panther Party, and more romantic and balanced then Oakland’s other acclaimed summer sleeper, the searing satire “Sorry to Bother You”, “Blindspotting” would take this year's cineSOURCE Stutter Award™, if we could afford to present such a thing.

Cinema quality aside, however, what about “Blindspotting”'s politics and philosophy? Is “Blindspotting” the great cultural antidote to the Trumpist racist surge?

As it happens, “Blindspotting” revolves around Collin witnessing an unarmed black man being shot in the back by a white cop. As it happens, “Blindspotting” sets this climactic moment on the corner of West Grand and Adeline in West Oakland, if in name only, during the film’s faux news report (the actual scene was shot on a side street).

And, as it happens, cineSOURCE studios are also on the corner of West Grand and Adeline, where this author has lived since 1989, a few years before “Blindspotting”'s director or writer-stars were born.

As happens, I, too, am an old white guy who, like Nilsson, believes my art and world-travel bonifides allow me to speak freely about any film but also West Oakland, regardless of tribal affiliations, especially valid given “Blindspotting” is about evolving beyond race-based viewpoints.

Driving home in his company's moving van, Collin sees a cop kill a black man on the corner of West Grand and Adeline in West Oakland. photo: courtesy C. López Estrada

So what is my take, as one of the few people to observe West Grand and Adeline for the last thirty years? (Actually, I am probably the ONLY person, since three of the intersection's four corners are industrial, and my building's one other long-term resident doesn’t face that direction.)

For one, few whites have adopted Oakland's unique black culture—low pants, teeth grills, regional slang—as Miles does, simply because Oakland has always been multicultural, leaving little incentive for cultural cross-dressing.

Indeed, the Black Panther rallies, often held four blocks from West Grand and Adeline in DeFremery Park were mostly radicalized white kids, since 1967's Summer of Love brought a massive influx of them, while most black kids were dissuaded by their families or their fear of the cops from attending (see cineSOURCE's "The Black Panther Filmography").

On Day Two of the Rodney King Riots, May 1st, 1992, I didn't notice a single other white guy playing basketball in DeFremery, at the exact spot where the Panthers used to hold their rallies. While LA burned and 49 were killed, and there were riots in Berkeley and San Francisco, I got some icy stares but no overt violence, while Oakland had only a few broken windows.

Two: there have been no killings by cops at West Grand and Adeline. While white cops killing black men is a critical issue for artists to tackle, and Oakland, with its Panther history and some high profile murders by police, is the perfect place to set such a story, it is not that relevant to West Grand and Adeline, or Oakland in general.

As bad a rap as the Oakland Police Department gets for its prodigious prostituting and number of police chiefs (three in one week, June, 2016), there have been no flagrantly-unmotivated killings by cops since Oscar Grant in 2009, as excellently explicated by Ryan Coogler in “Fruitvale Station” (2013), which springboarded him to “Black Panther”.

As it happened, there have been few killings by Oakland cops in the last decade; conversely, four of their number were murdered in one day, March 21st, 2009, by a hardcore criminal wanted on parole violation. Indeed, during the entire year of 2017, the OPD didn’t discharge a single weapon—ever!—while 76 Oaklanders were offed by civilians.

“How many murders have you seen,” I inquired the other day of Muhammad, who owns Nick’s Liquors, one block from West Grand and Adeline, and I’ve known for eighteen years.

“Oh man…” he said, “many, many.”

“How many? Ten?” I asked.

“Ten? Oh no,” he answered, "many more," punctuating his response with the hollow laugh people use when they’re addressing fate, although Muhammad is assisted in that regard by his faith and heritage.

An outgrowth of the Oakland church movement that emerged out of the high murder rate of the 2010, SAVE and True Vine Church does monthly protests around Oakland against violence. photo: D. Blair

Like many Oakland corner-store owners—and "Blindspotting" features one prominently—Muhammad is of Yemeni stock and his wife wears the colorful Yemeni dress, even though both she and Muhammad were raised in Oakland, where both of their grandfathers started stores in the 1960s.

A country beset civil war, Saudi bombings and now famine, Yemen has world-record weapon ownership, almost as much as the US. But that didn't prepared Muhammad for all the killings on his corner, mostly by drug gangs, or the stickups of his shop, which sent two relatives racing to Highland Hospital (they survived).

To be sure, being shot in the back by an officer of the law, sworn to uphold justice, in the land of the so-called free, is a crime against humanity. Nevertheless, it represents a tiny fraction of the actual human beings being killed in Oakland.

One evening in 2016, I was rudely awaken from a couch nap by a fuselage of machine gun fire, the loudest of the dozens of blasts I had heard over the decades, because it was coming from right beneath my window. Fascinated to find out what was going on but fearful to peak out or exit my front door, I circled around back.

By the time I got to the corner of West Grand and Adeline, a fresh-faced white cop, probably residing in the suburbs of Walnut Creek, and his female Latina partner, perhaps from San Leandro, were picking up shell casings. “About 18 here and another 15 two blocks down,” he told me.

Later, I got the details from a neighbor, who saw the fire fight from his truck, parked forty yards from the corner of West Grand and Adeline.

"A couple of cars were chasing each other down West Grand," he explained. "Then the first car swerved right onto Adeline, screeched to a halt and out jumped a guy loaded for bear—some sort of machine gun." When the pursuit car cornered, he ambushed it.

“I could see him about 20 yards away, riddling the other car with bullets, amazing they could still drive away,” my neighbor said.

“Did you call the cops?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

An anti-violence protest at West Grand and Adeline organized by SAVE and True Vine Church, attended by lawyer and mayoral candidate Pamela Green. photo: D. Blair

“Why,” I asked.

“I don't call cops,” he said.

Yes, a few people have died on West Grand and Adeline, but from traffic accidents: it is a notoriously dangerous intersection. In 2005, a car full of illegal immigrants, being chased by ICE, ran the red light and hit another vehicle, instantly killing its driver.

While no one has been murdered on this corner for the last thirty years, over a hundred people have been butchered within a three block radius. Indeed, Chestnut and 24th, three blocks away, is a heavily-trafficked crack corner where dozens have died (for the story of one young man who was slaughtered in October, 2017, see "Four Indies Out of Oakland, Some with Bullets").

One year after that machine gunning, on October 13th, West Grand and Adeline was the site of a demonstration by Soldiers Against Violence Everywhere, also called SAVE Oakland. Organized by Michelle Edmond and her many good Samaritan associates, they mount their brand of vigil/demo some where in Oakland every second Saturday of the month, from 11 am to noon.

I thought it was one of those anarchic parades—a high school football win celebration, a bicycling group—that periodically rolls through the neighborhood, until I looked and saw some twenty people, most waving signs saying “Stop the Violence” and “Honk to Help”, with one gentleman on a bullhorn.

One demonstrator was Oakland mayoral candidate Pamela Green, although SAVE was not endorsing her; another was a white guy, from a participating church.

"We don’t want accountability only from the police,” Ms. Edmond told me by phone, a few days later. “We want accountability from the community, to be accountable, to report to the police. We stand for every victim. Not all the victims are black or brown. We think murder is terrible and we want peace on the streets of Oakland."

When I noted that Oakland's murder rate had been cut almost in half, to 76, from a high of 145 in 2006, Edmond retorted:

Another reaction to gentrification may be arson, according to Mayor Libby Shaft, as transpired on October 23 at the Ice House Complex four blocks east of West Grand and Adeline. photo: D. Blair

“It is hard to say that 76 people being killed is OK. From our perspective, every life is precious. Every family deserves to have their family members remembered. Their life is precious and those who are committing the murders are still in the wrong. Those things are just basic."

SAVE, which has been operating for eight years, grew out of the clerical movement, which started during that very bloody year, 2006. Pastors, mothers, rabbis and teachers came out to walk the streets and rally the community, as well as put the police on notice.

One vocal advocate was Pastor Zachary Carey Senior of the True Vine Ministry, on nearby Isabella Steet—recently renamed Newton Carey Junior Way, in honor of his relative, who continues his efforts. Carey Senior along with Theresa Butler, an activist social worker, founded SAVE.

"Carey Senior had a passion for service in community," Edmond told me. "That is why he created the True Vine clothing and food drives and started calling for peace in the streets.”

Sadly, not everyone agrees. At their vigil-rally the previous month, in front of the MacArthur BART, a white women called the police, claiming, "'There was no need [for a demonstration] since there was no crime at this location,'" according to Edmond.

Conversely, I was overjoyed that someone was exercising spiritual strength on my corner, and I immediately jogged down to join them. Although the chanting and sign waving was invigorating, I found it especially moving when we gathered in a circle, prayed and honored the victims, including the son of youthful-looking woman.

"He was a very friendly kid," she said, "About to graduate high school."

As all of us should know, wherever we live but especially in West Oakland, any day can be our last, and it's worth honoring life as well as its passing as fully as possible.

Others, however, are not satisfied with the non-violent approach. On October 23rd, a five-alarm fire engulfed the half-completed 126-unit Ice House complex four blocks east on West Grand from Adeline. It is thought to be the latest in a series of suspicious fires at residential construction sites.

"It’s unclear whether an arsonist set the blaze," the about-to be-re-elected Mayor Libby Schaaf told a news conference, "[but] arsonists have been trying to burn down housing projects in Oakland.” There were also reports that homeless were living there, the site had a fire in April and security was lax.

Either way, citizen filmmakers, please try to shoot some footage. The documentary about what is happening in Oakland is an important part of a cinema scene that now ranges from "gritty, grimy films," like those by Jamie DeWolf (see cineSOURCE article) to block busters like "Black Panther" or a full-on masterpiece like "Blindspotting".

While "Blindspotting" tackles one of the terrible tragedies trying our body politic—the cold-blooded killing of young men of color by mostly-white police people—we must be a notch more pragmatic as well as spiritual, following the example of SAVE, to address the more lethal diseases attacking us.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Dec 19, 2018 - 08:31 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner: Dec 2018
by Karl Cohen

Pixar sweeps Hollywood, yet again, with 'Incredibles 2'. photo: courtesy Pixar

Pixar's Latest Incredible

The award season is beginning and Pixar will win yet another. This time it will be with “Incredibles 2” at the Hollywood animation award.

Directed by Brad Bird and the sequel to their 2004 hit, “The Incredibles”, it features a voice cast that includes Holly Hunter and Craig T. Nelson. The 22nd annual Hollywood Film Awards was held November 4th at the Beverly Hilton, produced by Dick Clark Productions, which shares a parent company with The Hollywood Reporter.

Toy Story 4 Not So Shabby

The ‘Toy Story 4’ teaser, featuring a new character named Forky the Spork, is laugh out loud funny. Hope you enjoy it.

Incredible Blu-Ray

Now out on Blu-Ray, “Auntie Edna” is the short accompanying the digital release of “Incredibles 2”. Find out what happens when Edna E. Mode, voiced by director Brad Bird, becomes the babysitter and creates a “super suit” for the infant.

It was directed by Ted Mathot and produced by Marc Sondheimer, the former being the story supervisor on “Incredibles 2”. He began working at Pixar as a story artist in 1999, and has since worked in a similar capacity on “The Incredibles”, “Cars”, “Ratatouille”, “Presto” and “WALL•E”. Mathot received an Annie Award in 2008 for his storyboard work on “Ratatouille.

Lasseter Looking

John Lasseter is looking for his next job after he officially retires from Pixar at the end of this year. The Washington Post says he is seeking a new job and he recently met with the agency William Morris Endeavor.

Catmull Retiring

Meanwhile Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar, is retiring. He co-founded Pixar along with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter. He will step down next year in July and stay on as an adviser.

In memory of long time and lauded animator, Adam Burke (1972-2018). photo: courtesy Cartoon Brew

Veteran Pixar Animator Passes

Adam Burke, the veteran Pixar animator, has died. Born in 1972, Burke grew up in Massachusetts, attended CalArts, and left school when he was hired by Don Bluth to work on hand-drawn animation.

His credits include “Thumbelina, “A Troll in Central Park” for Don Bluth; “The Swan Princess” for Richard Rich; “Space Jam, “The Iron Giant and “The Road to El Dorado” for Warner Bros. and “Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas”, “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” for Dreamworks.

In 2003 he joined Pixar. His credits for them include “The Incredibles”, “Cars”, “Ratatouille”, “Wall-E, “Up, “Toy Story 3”, “Cars 2”, “Monsters University”, and “Incredibles 2”. Burke’s brother told me that, “He was diagnosed with lung cancer ten months ago and still found a way to brighten other people’s lives through his tough and short battle."

Hole in the Head Fest

Another Hole in the Head Festival has a program “Strangers with Eye Candy" is a collection of animated short films from around the world. There will be a Q & A with some of the directors after the screening. See it Dec 9, 3pm, New People Cinema, 1746 Post St., SF.

 The Future of Your ASIFA-SF

We could us some input from YOU because ASIFA-SF has gotten very little news in recent years about what our local animators are doing as animators. This is why we no longer publish much local news except about Pixar. We would like to fill the newsletter with news of your work, community information and unusual animation events.

Hence, please BLOW your horn and keep us informed!

I report the local animation news in the ASIFA-SF newsletter. cineSOURCE and other sites reprint our local news and it is emailed out to thousands of professionals, animation artists, teachers and more. Moreover, the ASIFA international newsletter reprints items we originate. If there is a good story or an interesting event EatDrinkFilm may also want to run it.

Karl Cohen is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .

Posted on Nov 26, 2018 - 11:28 AM
No More Hoarding While Mama Earth Burns
by Tiny (Lisa Gray-Garcia/Daughter of Dee)

Poet/Poverty Skola Lisa 'Tiny' Gray-Garcia wears prison orange because she was incarcerated for the crime of being unhoused and wants to univisibalize those across the country like her. photo: courtesy T. Garcia-Grey

In keeping with our in-depth arts coverage of 'Cali Civilization in Crisis', this piece is by Tiny Gray-Garcia, a poet ('Criminal of Poverty', published by City Lights) and homeless advocate, working with numerous groups including Poor Magazine.

TODAY'S ANNOUNCEMENT/POEM IS
dedicated to all my fellow Poverty Skolazs who—even before the fires in Califaztlan—were barely housed, were pushed out of urban areas, were struggling to even stay in a tent...

...to all the people who don’t have what I call the "Privilege of Privacy."

Breathing in,
breathing out.
No more breath to shout,
just a gasp.
Amerikkklan scarcity models
forged this fiery path.

One dollar a day the inmate fire worker earns,
while our mama earth burns.
Gentrifuked out of our towns, space and centers.
We're living in forests, tents and highways,
when we used to live in the Bay.

It's very simple.

The time for radical redistribution of resources is nigh. There are direct actions people can take.

Radical redistribution ranges from buying masks and water to making food or healing tea and distributing to un-housed folks on the street, or in the towns and cities impacted by these fires.

The formerly houseless founders of Homefulness, landless peoples self-determined solution to homelessness, some of whom also write and edit Poor Magazine. photo: courtesy T. Garcia-Grey

Radical redistribution ranges from supporting projects like Mask Oakland, which is giving out masks out all the way up to buying land for folks so they can launch their own hopefulness projects—the opposite of homelessness.

Radical redistribution ranges to giving away excess cars, boats or RVs, so folks can live in them.

Give away your excess trust funds or resources so folks can live.

Give away your excess love so the earth can heal.

This is why we have created the Poor Magazine, and the Bank of Community Reparations with the Po Mamaz Reparations Fund.

Our goal is to give cars, money, land, housing and tech reparations directly to poor families or folks who are victims of displacement and gentrification.

Breathing in and breathing out,
no more energy to get thru the day.
No more breath left to shout,
"Un-housed fire victims don’t even make the count!"
Now we got more marginally-housed and fire victims living in tents,
wealth hoarders have made it impossible to find a place to rent.

Muteado Silencio, formerly houseless poet and co-founder/co-builder of Homefulness, speaking in front of a Homefulness construction project. photo: courtesy T. Garcia-Grey
Migrant indigenous familias afraid to even come in.
Already un-housed peoples exposed to air filled with smoke and poison.
The time is nigh for radical redistribution,
enacted interdependence is our solution.
Not just one of us, but all of us can live,
to see a new day and life we can give.

Different forms of redistribution for different folks:

Elders in Chico, Woolsey and Paradise need rides to the hospital, and help getting medicine.

The un-housed need you to open your extra rooms to families, your backyards to tents.

The earth needs you to share your time, if you can.

We are in a when Mama Earth is struggling, fires are burning and there is no more time for hoarding.

Radical un-hoarding is necessary along with un-gentrifuking, un-evicting, un-taking and un-buying.

No more time to hoard resources,
to buy or sell Mama Earth.
Open up your unused rooms, garages, farms, vacation homes.
Stop this war over ownership and turf!
Give away your third and fourth cars.
Support the Po Mama's Reparations Fund.
Help us po' folks manifest homefulness projects everywhere!

The formerly houseless founders of Homefulness, landless peoples self-determined solution to homelessness, some of whom also write and edit Poor Magazine. photo: courtesy T. Garcia-Grey
This is it Fam,
we're in a state of emergency.
It's called 'Our 21st Century Life.'
The only antidote is radical redistribution of resources, love and time—
that will heal this strife.

To learn more about the Bank of Community Reparations Fund, which includes the Po' Mamas Reparations Fund, the Tech Reparations Fund, the Homefulness Fund and so much more, email or come to the next session of PeopleSkool, on January 25th & 26th.

And to all the conscious redistributors, reparators reading this who are already doing it—so much gratitude, love and respect!

Poet and homeless advocate Tiny Gray-Garcia can be reached by email or on her website, or by buying her book 'Criminal Poverty'.

Posted on Nov 19, 2018 - 08:06 PM
Cali’s Ancient Mariner
by Don Schwartz

Firefighters battle to save homes from the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, on Thursday. photo: Stephen Lam

AFTER SO MANY DAYS OF UNPRECE-
dented smoke and no wind in my adopted home of Northern California, I was reminded of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1834).

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

In the poem, a sailor on a wooden ship has been cursed for having killed a seabird, an albatross, for no reason. One consequence of that curse is having the dead bird hanging from his neck, and another is being on a sailing ship with no wind.

Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English author and poet (1772-1834). photo: unknown

Our smoke is staying with us because we have no wind. Indeed, as of November 18th it has been many days, even weeks, of these conditions, with school cancelled, people with asthma and other conditions confined indoors and average adults restricting exercise and more.

It is unclear when the smoke will clear, when the wind will return.

The mariner’s sin was to kill an innocent seabird. Finally, in a seeming non sequitur, as he regards the slimy sea creatures surrounding his ship, he blesses them.

Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.

O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.

The sea creatures predicted to reside in the Atlantic by Spanish artists, circa 14th century. photo: unknown

The albatross is released from his neck and the wind returns, but one aspect of the curse will never be removed. The mariner must roam the Earth, telling his story.

The seabird, of course, is a symbol of the natural world, the world we have been attacking for generations.

When will we bless this world, and honor it, and protect it?

Don Schwartz is an actor, writer and blogger on all things documentary, and can be seen here or reached .

Posted on Nov 18, 2018 - 08:55 PM
Rob Nilsson: Enfant Terrible, Old Master, Part II
by Doniphan Blair

Nilsson in the Tel Aviv Cinematheque with Mikhael Derenkovski, whose Holocaust chronicle helped him make 'What Happened Here' (2012). photo: Victoria Yakubov

Continued from Rob Nilsson: Enfant Terrible, Old Master of the Indie

“It turned out he had recently been taken in by a good Samaritan in Santa Monica,” he elaborated, a few weeks ago by email. “He came up, lived with me for about three years, joined the Action group and appeared in 'Chalk', before he hit the road again.”

Eventually hosted by the Faithful Fools Street Ministry, which does social work in the Tenderloin, the yGroup attracted some stellar actors, from the talented amateur Gabriela Maltz Larkin, who gave a standout performance as a sex worker in "Need" (2005), to David Fine, a versatile Hollywood character actor, who appeared most recently in “Sorry to Bother You”, as it happens.

“[I’d] done some time being a drug cowboy in the Tenderloin,” Fine told cineSOURCE, and “I like dark crime.”

“From Rob I learned the ability to relax or wire up,” Fine explained, “[to be] elated and then devastated... to look within, breathe deeply [and] then reinvent.” For this reason, “[a]ll at once the rag-tag band of merry/melancholy men and women [the yGroup] turned the tables on their demons.”

“There were some in the class who were pretty intense,” recalled Larkin, the actress. “One guy, for example, would scare people. At one point, he had Rob on the floor in a choke hold, with a wooden peg pushed into his eye. It got TOO real!”

Nevertheless, “I miss the camaraderie of those fourteen years," she added. "It clicked the first time. I walked into class one day and never left. I looked forward to coming on Tuesday nights and exploring different feelings—what [Nilsson] calls the six basic feelings: fear, happiness, anger, surprise, despair and love.”

No wonder the “yGroup Manifesto” opens ambitiously, if touchy-feely: “There can be no cinema outside the artist’s inner life... The collaboration of artists... writers, directors, actors, cinematographers and craft people of all kinds is given shape and energy by the kinetic release of the inner fountain.”

But then it turns on a dime: “Whereas the pale and anemic truth that ‘all art is political’ has spawned legions of nodding heads in the exclusive pews of race, gender and class... the living truth is that there can be no art without vision… [o]riginating in shamanic practice, in the ‘wild surmises’ of poets and sages.”

Although a good summary might have been “all art is visionary,” it concludes with: “We pledge ourselves as individuals to the communal circle of risk and protection where we reveal our secrets, power up our energy, open flesh and intuitive mind to received vision... to live with passion and to sing at the top of our lungs,” (for full text see "yGroup Manifesto").

“I am not interested in the predictable,” Nilsson noted, in the same cineSOURCE article I've been quoting.

“Today avant-garde is really another name for the establishment. Life is too dangerous and fragile to be exhibiting urinals while claiming to be anti-bourgeois. We have environmental problems, political meltdown, a proliferation of madmen who want bombs.”

Nilsson receiving yet another lifetime achievement award, this time from the Love is Folly Film Festival, in Bulgaria, where he also headed the jury (2012). photo: courtesy R. Nilsson

“Give me ‘the Aprés Garde’ with creators who astonish us with skill, vision and the freedom to rediscover new songs of the open road," Nilsson continued. "[H]igh wire walkers who dare the unknown and accept the consequences if they fall... Sunburnt souls finding their themes and saying ‘This is worth pursuing all the way around the bend.’”

No matter where you cut the cinema cheese, whether letting your guts hang out in front of the camera, or slicing away the tripe in the editing room, or wringing out your soul in your own private wilderness—writing—film is about self-realization, about becoming hyper-present enough to show your true self or that of your characters, in a manner sufficiently comprehensible, at least to the viewers who count.

An actor’s director, if there ever was one, Nilsson rehearses aggressively but leaves onscreen performances almost entirely to the individual, precisely so they can concentrate on achieving that epiphany. Because the performance is so intense, he generally makes do with minimal takes. While he rarely arrives on set scriptless, it is usually only a few pages, listing situations, characters and themes.

Nilsson’s remarkable skill is how he helps his actors develop those characters, in his Direct Action workshops, and inspires them to perform their hearts out, drawing on the full gamut of his poetics, insights, film theory and viewings, and his wildly-diverse life.

As a director, he’ll sometimes seize the floor, but almost always with a gentle hand. In the middle of a long, improvised set piece, for example, he will tip-toe up behind his director of photography, take hold of their back and slowly shift them to a different shot.

Mickey Freeman, who’s shot some twenty Nilsson movies, tolerates such mid-scene intrusions begrudgingly. A seeker of what he calls “the beckoning,” the perfect alignment of character, camera and vision, Freeman "knows I can’t do without him and that we are brothers," Nilsson told me.

Having seen over half of Nilsson’s oeuvre of the last decade, I find the films largely excellent, if markedly looser than his first decade, of which, with my viewing of "Prairie Trilogy" in August, I’ve seen almost all.

Another recent film of interest was “Next Week in Bologna” (2016), made in collaboration with the International Filmmaking Academy in Bologna, Italy, run by Owen and Christine Shapiro, founders of the Syracuse International Film Festival. In 2015, after screening his remake of "Heat and Sunlight", "Permission to Touch", to loud applause, the festival presented Nilsson a lifetime achievement award.

“Next Week in Bologna” opens with a male-female meet neat in the street, followed by a rambling, fun-photo-ed pursuit through the city’s old quarter. It ends in entirely different neighborhoods, however, cutting in black-and-white bits from the infamously-slow-if-brilliant art film “Last Year at Marienbad” (Resnais, 1961), or having the happy couple encounter a remorseful pedophile priest (Nilsson, naturally).

Nilsson's actors for 'Maelstrom' (lft-rt): Ed Ferry, Samantha Vansteen, Dan da Silva and Deniz Demirer at its Mill Valley world premiere in 2012. photo: Victoria Yakubov

The same year as "Bologna", 2016, Nilsson did “Love Twice” about a screenwriter—evoked nicely by Demirer—haunted by two lover characters, who refuse to obey his authorial commands. Nilsson started the film in Mexico, on a road trip with his Citizen Cinema Players, as he sometimes calls them, to the tropical paradise of Isla Mujeres, off the coast of Cancun, where he occasionally retreats to write.

Edited by Kremer, “Love Twice” finishes in Richmond, California, hardly a beautiful beach town, although the film emerges intact, given the story as well as the telling are loose. “Love Twice” has some great romantic and physical moments—outright acrobatics, in fact—and strong performances by Jeff Kao and T. Moon, as the lovers. It also features The Velvet Underground's John Cale, as the film-within-the-film’s producer, who is trying to get "a little something" off the gorgeous lead actress (Moon), and the well-known television actor Carl Lumbly, playing another producer, who both acts in the film and criticizes it.

That very same year—Nilsson generally has two or three films in production at any one time—there was “Devised”, which I didn’t see. Filmed entirely in Marshall Spight's green screen studio, it included Demirer again and a host of other CC Players, like Allen.

Another notable film, which I did catch, was “A Leap to Take” (2013). Not only does it take place in one night, as is Nilsson's want, it was SHOT in one night, by the human tripod Freeman, in a gravity-defying, nearly-continuous, three-and-a-half hour take.

“A Leap to Take” starts at a birthday party for a mob boss, portrayed with gusto by FABA director Kayalar, who can also easily conjure a grizzled, old Nilsson leading man. With 21 speaking parts, it features a host of FABA actors, most delivering incisive performances as they leave the party, board a double-decker bus and descend on another watering hole, as well as each into their own delirium of love, regret, anger, what have you.

Just before that, however, Nilsson made two films completely outside—yet again!—his previous work. Another fiction-doc pair, like “Northern Lights” and “Prairie Trilogy”, “The Steppes” (2011) addresses Stalinism while “What Happened Here” (2012) concerns Stalin’s partner-turned-enemy Leon Trotsky.

Shot in one of the Tenderloin's fantastic old buildings, “The Steppes” follows the elderly Ukrainian owner of a flop-house hotel. Although I haven’t seen it, Irit Levi, who also produced, is said to deliver a stunning performance as a woman haunted by the Holodomor, Stalin’s man-made famine which killed as many as five million Ukrainians in the 1930s. Evidently, it is also augmented by a powerful score by longtime Nilsson sound-person and -designer, Al Nelson.

For “What Happened Here”, which also features an excellent soundtrack (by Daniel David Feinsmith, this time), Nilsson traveled to The Ukraine where a local television producer, Olga Zhurzhenko, helped him find Trotsky’s home town and his mother’s grave, both in ruins. Returning later that year with Freeman, Nilsson interviewed the people in the area about Trotsky, the Holodomor and the Nazis, who seized the town in 1941 and annihilated its Jews.

Nilsson spent almost year on research. After discovering, in the archives of Washington DC's Holocaust Museum, an eye-witness testimony about the Nazi atrocities there, Nilsson located its author, Mikhael Derenkovski, with the help of young Israeli filmmakers, and interviewed him in Israel.

Nilsson (rt) and co-director John Hanson introduce their 40-year-old 'Prairie Trilogy' on its recent world premiere tour, at the Metrograph in Manhattan, July 2018. photo: D. Blair

When an Israeli film organization gave an award to “What Happened Here”, the elderly Derenkovski “spoke with such humility and power, it was as if he’d been speaking before the public his whole life,” Nilsson recalled. “It brought everything full circle—an event I’ll never forget.”

Nilsson was inspired to make this film pairing by reading a biography of Trotsky but also his own interest in socialism and its breaking point, where it crosses into fascism, an investigation which started with “Prairie Trilogy” and “Northern Lights”.

“You can’t eat the rich,” Nilsson told me, matter-of-factly.

“I always felt the doctrinaire side of the Left has been its Achilles Heel. They got to have everyone equal, which cannot happen in any sense. You aren’t as good a piano player as that guy; you can’t shoot [film] like that guy. No, there’s differences, and we should love the difference, praise it, give it everything it can get.”

“Equality of opportunity is a goal we should work towards, but after that there is no equality. Let’s celebrate personal differences and nourish it. Let’s not send philosophers and ballet dancers out to harvest rice. The Cambodian farmers just laughed at them.”

“Once you read and find out what happened to the Bolsheviks, the Maoists, the Cambodians, the French Revolution—something cracked. [They] didn’t maintain the level of empathy that organizations like that need.”

“At Cine Manifest,” Nilsson told me back in 2008, “I argued to avoid ideology. I opposed the thought that there is any single idea that solves the human issues.”

“All humans have to be judged on a case-by-case basis," he said, in our recent interview. " Other members of Cine Manifest were Marxist-oriented lefties... but I was more of a populist/anarchist,” in the good sense of those words, he hastened to add.

“When you read Madison and Hamilton,” he elaborated in a recent email, “you realize they were very wary of human nature. They thought it was… more realistic to trust appealing to people’s interests, rather than relying on what they claimed were their values. Your biggest enemy is often in the family or the state next door.”

Consuela Faust and Nilsson in a love scene from 'Heat and Sunlight' (1987), a film esteemed highly by the critics as well as, in an odd synchronicity, Nilsson himself. photo: courtesy R. Nilsson

But what could compel people to be more generous—fiscally, emotionally, philosophically—great films, perhaps? In this time of blockbuster-ruled box offices, even as tiny cameras and YouTube access attempt to revolutionize cinema, visionary films are few and far between. Some have magical moments, brilliant lines and honest portrayals, but all at once, or film as a form of poetry, not so much.

“I happened to watch ‘Fugitive Kind’ [1960, director, Sidney Lumet, writer, Tennessee Williams] again,” Nilsson admitted, as if confessing a secret Hollywood habit.

“I watched Anna Magnani and [Marlin] Brando and it transcends…” he waved his arms broadly again. “Anna Magnani is one of the MOST present actresses I have EVER seen! Her emotions are so raw and Brando is Brando. God knows where he came from—that is just a personal gift.”

“But those who don’t have that charisma, who are working from the belly out, because they don’t know how to do anything else, because it has an element of honesty, of being truthful to oneself," Nilsson explained, "that’s what I care about.”

“The intermediary of a script and all of the paraphernalia of a set—go here and turn left and make your mark—that to me is just horrid. Even when it is done by... Bergman OK, Bertolucci OK, you can’t argue against those geniuses."

“It is not a business, the ‘film business.’ That, I think, largely leads people astray, away from the ‘ore.’ Which isn’t to say the ore will always be fashioned into something elegant and beautiful, or rough and savage—a wonderful piece of art.”

“But if you don’t start with that, or there are too many people telling you, ‘You can’t do this, there’s a union regulation and all this stuff,’" Nilsson said, drawing to a close. "You can’t do what a poet does or a painter does.”

Nilsson certainly mined ore during the 2000s, when he was mostly working with the yGroup on the "9 @ Night" films.

It was an intense period of creativity, we can assume, given the titles, which are almost all stark, single words: “Used” (2007), “Go Together” (2007), “Pan” (2006), “Need” (2004), “Attitude” (2003), “Noise” (2003), “Singing” (2000), “Stroke” (2000), all kicked off by the highly-heralded “Chalk,” (1996), which included Harvey Mandel as a surfer.

Sadly, cineSOURCE's per article budget, which we've already overdrawn by a factor of a fifty, precludes us from extensive old work review and I've yet to see a single "9 @ Night" film. To fill in the gap, however, here's an article by Ray Carney, a film scholar who's written books on Cassavetes and Dryer the "Surviving on the Margin", concerning Nilsson's Harvard Film Archive show. Connected to his alma matter, Harvard, the Archive screened all nine "9 @ Nights”, around 15 hours worth, one weekend in November 2007.

According to Carney: "Nilsson has been serving as the conscience and agent provocateur of low-budget American independent filmmaking [for thirty years]... He has devoted his cinematic career to presenting the sorts of sociological realities, interpersonal interactions, and emotional transactions that have been screened out of big-budget, mainstream American film."

(lf-rt) John Cale, of the Velvet Underground, Carl Lumbly, the well-known television actor, and their director Nilsson in 'Love Twice', at its premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival, 2016. photo: D. Blair

If "serving as the conscience" of American indies through nine "9 @ Night” films was not enough, during the same period Nilsson made “Security” (2006), about life after the 9/11 attacks, “Winter Oranges” (2000), a collaboration with a Japanese cine-tribe (Hiroshima’s Studio Malaparte), and “A Town Has Turned to Dust” (1998), an utter anomaly.

“A Town Has Turned to Dust” is Nilsson’s most Hollywood production—even more than “On the Edge"—given it was made for the dreaded TV monster and from a full screenplay, albeit one penned by the respected Rod Sterling for the BBC, forty years earlier, oddly enough. Within this utterly un-Nilssonian scenario (he updated the original to a post-apocalypse future), a racist merchant accuses an employee of rape and robbery. When the sheriff is unable to stop the vigilantes, a reporter visiting Earth from New Angeles—a megalopolis far, far away—does.

Somewhere in there (I can't find the date—it's missing from Nilsson's IMDb page) was a film even more outside Nilsson's geographical zone but very much in his cultural one: "Samt". Shot in Amman, Jordan, under the auspices of ZENID, the Queen Zein Al Sharaf Institute for Development, "Samt" probably emerged from a week-long Direct Action workshop and intimately addressed its participants issues.

So what is next for the Bay Area’s not-well-known-enough painter, poet, filmmaker and visionary, who pioneered an entire cinematic genre, especially now that he's supposedly doing his last major film, "Nomad Trilogy"?

“I'm now writing my take of my life,” he told me by email on July 25th. “You had a lot of it well organized [in previous cineSOURCE articles]. I'll certainly credit you if I use any of it. But I'm using my writing as a test of memory. What continues to read... what small moments continue to inspire or rankle.”

“Not sure who would want to read this," he continued. "I'm going to put in my poetry, my paintings, fragments and things I never let anyone read, and... free associate myself through my thoughts, beliefs and convictions. It's a kick to go back there, sometimes a boot [to the rear]... sometimes a bittersweet cut.”

Naturally, Nilsson’s urge towards autobiographical compilation and contemplation is not limited to text.

“I have my movies; I have my poetry; and I have my paintings,” he reflected, at the end of our interview. “I just had an art show at Spark Arts,” in San Francisco.

“I am trying to think: How does my painting integrate with the movies, which I have also shown in [the Sparks] gallery? How can I pull all three things [including the poetry] together and have a single show? I have been wracking my brains.”

“I have come up with this: I am going to call the whole ‘gallimaufry’, if that is how you pronounce it [meaning confused jumble in Old French], ‘Tenderloin.’"

Nilsson, in front of the 'Love Twice' poster, chatting with film and film school director Christopher Coppola, who cast him as a vampire in his 'Sacred Blood' (2015). photo: D. Blair

"I am going say: ‘The Tenderloin is a place in San Francisco. It is a major place for South East Asian families and small businesses. But it is also a dumping ground, a place for homeless, a place for graft and vice and drugs and suffering.”

Earlier in our interview, Nilsson told me that his interest in suffering was sparked by the recent bestseller, “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” (2014, English), by the Israeli author Yuval Noah Harari. “I love one of his aphorisms,” he said, “which is that the closest thing one can find as an identifying characteristic of people is suffering.”

“I am going to show the suffering of the paintings; the suffering of the ‘9 @ Night’ films; and of my poetry. And I am going to say that a percentage of all the proceeds will go to the Faithful Fools Street Ministry,” which hosted the yGroup, and “that it is helping the suffering people there.”

“Suffering, so that’s the final upshot,” Nilsson concluded, looking like nothing less than—in his gaunt but vibrant old age—a saint from a Dreyer film, “a lot like what the Buddha has been trying to tell us.”

I looked around. The majority of our interview transpired in Nilsson’s downstairs screening room, where I had once crawled on the floor to prove a long-forgotten point; where he had shown so many fantastic films, his own and by others; and where he had shot not a small number of them.

It was now a ruin, torn apart, the big screen in the front as well as the fixtures in the back—gone. There were dozens of boxes, filled with endless flotsam and jetsam. Nilsson will soon be moving on, moving out of this fantastically-utilitarian house/studio he's inhabited and worked his ass off in for over two score years—completing that circle.

Nilsson had also paused and was looking around.

“What do I own? These paintings? These films here?” he said, banging a film can. “This is the only thing I feel proud of.”

“I have a skull—you see that skull up there, the baboon’s skull? David Schickele picked that up on [Mount] Kilimanjaro. He gave me that when he was dying [in 1999, age 62]. It was totem of his and he knew I knew that—that is why I value it.”

“When we went together back to Biafra in the ‘70s [in part to show Schickele’s “Bushman”], we found that the last hippo in the Cross River [local name: Oyono; location: southeastern Nigeria] had been killed. From then on we had this name for each other, ‘Hippo.’”

“The two of us were hippos. I’ve got a couple of hippos around here; once in while he would send me one. Animal totems were part of our friendship,” he said. "David was a big influence in my life.”

A self-portrait painting by Nilsson, circa 1985. image: R. NIlsson

I felt like crying. Rob was a big influence on my life. When I first met him, in 1986, I felt so enamored because I, too, was making an improvised film "Sammy Delerium" (sic), with my own cinema tribe (see "Brief History of Modern Lovers Commune and Ancient Currents Gallery".

Unfortunately, within two years, the group had disbanded and "Sammy Delerium" was abandoned. I doubted Nilsson would recall my unfinished feature from forty years ago, during which time he has made fifty films, so I didn't mention it.

Moreover, he had told me, on our way to see "Blindspotting", that he doesn't brook much depression. Yes, severe existential angst does enter his mind on occasion, he admitted, but after a few minutes of indulging or exploring it, you have to buck up and get on with the production of life at hand, he admonished.

Nilsson suddenly stepped out of his own introspection and turned to me—yet another one of his abilities: intense empathic interest in the other, which obviously fuels his filmmaking.

“What do you think? You suddenly seem kind of down.”

“It’s kind of heartbreaking, you know, Rob,” I said, choking up, “The fact that cineSOURCE couldn’t support you enough, that the Bay Area cinema scene couldn’t support you enough, that you have to move out of your place in your old age—to what, a retirement home?”

“Who told you that?” he retorted.

“This room is full of moving boxes; that was the impression you gave; that is what your contractor was saying right outside; that was—“

“This sounds good for some sort of life cycle bullshit you were hoping to put in your article, but it isn’t true.”

“I’m not leaving. I’m renting out one unit and developing this one to better create and show the work. I’m also creating new financial arrangements, which are personal business and not part of the article—so please don't mention it," he concluded, glaring at me.

And so Nilsson snapped me back to the beginning, Schickele and Nigeria, while jamming me forward with his ascetic discipline to make movies and other art at the highest level of creativity, as well as to treat each other equitably, all exemplified by his massive, multi-disciplinary oeuvre.

The sum total of this he hopes to bring together in one last show. Although he warrants a floor at SF's Museum of Modern Art, its curators are probably not adequately or at all aware of his inordinate work, innovation and world-wide influence, so he will have to settle for a smaller institution.

On the plus side, that will allow him more of his highly-coveted independence in precisely how he curates his sun-drenched paintings, his cooler visionary poems and his 51 films—54 with "Nomad Trilogy".

Obviously, he will need multiple screening rooms: one for the early achievements, one for "9 @ Night", another for the little gems, like the one about the mother and son reunion—which still sits burnt into my mind's eye, despite its production flaws. "Another room will have nine large TV screens, each playing one of the 9 @ Night films on continuous loops, with headphones available for an audience to hear the sound on individual screens," he told me.

This will probably happen when he finishes “Nomad Trilogy”, which I would guess will be in 2020—hopefully a good year for hindsight.

Wrong again, as I have been so many times in this moving target of an article. Indeed, this just in:

"Marshall Spight, my old friend and constant collaborator, has agreed to host 'Tenderloin' at Meets the Eye, his cutting edge green screen studio in San Carlos," Nilsson told me, via email on December 19th. It will feature an eighteen-foot tall "temple," designed by Spight, to show all nine of the "9 @ Night" films simultaneously, just as Nilsson imagined, plus extensive wall space for his paintings and drawings and a poetry reading—now scheduled for the spring of 2019!

Sure, "The Tenderloin Show" may not earn accolades equal to "Heat and Sunlight” or "Prairie Trilogy", which is still touring the indie circuit, let alone bring in sufficient funding for the Faithful Fools Street Ministry or his needy comrades-in-arts.

Nevertheless, it will undoubtedly “smash the iron ball and chain of excessive plot” and crack open the multiplex wall or smart phone screen enough to rouse from slumber a few child-prodigy cinema brats—like Michelle Anton Allen, long ago in Los Angeles—to the oft-hidden fact that:

There is liquid light, there is honest feeling and there is revolutionary poetry in moving pictures.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Nov 13, 2018 - 12:31 AM
Soros, Jewish Bankers and Interest Explained
by Doniphan Blair

Currency trader, philanthropist and open society activist, as well as Holocaust survivor, George Soros at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, this year. photo: courtesy Bitcoinist

WITH THE FIRST REAL POGROM IN
American history—the Pennsylvania slaughter of eleven Jews in a synagogue, on the Sabbath no less (Oct 27, 2018)—and President Trump growing ever more inflammatory, dropping dog whistles like piss marks, many Jews, liberals and people of good will, including many friends of mine, particularly female, are feeling rather freaked out.

Some are depressed; others are wringing their hands; a few have asked me, “What are we going to do?”

Anti-Semitism did not abate with the Holocaust, many of us were shocked to learn, late in life. That is because anti-Semitism faded during the four decades following World War II, while many of us were growing up, leaving us without an early, frightening cautionary experience. Alas, anti-Semitism is on a tear today, as we can see, from homicidal hometown shut-ins and white nationalists to European and Middle Eastern intellectuals, from 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists to otherwise laudable leftists, who nevertheless retain an oddly oversized obsession with Israel.

After studying the matter for 35 years, discussing it with Jews, gentiles, Holocaust survivors (including my mother) and a few neo-Nazis, as well as helping to make the movie “Our Holocaust Vacation” (2007), I was lucky enough to stumble on four seemingly game-changing discoveries.

“Seemingly,” I say because when I announced them two years ago in cineSOURCE, “Holocaust Films/Books: What’s Been Achieved/Missed” (2016), there was hardly uproarious acclaim.

My most earthshaking finding? A few Jews lent money at interest—sometimes high interest, sometimes what is called usury, although the exact percentage where interest becomes usury is rarely specified—during the Middle Ages.

Brilliant deduction Einstein, you might say, given the popular middle America saying “Don’t Jew me,” Shakespeare’s play “The Merchant of Venice” (1598), and everyone’s favorite Elder of Zion, financier and civil society advocate George Soros. But, when I was growing up in New York, across the street from the world’s largest rabbinical school, attending majority-Jewish schools, literally surrounded by Jews, no one once breathed the words “medieval Jewish moneylending.”

“That’s because it didn’t exist,” would probably be the response of Julie L. Mell, an associate history professor, who teaches medieval and Jewish history at North Carolina State University. Although the pressing need to publish this essay precluded my perusal of Professor Mell’s book, her title is telling: “The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender” (2017).

With all due respect to those who claim medieval Jewish moneylending was invented outright by zoological anti-Semites or exaggerated to an extreme, it is not hard to see or research that:

A) civilizations need capital to operate; B) “The Bible” outlaws lending at interest; C) the Catholic Church was the bank during the Dark Ages (how else did they build all those fancy churches?); D) when Christ didn’t return to kick off the second millennia, Church fathers concluded it was due to sin, the biggest one being that they themselves lent money at interest; E) to keep civilization crawling out of the Dark Ages, they needed a tax loophole with God; F) the Jews, who were living next door to the Vatican, as well as across Europe, could read, write and do a little math—some even had far-flung relatives with whom they were trading; which brings us to G):

“Hey, I have a great idea to solve this goddamn interest problem,” a bishop must have shouted in Latin, in the middle of the eleventh century, “We can lend money at interest to the Jews, who are going to hell anyway, and they can lend to the Christians, allowing us to make our 'vic' and keep God happy, while providing the peasants a way to survive the winter.”

Although I have not read Professor Mell, I just reread “The Jew in the Medieval Community”, written by Reverend James Parkes in the 1940s, after he fled for his life from Germany and was living under their bombardment in England. A medieval and Judiaica scholar, Parkes realized that the time had come to finally review all available ancient texts, letters and laws concerning medieval Jewish moneylending.

The cover of Reverend James Parkes's 'The Jew in the Medieval Community' showing Christians and Jews arguing, books in hand. photo: courtesy J. Parkes

“It was unfortunate that [medieval society] did not recognize that [Jewish] men followed moneylending as a profession,” Parkes concludes on page 282, “because society needed to be able to borrow money, and that many of their loans were made for the profit of the borrower.”

“Medieval Jewish moneylending” are three words that strike terror in the hearts of BOTH Jewish educators, scholars and clerics, who are stumped as to how to summarize such a complex, ancient issue, AND haters, anti-Semites and neo-Nazis, who need an all-controlling puppet master and father figure on whom to blame their grandfather’s, their father's and their own mistakes.

The mere fact of medieval Jewish moneylending, regardless of the details, allows people to fantasize that Jews built a secret compartment inside European banking, which lets them control interest rates, a notion supposedly certified by the notorious forgery—or revealing historical document, according to conspiracists—“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (1903, Russian police).

Interests rates are even more criminal than killing the revolutionary Jesus Christ, which “The Bible” tells us the Romans did and even simple-minded Christians realize they must forgive. Obviously, you can’t be both a pacifist follower of Christ and rabid wolf baying to crucify the Jews, while Christ can’t die for your sins and not be crucified (by the Romans, of course, although a Jewish mob may have cheered them on).

Indeed, the banking libel is bigger than the medieval blood libel, which accused Jews of harvesting Christian children to make their Passover matzo, and continued to emerge periodically until the 20th century, especially in Eastern Europe.

While the blood libel was cannibalistic and absurd—shouldn't blood make white matzo red?—the banking libel seemed to make sense and appealed to broad swaths of the world's population. Published as fact by the Nazis and anti-Semites like Henry Ford, "The Protocols" gathered believers across the 20th century and had a resurgence in the 21st, post-9/11. Indeed, “The Protocols” are available today at many ethnic or nationalist book outlets, as well as online versions, while Arabic editions can consume up to five percent of any given year's book runs in Egypt, which is the center of Arab publishing.

What can Jews do? They are the most readily-available “other” on which small-minders can blame big problems. Indeed, they are the perfect scapegoat, as Freud conceded in “Civilization and Its Discontents” (1929).

This is simply because the Jews are Western Civilization’s oldest, well-documented group—precursing the Greeks and about whom a blockbuster bestseller was written—who are still intimately involved in its evolution. Given the fact that: A) Jewish people were present at every major point in Western Civilization (Egypt, Greece, Christ, Rome, the Middle Ages, both of Spain’s Golden Ages, Magna Carta England and Germany’s 19th century unification and expansion), and that B) many people believe Western Civilization went off its rails and injured their grandfathers, you get C) the Jews must have conspired to screw their tribe somehow.

And so we have the vicious circle: Even though the Jews appear to have been severely punished for their supposed sins, from medieval pogroms through the Holocaust to today’s military and moral attacks on Israel, they’re still doing well. How can that be? They must control interest rates! Moreover, they’re more dangerous than people of color (although some are also that) because many can pass as white (hence the neo-Nazi chant: "You shall not replace us").

When I finally figured out medieval Jewish moneylending, around age thirty, after years of reading references to it while doing research at the Holocaust Library of Northern California, in San Francisco, I broached the subject with my mother.

“Don’t be an idiot anti-Semite,” she barked right back. “I grew up in one room, without water or electricity. There were no moneylenders in my city, as far as I could see.”

Admittedly, my mother's city was conquered by the Nazis when she was fourteen, precluding her ability to examine it, and she is not a professor of Jewish history or a rabbi. Nor were they honest or forthcoming. Indeed, if you peruse the indexes of books on Jewish history, of which there are hundreds, only a handful have more then a few entries under “moneylending,” and even fewer attempt to explain what happened, let alone adequately.

“The Bible”, also a book on Jewish history, as well as myth, philosophy, law and romance, does much better than most with eighteen moneylending mentions, all of which forbid the practice to fellow tribal members. It also enjoins Jews to forgive non-tribal members all loans, indentured servitude or promissory notes every seven years, during the so-called Jubilee Year, as well as to enact other redemptive measures, like leaving some harvest in the field to be gleaned by the poor.

Lending at interest TO FOREIGNERS, on the other hand, is not only perfectly legal but absolutely mandatory, both to Biblical authors as well as almost all other civilizational figures.

In point of fact, no merchant in their right mind, two thousand years ago or today, in the Middle East, Mongolia or Mexico, would hand over one hundred sheep to someone without them promising, when they came back the following year, to return the herd plus some of the new-born lambs. That would be the benefit of the transaction, some of which must cover the cost of the lender not having the benefit of a hundred sheep for one year, lest we disincentivize lending.

“Poppycock,” might be the retort of anthropologist and best-selling author David Graeber, albeit not using that word, since his 2011 “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” is very readable and well, if selectively, researched. Although “Debt” is a comprehensive, 500-page accounting of the myriad methods oppressors enslave people using debt and interest—and they are disgusting—it allocates only two pages to Jewish moneylending. That is hardly enough to explain the complexity, no matter how great the author, while still tarring the Jews as debt slavers.

Aside from Graeber and Marx, who studied lending at interest and didn't like it, almost none of our most influential philosophers, as far as I can see, have looked into it, despite the obvious fact that lending at interest is more critical to Western Civilization than geometry or electricity. Lending at interest is so central, in fact, it is the bright line dividing civilization, our supra-social structure, from our older, still very powerful human grouping, tribe.

I stumbled on this closely-held secret some thirty years ago, but it is so complicated I made no mention of it in my recent treatise, “Tribe Versus Civilization Manifesto”.

Lending at interest was so difficult and divisive during Europe's transition from tribe to civilization, almost two-thirds of medieval rabbinical writing on record was concerned with it. Indeed, the two fiscal systems are diametrically opposed and almost impossible to reconcile.

While tribes do not lend at interest internally, because they enforce all responsibilities, including fiduciary, through family ties, civilizations exist largely due to lending at interest. Yes the Muslims, who also adopted the Hebrew interest prohibition, developed a workaround whereby they treated loans as investments, with income dependent on outcome, that is too complex for many deals. Hence, Islam also depended on loans at interest, from forced Jewish moneylenders or others. Without interest, there would be no incentive for anyone to help a non-tribal member or to reinvest the surplus of one tribe into another tribe, the very definition of civilization.

Let me repeat: Without interest, there would be no incentive for anyone to help a non-tribal member or to reinvest the surplus of one tribe into another tribe, the very definition of civilization.

Yes, the resources needed to build civilization—the buildings, armies and infrastructure, the castles and crowns—can simply be stolen by force. But the fact of the matter is: it is easier and more efficient for kings and tyrants to borrow at interest, since people will offer their capital willingly, on the assumption of recompense at a profit. Meanwhile borrowing at interest makes it much easier for average folk to recover from a natural or enemy-inflicted catastrophe, or to develop a business or invention.

Indeed, with the maturation of rule of law in Holland and England around the 16th century, which vastly increased the likelihood debts would be repaid, via the courts or debtor prisons, lending at interest created capitalism and—in tandem with the scientific revolution and The Enlightenment—modern civilization.

Back in the Middle Ages, however, the only professions open to most Jews were rag-picker and moneylender. Often the only Jews allowed to leave the ghettos, which were closed after the 11th century’s First Crusade (which started with a slaughter of Rhine Valley Jews), were the rag-picker and the moneylender. One wore actual rags, the other the finest couture and rode in a gilded carriage, going to dine with the prince.

By the way, Christendom’s popes, kings, bishops, princes and even saints frequently claimed that their oppression of the Jews—using ghettos, the obligation to wear funny caps or Stars of David, the enforced practice of usury, or outright violence—was part of their Christian love for the Jews, to push them to the "true religion" so they, too, could enjoy eternal life.

And so Jewish leaders were compelled to accept the churches’ and princes’ wealth and lend it back to the Christians at a healthy interest, gifting the church and princes a four-fer: avoiding sin, making money, building civilization AND destroying the Jews’ reputation.

In this way, the Jews simultaneously became both economically central and hated in most European principalities and many Muslim ones. Indeed, Jews lived inside the castle (where the women were often royal mistresses, making many European noble families part Jewish, if only genetically); Jews were fiduciary serfs, owned by the prince; this means they could be sold, lent at interest or harvested, although slaughtering them drove them to bury their wealth, forcing the princes to turn to blackmail, ransom and torture.

With Western Civilization’s dependence on Jewish banking besmirched by such grotesque practices, it’s no wonder peasants, farmers and workers became anti-Semitic. Imagine you’re an illiterate farmer in 17th century Ukraine, where the princes used “tax farming,” a practice originating in the ancient Middle East.

Not as bucolic as it might sound, tax farming in this case is where the richest local Jew is compelled, under pain of death, to pay the prince their region’s entire tax bill, up front, which they were then entitled to extract from the population, at whatever profit the market could bear.

Watching a wealthy Jew crisscrossing the countryside, collecting taxes, with the help of the prince’s Pretorian guard, just might turn a peasant from a giving Christian into a rabid anti-Semite, especially as the prince claims he himself is being squeezed by the Jews (the princes often gambled away all their liquid assets and became beholden to their Jews). Meanwhile, the priests are condemning Jews as Christ killers, demons and interest thieves.

A related situation still stands today. On the eve of the 2016 presidential election, Trump’s final ad “has been criticized for having anti-Semitic overtones and implying a vast international Jewish conspiracy behind Hillary Clinton… Philanthropist investor George Soros, Federal Reserve head Janet Yellen and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, all of whom are Jewish, appear onscreen as Trump inveighs against ‘levers of power in Washington’ and ‘global special interests’—both considered anti-Semitic dog-whistles,” (The Times of Israel, 11/6/16).

Soros, as you may recall, made his first billion “shorting” the Bank of England in 1992, when Prime Minister John Major was artificially propping up the pound sterling.

Shorting, which was invented in 16th century by Isaac La Maire, a Dutch Jew, may seem like the most insane fiduciary instrument since tax farming, but it caught on because it is perfectly logical, legal and functional.

Shorting is when an entity loans shares to an investor, who either pays them back plus some, when the shares go up, or, when they go down, buys now-cheaper shares on the open market, repaying the loaned shares to the entity and pocketing the profit. Say A lends B 100 shares of A stock at $10 a share. If, after a set amount of time, the stock devalues to $9, B simply buys 100 A shares on the open market for $900, returns A the 100 shares and makes $100.

Although this is condemned by the tautology "making money from money," it is a perfectly logical use of funds which are simply another resource which can be hidden, held, invested or shared.

How does this help economies you might ask? Of course, when A’s stock goes up to $11, B simply pays $100. But, even if a short happens, the capital is kept close since it is usually a community member placing the short. In fact, companies often contract their own shorts as a form of insurance.

But does anyone ever take the time to explain lending at interest, medieval Jewish moneylending, shorting or Soros’s first billion to contemporary Hungarians, 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists, college kids or folks from ethnic communities featuring old-wives tales about Jews?

The short answer, as it were, is no.

The obvious, immediate and logical long answer would be for George Soros’s Open Society Foundations to produce a documentary series about the evolution of feduciary instruments with ten episodes, at a minimum—given it’s so damn complicated. In fact, Soros should host, simply so viewers can see for themselves that he doesn’t have horns. It could be titled just like this essay, “Soros, Jewish Bankers and Interest Explained”.

Barring that, Soros or one of my millionaire readers, of which I have one that I know of—and there are undoubtedly a few more, among the million plus millionaires in the Bay Area—should write me a check for $10,000, with which I can start this vitally important humanitarian project (cineSOURCE has access to a documentary production company).

Without such an educational effort, to save us from the insanity of blaming Jews for lending at interest, which they didn’t invent—that would be the Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians and other civilizations, in fact the Jews prohibited it—let’s at least try to get one economic fact straight:

The trick to lending at interest is not prohibition or limitation, a la Biblical Jews, medieval Christians or modern conspiracy theorists, but freedom, within some regulatory structure, so lenders can compete, which would allow the market to lower interest rates on its own. Once the average citizen comprehends the basic facts of interest rates as well as markets, they can start studying other normative investment methods, like shorting.

Yes, a few Jews have been at the forefront of inventing financial instruments, either due to compulsion in the Middle Ages, to being excluded from other professions, or to the brilliant math and risk taking of people like George Soros today. Yes, not all financial instruments are functional, as we found out the hard way in 2008, with the toxic bundled mortgages. And yes, new financial instruments are hard to regulate, precisely because they are new.

Nevertheless, we need and will keep inventing new financial instruments, of which lending at interest was the very first, after money itself.

As harsh as lending at interest’s side effects may be—if you think the 20th and 21st century is bad, check out the 19th century’s boom, bust and rampant fraud cycles—it did create the majority of our wealth, tools and toys. To begin functioning in a healthy fiduciary manner, to cut back on the pogroms, we have to get used to that five-thousand-year-old practice and cornerstone of civilization and stop blaming the Jews.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Nov 06, 2018 - 03:44 AM
The Harkness Ballet Was Camelot!
By Steven Middlestein

Rebekah Harkness (lft), founder/director of the Harkness Ballet and one of her top dancers, Marjorie Tallchief, a First Person of the Osage Nation. circa 1965. photo: courtesy Keystone Shows

THE HARKNESS BALLET BURST ON THE
burgeoning global dance scene in 1964, when the young Joffrey Ballet, in Manhattan, split over a power struggle for artistic control. Bold, brash and controversial, the Harkness revolutionized the way dance is taught and performed until, suddenly, it disappeared.

What happened to the Harkness Ballet, a company that produced two international touring companies, a youth ballet and its very own theater, whose training program sent more dancers into the world of professional dance than any other company of its time? Indeed, the name “Harkness Ballet” has been almost totally eliminated from books on dance history.

“It is one of the great artistic mysteries of the 20th century," filmmaker Leslie Streit told me. Streit works with Robin McCain, as Cinematiks, out of a live-work in the Bayview district of San Francisco, and they decided to investigate.

"That’s why we decided to make a documentary about it, ‘An American Ballet Story’.”

Although ballet history or ballet itself is often considered a little elitist, they found a story they couldn’t resist, after stumbling on it in 2010. That was when the ODC dance school in San Francisco hired Cinematiks to cover a three-month workshop taught by Maria Vegh, the former co-director of the Harkness Ballet School.

When Vegh talked incessantly about the Harkness, that it was a world-class company, that it had danced at the White House and performed for Princess Grace, the infomercial expanded into a much longer project.

Although Streit grew up in New York City, she didn’t see dance or dance herself until her late teens when she suddenly was smitten. Obsessed with ballet and the lives of its dancers she studied not only the art but everything related to it.

Harkness Ballet Company dancers 'Time Out of Mind', 1974. photo: Milton Oleaga

Her first research, along with partner McCain, led straight back to the Ballet Russe, the notorious Parisian troupe which toured prodigiously between 1909 and 1929. Drawing on the Ballet Russe model of bringing together great artists to create spectacular productions, the Harkness Ballet employed the best minds of the 1960s from not only dance, music and visual art but politics, journalism and Broadway musicals.

The Harkness dancers, choreographers, composers and designers were pioneers and experimenters. Themes of sexual repression, homoerotic love, tribalism and even the aftermath of rape were explored by some of the most famous choreographers of the day, notably Brian Macdonald, Alvin Ailey, Stuart Hodes and Margo Sappington, whose pieces are highlighted in the film.

All of the work and much of the music was original. Modern, jazz, Spanish and Indian dance were also taught at the school. The core ballet curriculum was based on principles of Kinesiology (how the body moves) rather than traditional ballet's learning by imitation.

Founder Rebekah Harkness gave opportunities and scholarships to dancers and students regardless of race, body shape or background. Her philosophy of “dance for everybody” was truly ahead of its time. Both the company and the school reflected a diversity in line with the civil rights movement of the day—a fact that caused problems when they toured the South.

In addition to founding and directing the company, Harkness arranged and composed music, designed pointe shoes and established a foundation that still supports dance today. Her generosity to her dancers was legendary.

But so was the reaction of the art press. Indeed, Harkness was maligned by powerful New York critics who sought to destroy her, particularly Clive Barnes, an Englishman who ruled New York arts from his throne at the New York Times, 1965-77. Barnes had a personal agenda and never let up.

Was it because Harkness was rich and powerful? Or simply because she was a woman? Was he attacking her artistic tastes or the fact that she withdrew funding from the Joffrey Ballet, which he loved?

The Harkness dancers toured the world to high acclaim, circa 1968. photo: courtesy Harkness Archives

Although the company was a sensation when they toured in Europe, Barnes’s influence and vituperation were so great, audiences, impresarios and theater owners were forced to take sides.

The drama unfolded year by year, dance piece by dance piece. Stories about conspiracy theories and chaos within the company came out alongside the daring of the pieces and the excellence of the dancers, which are the true legacy of the Harkness Ballet.

The first Harkness Ballet, which began in 1964 with core members from the Joffrey Ballet, was disbanded in 1970 by Harkness for many reasons, which will be explored in the film. They were replaced by dancers trained at the Harkness Ballet School.

But in 1975 the bottom dropped out of her fortune and Rebekah Harkness fell on hard times. Despite drastic cutbacks, economizing, and a last-ditch attempt to solicit public funding, she could no longer support a major ballet company on her own. Donors were reluctant to fund a company on the receiving end of so many negative reviews by Barnes, so the second company came to an end.

The world had clearly changed. Nevertheless, the Harkness Ballet School continued to train dancers for another ten years, until it too closed.

Rebekah died in 1982. The key artists carried on with other companies, creating a post-Harkness world, while the Harkness Ballet’s own accomplishments were buried behind hard-to-access archival walls or legal issues of rights ownership.

Many questions arise: How does funding affect art? Who owns art, creators or funders? Does art criticism determine success or is it “fake news”? Did the walls at the sumptuous Harkness House actually have ears?

Most importantly: What does the Harkness saga mean to artists today?

“An American Ballet Story” went into production in 2015. With little time for pre-production, as the producers learned that some of their interview subjects were dying of old age or disease, they dove in using their own money.

To date they’ve made three production trips out-of-state New York City, Florida and Cincinnati, and three to Los Angeles. When they couldn’t afford travel fees, they sent DIY video kits to their subjects. In this way, more than 70 former Harkness dancers, choreographers, composers, technicians and designers have been interviewed and the project is now in post.

A group of Harkness dancers. photo: courtesy Harkness Dancers

Their current plans are to not use a narrator and let film unfold through interviews with the people who were actually there, with each individual story forming a short stand-alone piece.

“It was Camelot!” Marina Eglevsky, a former dancer, told them, while Andrea Cagan, another dancer, who is now a bestselling author, recalled opening night at the Harkness House, a Gilded Age mansion on Fifth Avenue and 75th Street. Looking up the stairs, Cagan spotted painter Salvador Dali swooping down in a black cape and, on his shoulder, an ocelot. “It was magnificent!” she exclaimed.

For many of the former Harkness artists, it was the greatest time of their lives.

It has taken over three years to unearth archival film and video (video was rare in that era), and a growing collection of photos. Amazingly, more films and photos keep showing up.

The film’s score will feature Lee Gurst, a composer and musician who has toured with Barry Manilow and Bette Midler. Additional music is by Marga Richter and Michael Kamen, and even Mrs. Harkness herself, who will accompany archival dance footage. The first rough cut is due in 2019.

Over their more than twenty years, Cinematiks has proved that compelling media can be made on minuscule budgets. Their “VD 2001” is widely recognized as the first dramatic series on the web (1996-97); their “God Wears My Underwear” (2005), an experimental film about the Holocaust, has earned many plaudits.

Their recent feature documentary, “Elly and Henry” (2017), concerns a love story and Holocaust survivors who built the first solar house in America. Distributed by Espresso Media International, it can be seen on Amazon and Amazon Prime. You can also see more about “An American Ballet Story” at its website, which has thirteen short video previews, or on its Facebook page.

Steven Middlestein is a writer, editor and movie fanatic and can be reached .

Posted on Nov 04, 2018 - 12:42 PM
DeWolf Smokes Monster Oakland Joint Film
by Doniphan Blair

Despite the suit and cool cat demeanor, Oakland filmmaker, writer and performer Jamie DeWolf inevitably reached a point in his interview where he had to express himself fully. photo: D. Blair

WITH ONE BLOCKBUSTER AND TWO
indie darlings this year, Oakland film has become the biggest thing since crack cocaine in the ‘80s, or the city’s crazed football fans, Raider Nation, a decade later, or the Golden State Warriors' four-year-old basketball dynasty, although they’re moving to a brand-new, half-a-billion dollar stadium in San Francisco at the end of the season.

Unfortunately, it may be too soon to crack the champs for Hollywood on the Estuary. Yes, “Panther”, “Sorry to Bother” and “Blindspotting” were created by Oaklanders, but they were mostly crewed by Hollywooders, a situation not likely to change soon.

In addition to getting gentrified out, many filmmakers are self-evicting. With commercial film relatively small in Oakland and big productions from out of town, many are making the six-hour drive south to the actual Hollywood, some permanently.

Six years ago, Oakland had high hopes as a film center. It had the actual Oakland Film Center (two buildings/25 businesses on the old army base), the Oakland Film Office (featuring the talented Ami Zins wooing producers with tax rebates and incredible location variety) and a startup film magazine (yours truly).

Within a few years, the Center was gone (see cineSOURCE article), the city had cut its commission by half and, although cineSOURCE is still with us (as you may have noticed), the city and most film businesses cancelled their ads.

“I just hope it is not the last chimes of the bell,” noted Jamie DeWolf, another great Oakland filmmaker, albeit in the scrappy DIY, or “grimy, guerilla Oakland,” as he calls it, genre. Indeed, DeWolf wrote, co-directed with Joshua Staley, and starred in “Smoked”, a drug-addled, one-liner laced, caper-comedy precisely six years ago.

Although Oakland had a through-the-roof murder rate in 2012 (127 killed), as well as plenty of theft, addiction, sex slavery and unemployment (it still does—please don’t tell anyone), it was also a cheap, fun place to live, work and play for tens of thousands of activists, artists, musicians, filmmakers and writers.

For those who hadn’t gotten with the Oakland program, well, “You’re just a blind man jerking off to braille,” as a character quips in “Smoked”, which is available on iTunes and Amazon.

“I really wanted the film to be good on the page,” DeWolf told me in our late-October interview (below). “I wasn’t interested in trying to make it naturalistic in any way. It was all about clever turns of phrase, much like we used to see back in the day, with old noir films, where everyone talked ‘smart.’"

Starting as a writer, director and actor, DeWolf had to learn to shoot and more to make his feature, 'Smoked' (2012). photo: courtesy J. DeWolf

How 'bout this smart talk: “Your asshole was a question mark that someone else had the answer for.”

A lanky, red-haired 41 year old (his birthday was October 28th), DeWolf is from the all-white suburbs of Benicia and resembles an insurance salesmen in the cheap suits he favors. Alas, if you made any other confirmation biases, you’d probably be wrong, given DeWolf is from the wrong side of the tracks, literally and figuratively,

A graduate of the university of hard knocks, DeWolf majored in drugs and suicide, with a minor in film, until he attended actual film school—after making "Smoked"! His early years are examined, with all of DeWolf's excess intensity as well as artistry, in a cinema love letter to an early girlfriend, "Strchynine Valentine" (2018), now on the festival circuit.

Plus his white privilege is extra giving, given his family is not only serious Bible bangers but Hubbards, as in L. Ron Hubbard, as in Hollywood's only homegrown religion, which is more patriarchal than Christianity.

After moving to Oakland in his 20s and falling in with a sometimes shady pack of artists, musicians and performers, DeWolf was soon surfing the spoken word scene and performing all over the world with The Suicide Kings, which included his "Smoked" co-stars, Geoff Trenchart and Rupert Estanislau.

They even taught classes at high schools, often performing a play about Columbine, the 1999 Colorado school shooting that launched a thousand mad men. More recently, he made a striking short on the subject, "Ricochet in Reverse", with Eric Harris played by Rafael Casal, the co-star/co-writer of “Blindspottings”’.

“That was the play. We toured that around a lot. We were very, very proud of it [but] we were also doing ‘Smoked’. ‘Smoked’ was my crazy antidote to this hard-hitting piece about teen violence and suicide.”

Given today’s culture cops, “Smoked” could probably not get made now, even by the sheer force of will DeWolf exerted. Indeed, Oakland film may survive but only as a theme park, as a set for movies about an edgy, integrated and heart-felt city, the way San Francisco was once Hollywood’s urban face of film noir. If so, perhaps it is time to take a closer at “Smoked”, which cineSOURCE missed somehow in 2012.

'Smoked' stars (lf-rt) Geoff Trenchart, Rupert Estanislau and Jamie DeWolf; here eyeballing a young, delicious female... marijuana plant. photo: courtesy J. DeWolf

Yes, “Smoked” is harsh; yes, “Smoked” is raw; and yes, “Smoked” rattles on its rails a little in the fourth reel. BUT it remains a rollicking good and funny ride with a lot of sophisticated touches, take-downs and tales.

“Smoked” follows three hapless dopers, played by The Suicide Kings, as they concoct their plan, hold up a marijuana dispensary and try to sell the take to the Chinese mafia. They spend most of the film running from the dispensary’s owner, Shank, a coke-dealing revolutionary who went legit with legalized weed, yet another revolution California started in 1999.

Shank is perfectly played by local storyteller L. Abdul Kenyatta, who limped out of his hospital room soon after a stroke to finish the film. Shank's life summary opens “Smoked” with one of the most concise, cool and graphically filmed summaries of Oakland history I’ve ever seen.

There's also two thugs interrupted in a punch-fest by a woman with pit bull, which they protect themselves from by claiming they're gay; and crazy music, a modernist mix of Jewish Klezmer, horror theremin and dime-store Asian, and the absurdist elegance of a thirteen-year-old girl responding to a pistol with a riddle about a cigarette, while smoking one.

From there it’s down into a morass of robberies, pistol whippings, running, punching and shooting, with time outs for rapid repartee or for Estanislao, who in real life is a gangbanger turned punk singer turned performance artist, to coo lovingly over the phone to his girlfriend.

Indeed, “Smoked” has everything except sex, which is both still taboo and over filmed, with so many of our confreres porn junkies. Dewolf plays it for laughs with women walking around with their tits and their acerbic tongues out, a hard joke to pull off. But DeWolf is undaunted by cinema challenges, as we can easily see in this provocative sexy short, "A Girl and a Gun", or this mini-horror flick, "OK Monster!"

After getting DeWolf's number from a woman I met walking her dog , and chasing him down through the three different coffee shops he texted me the addresses of, I found him sitting serenely just outside the property line—to avoid legal issues, I assume—of Oakland’s esteemed Grand Lake Theatre.

DeWolf was wearing a bright red suit and tie and what looked like a red wig, although it turned out to be his real hair. From about a twenty feet away, I just launched into it.

DeWolf wanted to be interviewed right on the street, right next to the Grand Lake Theatre, for some reason. photo: D. Blair

cineSOURCE: That’s quite the film you got going there!

Jamie DeWolf: Thank you.

Was that an enormous headache?

Yeah, I pulled a lot of teeth to get it into being.

I was thinking it was going to be some sort of sane undertaking. It was totally crazy. I wrote the most impossible script for someone to start with: three main characters, nine villains, every scene in a new location, all the same day—incredibly complex to pull off.

I wanted to make a chase film that has a constant sense of moving through the city, a calamitous day for all the characters. I probably wasn’t thinking, when I was writing, that this was going to end up being 70 random shoot days with no budget.

70, wow!

Whatever it was, we were never able to do [full weeks].

A lot of the people in the film didn’t have official acting experience, but they were all performers: either rappers, comedians, poets or storytellers. A lot of the roles I wrote for them, specifically.

We shot whenever we could. Some actors would vanish. One guy ODed, so we had to rewrite scenes.

He died?

No, but he couldn’t be in the movie anymore.

I had to be fanatically stubborn to get it made. There were probably 20 times we could have stopped. I just kept foraging ahead.

I knew the film would never be perfect. There were some shots [where] the exposure was out of whack, the sound was all over the place [but] I had to hit the finish line to get to my next one.

It was a pretty insane undertaking. I’m glad I did it. It was probably the most arduous film school possible. I actually went to film school after that.

Which one?

SF State. [But] I felt that nothing they were teaching me was anywhere near getting your ass kicked by a guerillas film.

You must have had some film chops before that?

Jaylee Alde, who plays the heavy in 'Smoked', tries to extract information from a thirteen-year old girl—unsuccessfully! photo: courtesy of J. DeWolf

I had been a film maniac ever since I was in middle school.

Where?

Benicia, next to Vallejo [30 miles outside Oakland].

I had a partner and we used to run around in the summer and make all these insane, kind of violent, action movies and weird, dark comedies with whatever cameras we could find. Driving around in a van, we’d pull up, grab some friends and go out to the wilderness and, you know, stage these insane scenes.

I was used to forcing things into being—if you want to make something happen, just do it!—DO NOT wait for permission!

We were churning through a lot of films, which led me to performance art. I ended up in the world of poetry slams, these lyrical battles that were erupting all over the United States [starting at a Chicago jazz club in ‘80s, blowing up in the ‘90s].

I ended up touring a lot with the two other [main] guys in the movie, Geoff [Trenchard] and Rupert [Estanislau].

The white guy looks like a famous actor.

Geoff—he’s a lawyer now.

Our trio was called The Suicide Kings: Geoff, me and Rupert. We were all sort of crazy teens, coming from very different backgrounds—we didn’t meet until our 20s. All of us had a violent adolescence, in whatever ways, and we started performing together.

We would do writing workshops inside high schools and middle schools—we ended up doing a lot of those. At first it was shocking anyone would invite us into a high school. Then we realized how important it was for us to be an example, the example that you can be a messed up malcontent but art is an escape route, a method of survival, whether performance, hip hop, theater.

We toured all over, all the way to Russia, doing plays. We toured with the full-length play called ‘In Spite of Everything’ about school shootings and survival through art. A very hard-edged play [which became the film ‘Ricochet in Reverse’].

‘Smoked’ evolved for me as something I would write when we were on tour: this wild, dark comedy that was NOT as hard hitting as the play.

We would meet a lot of kids who were suicidal, who made poems with references to violence. We would wrestle with: How do we deal with this appropriately, considering I was one of those kids in high school?

You were a suicidal kid in high school?

DeWolf likes to cover a lot ground, both talking fast and surfing through stories of being a suicidal teen, a father at 21 and a film writer, director, actor, editor, shooter, etc, etc. photo: D. Blair

Absolutely, on a downward spiral, a tailspin, who had that desperate mentality of, ‘If I am going to sink, I am going to take the whole ship with me,’ that sort of diseased, adolescent mentality.

‘In Spite of Everything’ was—

The fictional premise is that we were doing a writing workshop the day before a student comes to that class and kills everyone, his teacher and himself—and leaves a note implicating us.

The plays goes through a series of interrogations. We asked ourselves, if this happened in reality, what would happen?

What would happen is: the police would come after us and go through all of our backgrounds, which pushes the question: If you had a violent, disturbed adolescence and come out the other side, should people [not] allow you to work with students? [Or] should you be the first to work with students, because only you understand what a lot of them are going through?

The play evolved through a lot of scenes, characters, vignettes, all basically about surviving through art and how do you internalize trauma. Every one of us [Suicide Kings] had been molested, had gone through all types of violent upbringings, and so on.

It was about looking at that with a fearless, ferocious eye, acknowledging the ugliness you have been a part of and [figuring out] what are you going to do about it, as an adult. How do you internalize it? What are you going to offer those who are facing some of those same challenges?

That was the play. We toured that around a lot. We were very, very proud of it [but] we were also doing ‘Smoked’. ‘Smoked’ was my crazy antidote to this hard-hitting piece about teen violence and suicide.

You obviously think showing violence is not unhealthy, that it is kind of cathartic.

Anyone who argues the art and violence thing… it is such a hypocritical conversation. Often it is by the same people shoving 'The Bible' in some kid’s brain.

I grew up super Christian. I saw Jesus get crucified in grisly detail many times by the time I was twelve. ‘This is horrifying!’ [I would say.] ‘You need to see this!’ ‘This is what Jesus went through for you!’ ‘Watch the lashes on his back, the blood spraying!’

Violence is a part of our history, part of our psychology. I am certainly drawn in my art to explore difficult subjects. I would argue a lot of my artistic sensibility is dark: whether it is dark comedy [laughs], or a dark, hard hitting piece—that is how my psychology variates.

I love to do things that are hilarious and insane. [But] once I scratch that itch, I go, like, ‘What is challenging and confessional and rough but honest?’ That level of rawness, I have been very comfortable living in that realm.

DeWolf has hosted a monthly vaudeville-like show at the Oakland Metro since 1999; seen here promoing a faux fight. photo: D. Blair

For instance, I just finished a short film called ‘Strychnine Valentine’, which we just submitted to a bunch of festivals.

It is all about one of my very first girlfriends. I watched crystal meth and heroin completely devour her life. She became this harsh lesson that poison doesn’t play favorites. It doesn’t matter who you are, how beautiful you are, [it] is just an empty mouth that will consume anything in its path.

This was a very significant lesson that completely set me on a different road. It is a pretty dark film, but it is absolutely 100% honest, as brutal and raw as I could make it—beautiful in its own way.

I will also do a dark comedy about a family trying to figure out how to hide a body—an all-female crime caper.

To me, violence is going to happen anyway, no matter what kind of art comes out or not. A lot of violence, if you aren’t able to show its true brutality, whether for laughs or impact, I think that is more dangerous. It is more dangerous to sidestep the consequences of violence.

In ‘Smoked’, which is a dark comedy, there is a whole cycle, a coming around. Once you open the door to hell, you are going to get burnt, the classical criminal arc: There is always a consequence.

We would film some scenes [to ‘Smoked’], then go on tour with the play, teaching at different schools. I was also putting on my monthly series, which I still do, ‘Tourettes without Regrets' since 1999, first Thursday of the month at the Oakland Metro Opera House.

‘Tourettes Without Regrets’ features live performers, rappers, circus acts, comedians, poets. So a lot of that world was woven through ‘Smoked’. So much of ‘Smoked’ is based on our lives, a ‘mild’ exaggeration: having the rapper get shot on stage, Oakland’s grimy, punk kids, friends who are pretty hard-core criminals, kind of ‘whackitty’ drug folk, artists and performers.

It synthesized all those crazy anarchic elements into one ‘Bananas’ ride.

The film, in strange way, is a real microcosm of that time. I pretty much threw my whole world into that movie, as ridiculous as that is. I couldn’t believe how hard it was to make a sort of wacky, dark comedy about a cannabis club robbery.

But a film is a film, it doesn’t matter what the subject is or how seriously you want to take it. The complexity is still the same.

You haven’t done another feature since?

I’ve done 75 shorts, it feels like.

It was such a brutal and humbling experience, I resolved I would never put myself in the position where I wasn’t able to do everything.

Jamie DeWolf in his trickster, happy place. photo: courtesy J. DeWolf

When I started [‘Smoked’] I couldn’t expose a shot if you handed me a camera. Coming out the end of that film, I was shooting it, editing, working with the sound mix—everything that had to happen. [Now] I shoot, I direct, I edit—I don’t like doing sound—but I can do everything.

You prefer that?

Not necessarily, if there is budget, I would rather not. [But] I realized, you are better off as a guerilla filmmaker if you can shoot. You don’t have to wait for a DP [director of photography].

Some of the people working on the film just moved really slow. That is not the way I shoot.

Since then, I have been a one-man documentarian; I have directed whole projects with film crews. I have been so busy, actually, with all of these other shorts and films and grants and documentaries and music videos.

I have five features ready to go. And I’m also starting to think again about my family history, which is the L. Ron Hubbard family.

You are from the Hubbards?

L. Ron Hubbard is my great-grandfather; L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. is my grandfather. I am not a Scientologist—at all. I was NOT born a Scientologist. The last Scientologist in my family was L. Ron Hubbard, Jr.

L. Ron created Scientology, raised his son in it, who became sort of his right hand man—also his enforcer. Yeah, he used to beat people up, shake them down, destroy their enemies. Then they had a massive falling out and went to war, all the way to their end days.

That is a whole subset of my life and I do performances of that. ‘The God and The Man’ is a piece that I performed for Snap Judgment [radio show].

Were you able to sell ‘Smoked’?

We got distribution through Indican Studios in LA. They also put out ‘Boondock Saints’ and different genres. We had a friend [Eric Jacobus, see cineSOURCE article] who got a feature film released by them, an action, comedy, martial arts flick.

I learned an important lesson: you have to be really careful monitoring your energy.

When you start a film, you may be signing on to three years of your life. You have to be ready for the stamina it takes. By the time I reached the end of it, I had gone from being a writer-actor-director to having to sit in a studio and grind through small, minute increments of volume changes or color corrections.

Near the end, I was really burnt. It was such an exhausting, grueling process, I just wanted to make a whole gang of shorts, of all different kinds, to showcase I could be the director that I knew I could be, which is kind of an endless goal.

It is coming time [for another feature]. I’ve been developing a few scripts. I have been waiting to see which one I want to pull the trigger on. I have one larger one, that would require a much larger budget, and two in the scrappy style of ‘Smoked’.

The 'Smoked' scene where 'No Nose' is pulled off his day job (body disposal) to hunt weed thieves, highlights DeWolf's interests in horror, gore and the instructive nature of exploring violence ON SCREEN. photo: courtesy J. DeWolf

When I watch the film now, it is a crazy time capsule. So many of those locations and people don’t exist any more. There is a scene at Van Kleef’s [a seminal Telegraph Avenue bar], where Peter Van Kleef was dancing around, pouring drinks. He has passed away—they even named a street after him [Peter Van Kleef Way, 16th/17th on Telegraph].

It’s a time capsule to see Oakland when it was still grimy, guerilla Oakland. Oakland now is not something I wouldn’t recognize.

Time to bail back to Benicia?

No way, no way, no way.

It’s still pretty hip actually. We are sitting in front of one of the best theaters in the world.

I still love Oakland but, the fact is, it is evolving. When your rent is skyrocketing, the first to go are the families, followed by the artists, followed by the soul… [laughs] of the city.

When you referred to the difficulties of making the film, you didn’t mention the difficulty of writing it and that is pretty much the best thing in the film.

Thank you.

There were a lot of great one line liners—all your stuff?

All my stuff. Basically, it was from that school of ‘running all over with lyricists’—a lot of my friends are performance artists, poets, MCs, rappers, writers, comedians.

It always came down to just the line; it came down to lyricism; whether that is a punch line or an off hand comment. I really wanted the film to be good on the page. I wasn’t interested in trying to make it naturalistic in any way.

I really liked films like ‘Brick’ (2006, Rian Johnson), where the language is elevated. What I loved about ‘Brick’, it didn’t have any interest in doing naturalist language. It was all about clever turns of phrase, much like we used to see back in the day, with old noir films, where everyone talked ‘smart.’

With ‘Smoked’ that was something I focused on. I wanted moments that just had lyrical banter. I was obsessed with every turn of phrase.

Some of the shorts I am doing now, I am much more open to crazy improv. I will give the actors maybe five punch lines for them to land wherever. It is almost like handing them a tool set; it is a fun experiment.

DeWolf displaying his moody-artist side. photo: courtesy J. DeWolf

I haven’t done another feature, since I have been so slammed with these other shorts and I wanted to be a better filmmaker. Now I have a camera that is full-cinema ready.

The Arri Amira [from the German Arriflex company, in the Alexa family, the same sensor, so I am really excited to work with that. The image quality is really gorgeous: it has a flat image that you can grade in all sorts of complex ways.

Some of that is just learning how to be a leaner meaner machine. I think I could honestly make a feature with probably a crew of four or five, you know, because I can shoot. I have shot so many projects, I know what will work.

That doesn’t mean I am the best DP but that is what I recommend to most directors: you need to be in every position at least once so you can understand it.

I think the ‘El Mariachi’ Robert Rodriguez mythos of just grab a camera and hit the streets and make a film in 14 days [is good]. I have learned the hard reality of that and how to do it the right way.

Rodriguez shoots his own films.

Right, so does Steven Soderbergh.

How about that older black guy, did he keep acting?

Abdul Kenyatta? Yeah, he is still around; he does a lot of singing; he is story teller; he has been working on a book.

Actually, he had a stroke midway through making the film—there is a lot of real life like that that we had to adjust around—which is why, at the end of the film, he isn’t moving. He is standing in the shadows, on a cane, since he just suffered a stroke. But he was kind enough to continue to finish out the film when he was going through rehab.

So he went to the hospital in the middle of the film?

Yeah. We had to switch actors once or twice. A lot of it is that scrappy indie quality of people just doing it when they can, which is also another reason I haven’t taken on doing another feature in that way. I have also learned you add so many problems that you can’t perceive.

Time is a constantly expanding factor. You get with actors, ‘Well, we are trying to film this on weekends.’ Well, everyone’s schedule is so insane. Imagine trying to get thirty adults to coordinate their schedule in any way. That actually causes a whole new raft of issues.

If I was going to do my next feature, I would bum rush it. Be as prepared as possible [and do it] in 20 consecutive days.

What budget you think you could do it?

I think I could do a grimy, indie feature—pull it off by the skin of my teeth—for 150 thousand.

I own the camera I would shoot it on. I have worked with a lot of filmmakers who I have done a ton of projects with, filmmakers that I would want to work with. They are fast; they have hustle. We don’t stand around and debate. We make things happen fast because that is what we are paid to do by other clients.

You can’t sit around in some director chair and make a whole lot of squares with your fingers. You have to hustle and knock out shots.

Also, I am far more used to coordinating with the crew and cast. I have directed and shot simultaneously a lot of my projects, so it is very easy for me. Something like a 150 thousand, if we are able to lock it down and do 20 hardcore days in a row.

A character from one of DeWolf's movies appeared to interrupt the interview until it became obvious he was inspired by the streets of Oakland, much like DeWolf himself. photo: D. Blair

My ideal would be to shoot five days and then give the actors a day off, while we are also reviewing. [That way] we know the pickups we need, while we are doing the shooting, versus the editing room.

I think next year, it is time for me to come back with a full feature or at least get one moving. That is the deal I made with myself. I sort of did the opposite route. I made a bunch of scrappy movies when I was a teenager, then went into the world of performance, then decided I wanted to return to film.

I view it as the ultimate art form. I love the fact it is forever. I’m a big ol’ film fanatic in that way, that film is forever.

I’ve done so many performances: in prisons, in Russia, all different kinds comedy, storytelling, all stuff I wrote. Early on, what got me into slam and the performance world is that it was all ‘written from you.’ I am not a vessel, an actor taking on someone’s work and inhabiting that—it is all coming from you.

First person?

Yeah. Based on a kind of gritty sensibility. That is what The Suicide Kings did. A lot of our writing was coming from these tales of survival and violence and trauma and sarcastic storytelling.

Where does that come from Benicia or Oakland?

Oakland. Benicia was a suburban wasteland.

You sound pretty much like an Oakland filmmaker.

I definitely identify with Oakland. Benicia was my teenage years. When I moved to Oakland, that was when I became a true-blue performer. I had always been performer-filmmaker guy, but Oakland was to me where I met my true family of artists.

You include a lot of sexual stuff, particularly for comic effect, but not the act, any particular reason?

If you're going to show sex, you better do something more original than soft-core pornography. Sex is about psychology and the characters; it should drive the story versus be a showcase of flesh. If your sex scene doesn't have any character beats other than the act itself, you're not offering the audience anything new.

What do you think of William Burroughs?

‘Naked Lunch’ is a stand-out seminal work, but I'm still a fan of his early hard-edged writing on heroin [perhaps ‘Junky’, 1953]. He writes with a brutal clarity on the subject, though there's contemporary authors that stare addiction in the face with a fearless ferocity that's almost hard to stomach.

Are there any sort of nameable art, music or film movement you see emerging out of Oakland?

I'm always wary of 'movements' as, too often, they're a label cooked up by writers to lump some rather disparate aesthetics into one box for the ease of discussion.

I think Oakland is unique in its scrappy sensibility, the roots of outrage and protest, of Black Panthers to Hells Angels, to AK-47's on the steps of the court house, to the Occupy surrounding city hall. The opening shot of 'Smoked' is of Oakland, and the entire film is circling around ideas of revolution, race and mayhem teetering under the surface.

DeWolf exhausted on set of 'Smoked', although it could be an art shoot expressing his subconscious. photo: courtesy J. DeWolf

You don’t seem to mention or focus on race much, any particular philosophy behind that?

Smoked has repeated references to race and a huge multi-cultural cast.

I wrote many of the characters for my friends to inhabit and I created a topsy-turvy world that pushed those cartoonish versions of them to extremes. Many of my short films tackle where race and economic disparity meet, of individuals trying to survive against systemic dysfunction and societal structures that have a sociopathic bent towards crushing those below the line.

The shorts are routinely excellent, very poetic in their words, if not so much cineaste style. Draw any inspiration from the art/poetry films of the 60s and 70s?

I draw inspiration from everywhere I can, and take more from the worlds of poetry and art, besides just films. I think too many filmmakers run a danger of being limited to the track of cinema when there's so many arenas of aesthetics to fuel us.

Would you say Oakland has a pretty strong filmmaking community?

Yeah.

There is a real hustle in Oakland because it has kind of this gritty sensibility. I think that really informed a lot of the energy, not only of [‘Smoked’] but of the people from Oakland. There was not this sense that we are going to hang around and you are going to hand it to us.

What a lot of the movie reflects is about Oakland —the opening shot of the movie is of Oakland.

Is that a drone or what?

That was a helicopter shot, actually.

So you put in a few thousand here and there for what you thought you needed?

Basically how ‘Smoked’ started, we took a grant that we got for a theater performance and literally threw it to get the movie going. So when we started the movie we didn’t have enough to finish. We had ten thousand dollars and I was like, ‘I don’t want to wait, let’s go!’

That might have been ill-advised because how are we going to [finish]? That started a constant cycle of chasing your own tail. Kind of a classic first feature film scenario except I didn’t shrink from any kind of challenge, like having so many characters is insane. We didn’t have any budget for any actors, even myself. I am not getting paid; I am just throwing money into this hole.

And because I didn’t own any equipment, that was its own trump card. You are working with folks because of what they own not because of aesthetic choices.

Today I would go the opposite. When you come with your own gear and technic expertise to the table then you are choosing people because of their aesthetics and eye not, ‘Do you own this camera or whatever?’

Any cinematic inspirations?

A lot films that I love, that ‘Smoked’ was informed by, are movies like ‘La Haine’ or ‘Hate’ [1995 French film by Mathieu Kassovitz], a great film. ‘Kids’ [1995, Larry Clark]: I love the raw quality of it—fearlessly living, take it or not.

I remember when I saw ‘Kids in the theater, there were people next to me who were horrified, ‘Oh my god.’ But to me I was literally,I' know these kids; this is a party we went to last month.' It wasn't horrifying to me at all; [it] made me realize that is why you need films like that.

'Smoked''s two top thugs, Jaylee Alde (lft) and Abdul Kenyatta, at the famed Oakland club, Van Kleef's, shortly before bitching out the wide-eyed gentrifier behind them. photo: courtesy J. DeWolf

They may be ugly, at least to someone else, but as long as they are based somewhat in reality [they're good].

How about ‘Irreversible’, ‘Reservoir Dogs’, ‘El Topo’. You know ‘El Topo’?

Yeah, yeah. I think ‘Smoked’ was also informed by classic crime caper films like ‘The Killing’, obviously, or ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’

I thought that film sucked. I thought your piece was so much better then that.

[laughs] Since I was a kid the movie that was most significant to me was ‘Goodfellas’.

By Scorsese, who is a master.

I saw it in middle school. It changed my life because the movie had no problem that every character was an anti-hero, corrupt and flawed. It wasn’t going by the typical Hollywood tropes, where your good guy was some cardboard easily identifiable character.

Your good guy was Henry Hill, the least morally repugnant [in the movie] only because he would not outright kill you and was not a stone-cold sociopath. But he would do whatever he could.

There is something about that rogues gallery that I really loved. I like Martin McDonagh, who wrote ‘The Pillow Man’ [2003] and ‘In Bruges’ [2008], dark comedy sensibilities, I have always had attractions to.

I think that is what I am wrestling with in my next feature: whether I want to do another dark comedy, which I love and I honestly don’t think there are enough of in the world, or if I want to go the hard-hitting, gritty route.

So I have two films: one is that exaggerated, rogue's gallery world, sort of like ‘Smoked’, reality on acid, sprinkled with some meth, anarchic, breaks all the rules, lots of characters all over the city.

Or I have another film based on old school crime rings, some folks I used to know. There were these large scale, kind of crazy, shoplifting rings all over California in the early ‘90s. They have very complicated scams with chain stores that led down this progression of violence. So I have a whole 'nother script on that, that is ready to go as well.

Quick question, coming out of your meth-ed out, fucked-up high school years, was there one thing that specifically turned you around?

My daughter. I had my daughter when I was 21. She absolutely made me accountable, I couldn’t just dive off the deep end. She was always my road back: I am responsible [for her] and couldn’t go down the same spirals.

Actually my daughter, I have been teaching her filmmaking and we had our first lesson over the weekend. ‘I am going to start you on a different way than I came to things. I want to teach you the tools first; then what you do with them and what you write, that is your path.

Definitely my daughter but also performance, art, meeting like-minded individuals.

I was like the classic lone wolf character who shows up at open mics and is really drowning. You find like-minded people who are drawn to the same life raft and, before you know it. you have crafted it into a sweet boat.

Basically it was meeting Geoff and Rupert. Actually, that is one of the reasons we called ourselves The Suicide King— we felt like we had survived. And that we had each other, as a way of working ahead and keeping each other accountable.

'Smoked' includes some graphic and nicely tracking camera work. photo: courtesy J. DeWolf

Rupert used to be a gang member in the Philippines and in Vallejo. When I met him, he had just robbed three houses that week.

But you met him at a performance?

I met him at one of his very first performances. It was one of those things: by us staying busy with performance that got him out of the gang.

He was too busy doing shows. There were many times that they called and went, ‘We got to go run out to Oakland,’ and he goes, ‘I got band practice.’ He was a really gret punk singer. Some of his music is in [‘Smoked’]. Eskapo is one of his bands.

Do you own fake guns or rent?

I own a few prop guns, some of those were Air Soft guns we borrowed for the day. I've never rented any prop guns.

What do you think of Oakland film and the three world-wide hits it produced this year?

I love it.

I have seen all the films. 'Blindspotting’—I have known Rafael Casal [star cowriter see cineSOURCE article] I knew him as a performer and he was in one of my first short films ‘Ricochet in Reverse’. I think it's incredible. I thought that film was incredible.

I also love the fact they were all different. ‘Sorry to Bother You’ is that kind of anarchic, dark comedy, just totally, gleeful.

It’s vicious satire, like ‘Dr Strangelove’—

Yeah, exactly. Gleefully nuts, that resounds with me.

‘Blindspotting' was absolutely hard hitting but really real and really showed that. It wrestled with what a lot of us in Oakland have. Oakland is evolving but they did it in a really smart way, fantastic filmmaking, great writing. I though they just knocked it out of the park.

It's obviously totally unbelievable. I have been pushing Oakland as a film center for ten years. But now it is off the charts.

What I would like to see—let’s be totally honest: some of that can look good on paper. But what I would like to see is: Stop hiring people from LA to come to Oakland. Hire Oakland filmmakers!

I hit a point were ‘I guess I got to move to LA, even though I love Oakland,’ because the industry isn’t the same up here. And that is what happens. People are like, ‘Oh I am going to make a movie about Oakland.’ So they hire an entire crew from LA; they come up here; they shoot Oakland; and then they are going to go back to LA.

That part is really frustrating. There are a lot of indie filmmakers here that are bad ass. Also I think we have a really scrappy mentality, a hustle and a grit that you aren’t going it find in many other cities. It is infused through me and a lot of the shows I have been putting on for years.

Rupert Estanislau, an actor with actual gang experience, in the medical marijuana robbery that starts 'Smoked''s chase scene rolling. photo: courtesy J. DeWolf

It is past DIY. It is a 'fuck-it' attitude. We even riot better then most cities. [laughs] The fact is San Francisco is forcing us to march to the beat of tech companies.

So that is the killer right there?

It’s gonna make things hard.

Art has to be income-drawing enough to compete with tech?

How are you going to have art competing against bits and ones and zeros? It is a different mind set. We will see what happens. Oakland will always be a corner stone of my art and my eye.

I love it. I love those films are happening. There is that movie ‘Bodied’ that is coming out about, [from] Oakland’s new battle rapper. ‘Black Panther’ opening [scene is] in Oakland and stuff—where the hell is all this Oakland love coming from?

I just hope it is not the last chimes of the bell at the end.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Nov 03, 2018 - 04:52 PM
Rich Sampler of New Animation
by Karl Cohen

Scene from John Kahrs's 'The Age of Sail', produced by Google. photo: courtesy J. Kahrs

THE 20TH ANNUAL ANIMATION SHOW
of Shows is opening in four local theatres November 2nd, see trailer. It offers a delightful blend of films, ranging from an exceptional sea-faring drama, “The Age of Sail”, to a very funny, goofy cartoon comedy, “The Green Bird”.

There are also handsome experimental images of a couple dancing in the sky in “My Moon”, and an ecologically poignant moment with a polar bear adrift on the sea in “Polaris”. The innocent imagination of a child is suggested in “Super Girl”, a minute-long poem created by a preschooler. In “Grand Canyon we are overwhelmed not by the beauty of nature but by… (I’ll let it take you by surprise).

In short, this collection of new films offers something for everyone.

My favorite was “The Age of Sail”, directed by John Kahrs and produced by Google. Kahrs won an Oscar in 2013 for his Pixar short “Paperman” and has animated on 10 features for Pixar and Disney. His new short is an action packed adventure with an old sea captain. It’s beautifully rendered sea and lighting effects are just as magnificent as the story. It has qualified for an Academy Award nomination and is certainly worthy of winning.

Another Pixar animator, Trevor Jimenez, made “Weekends” in his spare time over a four-year period. It explores the two distinct lives a child experiences. During the week, he lives with his quiet reserved mother who plays classical piano; on weekends, with his fun-loving father, whose taste for music and many other things suggests why this couple is separated.

A completely different kind of film experience is “Carlotta’s Face” by Valentin Riedl and Frédéric Schuld from Germany. It is a sensitive portrayal of a woman with prosopagnosia, which an online dictionary defines as “a neurological condition characterized by the inability to recognize the faces of familiar people.” The film is a fascinating work of semi-abstract visuals. Knowing in advance what the condition is gives gerater understanding to the film’s unusual visuals.

Show of Shows branding this year, produced by Ron Diamond. photo: courtesy R. Diamond

“One Small Step” by Andrew Chesworth and Bobby Pontillas opens with a heart-warming fantasy of a child dreaming of being an astronaut. The dream sequence of flying into space and to the moon with her father in a cardboard box is quite wonderful, but dreams can be shattered. The film has a poignant lesson about the importance of studying hard in school.

From CAL Arts’ exceptional animation program comes the film “Barry”, the protagonist of which just happens to be an extremely intelligent goat who wants to become a doctor. From Estonia comes one of the weirdest films imaginable, from Spain “A Table Game” by Nicolás Petelski, who studied with Priit Parn and created a strange, surreal four-minute experience which defies rational explanation.

From Germany, Veronica Solomon concocted “Love Me, Fear Me”, an impressive symbolic acrobatic pas de deux between two dancers made of clay! It conveys a wide range of emotions such as love, hatred, joy, fear and others with powerful visuals. The manipulation of the material is exceptional; the visuals flow so smoothly, at times they seem to defy gravity.

The Animation Show of Shows was created twenty years ago by producer Ron Diamond, who still runs it. His mission is to educate people that animation can be more than entertainment for kids; it can be a remarkable art form. In the past, Ron showed his programs of innovative shorts to appreciative audiences at animation studios and schools; however, in 2015 he began to broaden his distribution to theaters around the world.

If you haven’t seen any of his past shows and wonder if they really are something you might enjoy, you may not love every work as out tastes vary widely, but the overall quality is excellent and past shows have included 38 films that went on to receive Academy Award nominations with eleven winning. Most of the films have also distinguished themselves at other film festivals.

A 501(c 3) not-for-profit organization founded in 2015 for the express purposes of increasing public awareness of exemplary animated shorts, Diamond funds The Animation Show of Shows, through private benefactors, from successful Kickstarter campaigns and with donations from animation studios. He is also dedicated to restoring and preserving important short animations from the past.

The 98 minute program:

The Green Bird*, Maximilien Bougeois, Quentin Dubois, Marine Goalard, Irina Nguyen, Pierre Perveyrie, France
One Small Step*, Andrew Chesworth, Bobby Pontillas, U.S.
Grands Canons, Alain Biet, France
Barry, Anchi Shen, US
Super Girl, Nancy Kangas, Josh Kun, U.S.
Love Me, Fear Me, Veronica Solomon, Germany
Business Meeting, Guy Charnaux, Brazil
Flower Found in the Netherlands!, Jorn Leeuwerink, Netherlands
Bullets, Nancy Kangas, Josh Kun, U.S.
A Table Game, Nicolás Petelski, Spain
Carlotta's Face, Valentin Riedl, Frédéric Schuld, Germany
Polaris, Hikari Toriumi, U.S.
My Moon, Eusong Lee, U.S.
Weekends*, Trevor Jimenez, U.S.
Age of Sail *, John Kahrs, U.S.

* means qualified for Academy Award consideration

Karl Cohen is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .
Posted on Oct 28, 2018 - 04:35 PM
Great Year at Oakland’s Grand Lake
by Doniphan Blair

'Fruitvale Station', by Oaklander Ryan Coogler, sold out Oakland's prestigious Grand Lake Theater opening day, July 12, 2013. photo: D. Blair

BIG EVENTS IN OAKLAND FILM OFTEN
happen at the Grand Lake Theatre, the city's grand dame of cinema showcases. Almost a century old, it features a marquee visible for miles and was recently purchased by impresario, activist and antiquer Allen Michaan, who has been its tenant for the last 38 years.

An art deco masterpiece built in 1926, the Grand Lake is the jewel in Michaan’s theater empire, which he started in 1972, when only 19. Shortly after arriving from Connecticut to attend UC Berkeley, Michaan dropped out and began building The Rialto Theater in a warehouse on Berkeley's Gilman Street from parts scavenged from condemned film palaces. Within two decades, he had 24 theaters.

Alas chain consolidation, corporate greed and megaplexes made it difficult for a theater mogul as independent as Michaan. Hence, he switched to assembling one of the largest antique collections in California, on display at Michaan's Auctions, two massive warehouses on the old Navy base, in Alameda. But he retains the Grand Lake, which he adores as a living antique, with its neoclassical columns, crystal chandeliers and faux frescos, as well as Mighty Wurlitzer organ on the weekends.

"Buildings like that are money pits; they are so expensive to run. That is why every year we seem to have less and less of them," the boyish-looking Michaan told me during our recent interview in an office crammed with artifacts. "The Grand Lake survives because it is a very successful operation. People love it, they go to it, they buy tickets."

Indeed, with 2018 the biggest year in Oakland film history, the Grand Lake cracked its total take for 2017 in August. Along the way, it world premiered Oakland's two biggest homegrown films ever: “Sorry to Bother You”, by Boots Riley, and “Blindspotting”, by Carlos López Estrada. It also rented out to homeboy Ryan Coogler, when he wanted to invite all of his family, friends and neighbors to a private screening of his international blockbuster, “Black Panther”.

The Rialto, the humble beginnings of Michaan's theater empire, in a warehouse in Berkeley, was one of America's first independent cinemas. photo:courtesy A. Michaan

"’Black Panther’ smashed all of our house records, except maybe going back to ‘E.T.’ [1982]," Michaan told me. "It was huge. [But] when you add up the revenue from ‘Blindspotting’ and ‘Sorry to Bother You’, it exceeds ’Black Panther’! That’s how popular those films were at the Grand Lake. That's really saying a lot."

"People in Oakland are proud of their city and are coming to see these films," he continued. "The Grand Lake attracts a very ethnically diverse audience. Everyone seems to come and have a good time and get along with each other. We have never had any problems."

The Grand Lake is also well known for its community involvement and special events, often with rental fees partially donated.

Although Michaan's classical cinema interests compel him not to run pre-film commercials or sell anything but fifties-style snacks, he has become famous for his aggressive activism, which includes editorial comments right on the Grand Lake's marquee and hosting controversial shows, like a recent day of "9/11 Truther" films. Especially interested in election integrity, Michaan helped produce Greg Palast’s film "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" (2016).

Over the years, Michaan has spent almost $4 million on renovating and repainting the building and expansion. He split the balcony into a second theater and transformed neighboring storefronts into screens three and four. Each new room is decorated like the rest of the theater, using the "Egyptian Revival" or "Moor" look favored by theater designers since they started building cinema palaces in the 1910s. At that time, Islam was a place of dream and romance. He also installed two high tech 3-D projectors.

With its cutting edge films, classical looks and progressive politics, the Grand Lake is a true Oakland treasure. And after the city's stellar cinema year, I thought it only wise to stop by and see what the view looked like from there.

I met with Michaan in his painting and antique-filled office, one floor up from an acre of antiques, with a beautiful view of San Francisco across the bay.

Michaan in front of his Grand Lake Theater, 2011. photo: M. Short

cineSOURCE: As you well know, this is the greatest year in Oakland film.

Allen Michaan: By far. It’s off the charts.

The idea that Oakland is the future and should be a film center, since it has the stories to tell, all came true this year to an unbelievable degree.

Amazing. The exciting thing about it is, all of a sudden, Ryan Coogler is an A-List director. And these other films were so successful this summer, we will be seeing more output from those filmmakers.

Technically speaking Ryan is an LA director.

He is now!

But he has included Oakland in four of his six films [including shorts]. Of course, he started ‘Black Panther’ and closed it Oakland.

His first film was ‘Fruitvale Station’; we played it at the Grand Lake; it was enormously popular.

I covered it. I used a shot of the long line.

It was a break through for him and a great film for us, too.

He was there opening night. He talked to the crowd, I think, on two occasions. He bought out the whole theater, gave away the tickets to young people and came and spoke with them. He has been very supportive of the theater.

One thing I find amazing about Ryan is he maintains his street diction, his street culture.

Yeah. He’s good guy.

I was at the Grand Lake for the world premiere for ‘Sorry to Bother’.

Actually, it was for ‘Blindspotting’. We did a ‘Sorry to Bother You’ thing for the San Francisco Film Festival but it wasn’t like what they did for ‘Blindspotting‘. That was a Hollywood red carpet event. It was incredible. The studio rented [the theater] and all the stars were there.

Sorry I missed it. ‘Blindspotting’ was shot all around my building—I didn’t hear a word. I read somewhere you invested in these films.

A Die-In protesting the Iraq War in 2003 in front of the Grand Lake was not bad for business—in fact it emphasized Michaan activists politics, which he often posts right on his marquee. photo: Dave Id

No. I invested in and helped produce Greg Palast’s film ‘The Best Democracy Money Can Buy’ {2016, see full movie here] because I am very interested in election integrity, which is something we don’t have in this country.

No one ever approached me to have any involvement in these films, so far as investing.

About your movie houses: you had twenty, then four—

Now one, just the Grand Lake. The Grand Lake is special .

Everything else in Oakland is corporate theater: AMC in Emeryville and Jack London Regal. It is a very competitive business; you have big megaplexes with parking structures.

It is always a struggle to get people into the theater. And we’ve always done lots of specials at the Grand Lake—we like to do unusual things there.

When I was getting out of the movie business—basically being pushed out by the circuits—it was always my intent to keep the Grand Lake Theater, which is what I did.

I noticed you don’t do screen advertising.

We don’t do screen advertising. I run it in a very traditional way, the way theaters would be run 50 years ago. You go in—the food choices are pop corn, soft drinks and candy—and you watch a couple of previews of coming attractions and then the movie.

We also have the Wurlitzer pipe organ, which gets played on the weekend.

No thoughts of putting in a foody thing?

No.

I seen many events there, like Oakland International Film Festival. You probably give them some sort of discount.

The Oakland International usually does their opening night there. Then they do the rest of their programming elsewhere.

If Oakland were to have a little film movement, the Grand Lake would be the jewel in the center.

Allen Michaan, in his antique crammed office, looking east on an acre of antiques and west on San Francisco. photo: D. Blair

We hope to continue to be that, sure. The Grand Lake is an extraordinary building it is a wonderful survivor of an era of architecture that by and large to a huge degree has disappeared. It’s my mission to preserve the theater and keep it going.

Mine, too. Is there any chance there will be a revival, that places similar to the Grand Lake will be restored?

Doesn’t look good for old theaters. Every year we lose more of them. The Grand Lake survives because it is a very successful operation. People love it, they go to it, they buy tickets. And because of that we can afford to maintain the building.

Buildings like that are money pits; they are so expensive to run. That is why every year we seem to have less and less of them.

Even with four screens, we are a low screen-count theater. It is a difficult thing to program because of all the demands that are placed on you by the various film distributors: ‘We need you to play this and this and this and this.’

They do these weird film package deals?

‘You are our customer and we expect you play all of our pictures.’ But you can’t always do that because you don’t have the screens. For that reason you will never see a Sony picture at the Grand Lake.

They are so aggressive in their demands of what they want you to play that, years ago, I had to say, ‘I can’t do this. I am just going to have to forgo doing business with Sony. I can’t satisfy them. It’s always a fight.’ There is a lot of politics involved.

The last time I went by [September 15th], the Grand Lake was playing ‘Sorry to Bother You’ and ‘Blindspotting’ AND ‘BlacKkKlansman’. I am guessing that you are still running them even though the theaters are not super full.

Actually, I have to say that ‘Sorry to Bother You’ and ‘Blindspotting’ are both incredibly popular films. They both played nine or ten weeks, I have done very well, and they are still drawing people in.

As we are getting into the fall and Thanksgiving season, I am having to cycle them out. I have to take care of my other suppliers. Of course, they have dropped off. But, when I look at the total the number of people who came to both those films, they are among the top in years.

’Black Panther’ smashed all of our house records, except maybe going back to ‘E.T.’ [1982]. It was huge. [But] when you add up the revenue from ‘Blindspotting’ and ‘Sorry to Bother You’, it exceeds ’Black Panther’. That’s how popular those films were at the Grand Lake. That's really saying a lot.

What do you see for the Oakland film movement, from your perspective?

To me, it is great we have had these wonderful films this year. You earlier called Ryan an LA director. I think that as the young filmmakers we saw this summer—‘Blindspotting’ and ‘Sorry to Bother You’—become successful, they, too, will end up becoming LA filmmakers. LA is the film capital of the world. That is a natural evolution.

A recect Michaan marquee announcing that he will disregard the r-rating to show Michael Moore's latest film, 'Fahrenheit 11/9'. photo: D. Blair

It is great. We are spawning young people in Oakland that are going on to become Hollywood players. They will continue to have fond memories of Oakland and will probably look to have their creations showcased in Oakland. We hope to see more of them coming up here and seeing these people coming back, doing events at the theater, putting their new projects out in front the community.

I don’t know if we will ever see a year like this again. If we did it would be extraordinary. This was a record year for the Grand Lake.

How much did it go up?

Last year, 2017, was the best year we ever had! [But] we beat it the second week in August, which is phenomenal, since we have a third of the year left to go. So it looks like this year will be up 35% over last year, which is huge.

In the old days, film noir days, San Francisco was the city LA used to symbolize a city—

Oh yeah, Sam Spade days.

—so it could be possible that Oakland is the multicultural city that LA uses instead of the sprawling megalopolis of LA.

Could be. I can’t predict what these filmmakers will want to do with their projects. But happy to have them around and happy to have the year that we did.

Out of curiosity, do you have any take on ‘Sorry to Bother You’ and ‘Blindspotting’: a comparison of the crowds they drew?

A lot of Oakland people. People in Oakland are proud of their city and are coming to see these films. A very ethnically diverse audience for all these films. The Grand Lake attracts a very ethnically diverse audience. Everyone seems to come and have a good time and get along with each other. We have never had any problems.

You have never had any violence?

No, never.

They feel they are getting good a deal because prices are low; our snack bar prices are low; we have Five-dollar Tuesdays, Free Popcorn Mondays. We try to cater to the audience and deliver the best movie going experience, at far and away the lowest price in the area.

I think people respect us for that. They also respect us for the amount of community and special events that we do. The Grand Lake has earned a niche as an important part of the local community and it is treated thusly.

And, of course, you often have politics right on your marquee.

We have a lot of politics. I don’t think Republicans like the theater too much but that is OK. Who needs them [laughs].

I think our country is going down the drain and we have to save it. What can I say? [laughs]

You started worrying about it before the five-alarm fire when off.

Oh my god. Trump had a one-and-half-hour press conference today. I watched a little, I could not believe: How did we get here!?!

Is Popcorn Tuesdays your innovation or do you have a manager?

I direct what goes on in the theater. Whatever happens there are my policies.
There is a theater manager and assistant manager and they are the ones that are there every day. I only go there to watch movies.

Michaan in front of a massive floor full of antiques. photo: D. Blair

I read you got your first theater at 19?

I built my first theater at 19 from salvage of theaters that were being torn down. It was a completely recycled theater. It was in a warehouse in West Berkeley on Gilman Street.

It was a Rialto Theater and probably this country’s first real counterculture cinema. I opened the Rialto 1972. Old time East Bay people remember it well.

I don’t recall it. Now there is a Rialto in San Leandro.

They tried to hijack my company name to confuse people into thinking they had something to do with the Grand Lake.

When I had a chain of theaters, it was Renaissance Rialto Theaters; that has been my corporate identity since 1972. The corporate entity now is only the Grand Lake.

I closed [Gilman] in ‘89 after I build the Shattuck Cinemas. At that point, it just became too hard to get films. There were too many theaters in Berkeley.

Also, at the time, Gilman Street was going through a rough period. My customers started to get held up outside the theater. Their cars were getting broken into. People were coming in and holding us up at gunpoint.

That was a bad vibe?

That was a very bad vibe. And that was the end of the Rialto, it closed in ’89.

So you are down to one, but a great one.

I intend to keep the Grand Lake going as long as I can keep going.

It is a phenomenal architectural gem that has survived largely intact. It is so well constructed that, absent a major earthquake on the Hayward fault [laughs], it will survive for a long time.

Don’t we have to knock on wood? This is brass.

Here’s wood.

[they knock]

We got through the last earthquake, Loma Prieta, pretty good. We had damage but we fixed it all up.

Are you in contact at all with the city and film office?

Not really. I’ve never looked to the City of Oakland for any assistance or support whatsoever. They have not been supportive of the theater. Over the years, I have had a lot of run-ins with city officials over parking.

I was very angry when they put in meters in the parking lot under the freeway. I was able to get that parking lot build in 1985 with the cooperation of our then-council member Mary Moore. Prior to that it was a dirt lot; people were dumping stuff. We were able to get that paved over, working with the city and Cal Trans.

At the time, in 1985, I built Theaters Three and Four and the community needed more parking and we got it done.

A few years back, if you recall, Oakland did a very shady rejiggering of their parking
regulations. They extended the parking hours to 8 pm one night; they didn’t tell anyone; they didn’t change any signage.

The next day they blanketed city with tickets at 6 pm—very, very dishonest—and they killed my business. When they pushed those parking meters to 8pm, my business took a nosedive; people stopped coming to the Grand Lake; it was terrible.

Oakland's grand Grand Lake Theatre will presumably keep classical cinema viewing going strong for another century. photo: unknown

I started a whole revolution against this. I put out petitions all over town, ‘Rescind or Recall;’ I really mobilized a lot of people. I gathered ten thousand signatures and, within two or three months, I rolled back the hours to 6pm. I think the film we were playing was ‘Up’, so it must have been whatever that year was [2009].

It created for me an awful lot of enemies downtown because I humiliated them. To me, Oakland city leadership has not been great over the years. They’ve used parking as a revenue source, rather then as an amenity.

I think they missed the boat by taking such a closed approach. Instead of welcoming people to our city, they punish them for coming. It is not as bad as it used to be. They backed off a bit and San Francisco is way worse.

The city of Oakland has never done a thing or me except harass me for this or that or my customers over parking.

They didn’t do much for the film movement.

They didn’t, no. Sadly the City of Oakland is not a progressive government.

You probably recall, they supported the Film Center on the Army base [see cineSOURCE articles ‘Media Hub Hangs by Thread’ and ‘Film Center Under the Ax']

They signed a thing, about 2005, supporting it but it dribbled off. The same thing with the Film Commission: they had a very talented woman—

Ami Zins , I remember. We worked with her on a few things. Anytime she came to us and said, ‘I want to do an event, a screening,’ we got it done.

She actually made a profit. They had to pay two commissioners, which added up to 150 thousand a year, plus the rent, and they had to give a little incentive to the films. But if you do the math, they got quite a bit in return.

Yeah.

I have some sympathy when you have poor people and you say you are going to be giving these Hollywood filmmakers a 40% tax break.

But if you don’t give them a tax break, you are taking in nothing instead of 60%.

Everyone is giving tax breaks, Vancouver, Michigan.

You have to have incentives for people to come into your community and spend that kind of money. It is good business.

Look at the ‘Blindspotting’ credits. A friend who works in the business said about a third of the people were local, so many came up from LA.

If the Film Center was still here, there would been a convergence with these three incredible films. It would been a great boon for the city. But they phased it out—they got rid of Ami Zins, the Film Center, dropped the film commissioners to one. It was an opportunity lost.

That’s Oakland.

If you have some sort of visionary politician like Rebecca Kaplan. She could have explained it to people but evidently she did not. That was too bad. Maybe this year will inspire them, light a fire under their ass.

And your plans?

Basically, I will continue running the Grand Lake as I have been. Now that I own the property, I don’t have to worry about the lease running out.

You got a pretty good deal on that? 3.7 million sounds pretty cheap.

Considering what apartments sell for these days, I guess it is [laughs]. But our overhead goes up because paying the mortgage is more expensive than paying the rent.

The flip side is, it insures long term survival and incentivizes me to do other restoration projects that we have held off on doing because of the uncertainty of the lease running out in 2023.

The lease was written in 1929, when the original developers of the building, Krosky and Kaluski [who build it in 1926] got intimidated. That was when the Fox Theater was built downtown, in 1928.

They decided it would be better for them to offload the theater and make a deal with West Coast Theaters Inc. Then it went through very various corporate entities as one company got sold to another. [First] Fox West Coast, then it became National General Theaters in the ‘50s, and, in the ‘60s, it became Mann Theaters.

I bought the lease from Mann Theaters in ’80. At that time, I had six or seven theaters.

Are you a local boy?

I have been here since ’70. I grew up in Connecticut. I came out here, went to U.C. for a short period, dropped out and built the Rialto.

When did you get bitten by the film bug?

Always loved movies, always loved movie theaters. You know, in many ways I love the theaters more than movies. I love looking at old theaters, books of old theaters—love preservation. But I watch movies constantly; I love movies.

Is there are trick to your integration of your wealth and opulence to your politics? The combination of dealing in wealthy items and being on the left?

It’s a paradox [laughs].

I always loved art and architecture my whole life. I think what drew me into movie theaters and restoring movie theaters was my love of architecture.

I grew up in Stanford Connecticut and there were some great old theaters there. I used to love going to them. I didn’t like the new ones. Going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art [in New York City], I used to love looking at the architecture.

When I had to downsize my company and get rid of all my theaters—due to the major circuits—there was an opportunity, with the closing of the military base, to create an outdoor antique yard. I used to go to the Marin City Flea Market; that is what got me into doing what I do.

The antique business is a continuation of that philosophy of art and architecture.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .

Posted on Oct 24, 2018 - 11:38 AM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner: Sept 2018
by Karl Cohen

The wild cantina from 'Star Wars'. photo: courtesy G. Lucas

Drinking at Disneyland

For the first time in its 63-year history, guests will be able to enjoy an alcoholic beverage inside Disneyland, outside of the secretive, invite-only Club 33, which is hidden in New Orleans Square.

The new Star Wars Land, which will open in the summer of 2019, and at Florida's Hollywood Studios in late-fall 2019, will feature a cantina with alcoholic drinks. Cheers!

The Dogged Schulz Museum

An exhibit of working dogs is showing, now to Jan. 27th, at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa. Schulz long payed tribute to them in his comic strip starting,of course, with Snoopy.

Snoppy was also a professor on occasion. image: G. Schultz

Snoopy had many hard-working personas including attorney, WWI flying ace, grocery clerk and hired hand. In his work, Schulz acknowledges how much better life is when we share the working day with dogs.

End of New Art Institute

The Art Institute of California, San Francisco, is closing. This is the for-profit chain of Art Institutes, not the old, well-respected San Francisco Art Institute, at 800 Chestnut in North Beach, which lost students over the last two decades but adapted and is fully operational.

Hundreds of faculty and staff are out of jobs, some 138 at the San Francisco campus on Market Street, near Civic Center, plus 78 at the Alameda campus of Argosy University, a general education school.

Dream Center Education Holdings, a Pittsburgh organization, acquired the schools last year and will be closing these campuses as well as some others in California, in December.

“Local demand at the physical locations,” Anne Dean, the Dream Center’s senior director of communications, wrote in an email, “has been far surpassed by the demand for online programs in these markets, as evidenced by declining enrollments.”

“We came to realize we would need to discontinue campus programs on a larger scale if we were to truly focus on investing toward a more flexible curriculum to meet student demand.”

Students unable to finish their degrees before the closures will be eligible for tuition reductions or grants, according to Dean. Transferring to another Dream Center campus will make students eligible for a 50% tuition reduction, while those transferring to a partner institution will be eligible for a $5,000 grant.

Scene from David Chai's 'Space Butthole'. photo: courtesy D. Chai

Chai's Space Butthole

David Chai, who teaches animation at San Jose State University, just had his eight-minute "Space Butthole" accepted into KLIK. Amsterdam’s major annual animation celebration, KLIK runs from Oct. 10th to the 14th.

Aside from what it sounds like, space butthole is a nickname for the various wormholes, time rifts, and other sphincter-like space anomalies encountered by Star Trek's Enterprise. Some buttholes have been penetrated by the Enterprise, or its various probes and shuttles, while others have discharged objects.

Make Your Own Western States Mutoscope

Western States Mutoscope is a Ludite animation machine that can work with hand cut stencils and plant fragments. John Fadeff, who studied animation at SF State, continues to create wonderful creative surprises on his mutascope. Perhaps you may even try your hand at creating one, see instructional video.

Student Loan Ripoff

The Guardian reports a Sallie Mae spinoff called Navient is trying to collect unpaid loans from people associated with deceased students. When the loans were made by Sallie Mae the debt was forgiven, but now that Navient has the paperwork they are trying to collect the debt. Forewarned is forearmed.

Karl Cohen is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Sep 26, 2018 - 08:40 PM
Photographer Hank Wessel: A Remembrance
by Nicholas Blair

HENRY WESSEL, THE INTERNATION-
ally acclaimed photographer long associated with San Francisco's vibrant photography scene, died at his home in Point Richmond on September 20th from complications associated with lung cancer. He was 76.

Hank, as everyone called him, meant a tremendous amount to me. In 1975, when I moved to San Francisco, I carried a small Leica camera which had been lent to me by a friend. I took up residence with my brother and a few other students from the San Francisco Art Institute at 2205A Pine Street in San Francisco.

There I met Larry Bair, another aspiring photographer who had studied with Gary Winogrand in Austin, Texas. Winogrand had told him, when he came to San Francisco, to look up Henry Wessel. Larry had been sitting in on Hank‘s classes at the San Francisco Art Institute ever since.

I was relatively new to photography but I was very enthusiastic. Larry took me under his wing and we frequently roamed the city exploring different neighborhoods with our cameras. Before long I was churning out prints in a rudimentary dark room in the basement of 2205A Pine.

When Larry thought I was ready he took me to SFAI and introduced me to Hank. He was very welcoming and happy to have me sit in on his class. I was very shy at first but, after a time, Hank convinced me to bring in some off my photographs for critique.

I was learning so much, so fast. Hank was instrumental not just in teaching me how to process Tri-X film (overexpose it two stops and underdevelop it, to reduce the contrast and preserve the highlights), but how to see and react to the outside world in an unobtrusive way by pre-focusing and raising a rangefinder camera to take a picture all in one stroke.

Taking pictures was all about observation. “Where you stand and when you decide to click the shutter were the only decisions you had to make," Hank would say. All that was required was an eye, an index finger and a camera.

Hank’s advice was staggeringly important to my development, as well as to dozens of other photographers. He encouraged me to photograph, photograph, photograph and then carefully look at the pictures The never-ending fascination was seeing how three dimensional reality turned itself into a two dimensional image.

Talking about pictures was also one of Hank's great fortes, I would marvel how he could make me understand things I had been totally unaware of.

When Gary Winogrand came to town, Hank invited me to put up photographs for Gary’s critique and attend a brunch at his house. He was beyond generous. Who was I—a nobody?—the rest of the crowd were largely graduate students and accomplished photographers.

A few years later Hank suggested I apply to the MFA program in photography at the Art Institute. I was very surprised and didn’t think it was possible, I had never enrolled in college before but Hank convinced me I could do it. Amazingly I was accepted and Hank, of course, became my official advisor.

I also began working for Hank, developing his negatives and making contact sheets. In exchange he gave me copies of his photographs, which I still cherish. Hank was always very, very generous and always offered more pictures than I was expecting.

For financial reasons I was once forced to sell one of his photographs to a collector I met. She chose the famous image of the ice sign in the middle of a rocky desert. A few days later, however, she came back with a complaint.

“Hank was very sloppy,” she said, pointing out that there was a rather large hair that had not been spotted on the print. Not thinking much of it, I went ahead and spotted out the hair, or at least what I thought was a hair. She was happy.

Later when I related the story to Hank, he informed me that it was not a hair at all but a piece of bent iron rebar discarded in the desert. He found this hysterically funny and we both had a good laugh (see "hair" in top photo extreme lower right).

A week ago, I emailed Hank to tell him how much I appreciated his advice and guidance as a teacher, and how I often thought of him while editing my photographs. When I had last seen him, a few years before, he was extolling the virtues of scanners as a great way to look at contact sheets, and I had finally gotten around to getting one.

A few days later I heard he had died in his sleep.

Hank was a fantastic human being, an extremely generous and supportive person, a Zen master with a camera, a great mentor and teacher. He will be deeply mourned.

Nicholas Blair is a New York-based cinematographer, photographer and filmmaker, who does everything from high-end television to indie docs and can be reached . Posted on Sep 25, 2018 - 09:47 AM
South Korea: Where’s the Romance?
by Lauren Jiang

Asian couples often show affection by dressing similarly: this particular team is Chinese but the affectation is also very popular in Korea. photo: courtesy Wall Street Journal

DESPITE THE MELODRAMATIC TELE-
vision shows running rampant or the fact that most K-pop songs are about love, it looks like adults in South Korea aren’t choosing to have families. At least, not like how they used to.

With the rapid economic growth Korea achieved in the past 50 years, citizens are working harder than ever, oddly enough, and they turning from building families to building professions.

In a recent BBC piece, “Why I Never Want Babies” (Aug 16, 2018), Simon Maybin speaks with South Korean women who are dead set against pregnancy.

He details a case where a South Korean woman informed her boss that she was pregnant, and was given more work as a result. The piling on of stress eventually culminated with her fainting, with a risk of miscarriage. Such lack of understanding in the workplace is commonplace in South Korea, and correlates with the national sexism problem.

Women are considered of secondary importance compared to men. Until recently, it was standard at company dinners for women to pour drinks for their male coworkers, taking on a subservient or even an entertainer-like role.

Women are also expected to fully care for their in-laws, as evidenced by a tradition widespread during the Korean equivalent of thanksgiving, Chuseok. During Chuseok, it is customary for the women of the family to cook and clean for the entire extended family, while the men relax. Many South Korean women hate this tradition, but feel they cannot do anything to change it.

With the birthrate as it stands now, South Korea is due for a dramatic drop in population by 2065. Only Singapore, Hong Kong, and Moldova have equally low birth rates: 1.4 children per family. (For reference, 2.1 is the replacement rate, where a population remains level).

The result of this phenomenon is the phrase “the Sampo Generation”. “Sam” means three in Korean, and the phrase represents the three things that the hardworking middleclass must give up in order to thrive: relationships, children, marriage.

It would appear that the Korean musical miracle which has energized much of Asia with its beats, lyrics and stories has failed to address one essential ingredient in its own romantic equation.

Having a child means taking off from your career, or otherwise being absent from much of your child’s life. And even if a parent is present, they must have enough money to support their children’s extra-curricular programs, math, music, sports, which are essential in Korea’s hyper-competitive workforce.

During my time teaching in South Korea, I heard first hand and endlessly about my students’ busy schedules. One of my fourth grade students didn’t just have regular school to attend daily, but also English after-school classes, soccer practice, and drum practice, on top of prodigious nightly homework.

It’s not uncommon for elementary school students to go to bed at 11 pm or midnight. They are being trained young, and the societal norm is to be hard working from a young age.

South Korea is headed towards a fate similar to that of Japan’s, where some small town primary schools are known to have only one child as a result of a low fertility rate. When a small country is booming, having children is the last thing on the minds of working woman. Instead, they are focused on maintaining their success and capitalizing on a professional model that works, albeit only for a few decades.

Settling down seems to be more of the issue than actual dating. During my time in South Korea, I observed many couples, often in matching outfits, on Seoul’s downtown streets. More than once, I was told single people don’t go out as much, and couples are seen out on the town more often.

Indeed, singles are more prone to stay at home or hang out with friends in private. I was also told that when two people enter into a relationship, they tend to only spend time with each other. But of course, this is prevalent in Western dating trends as well.

What differentiates the Korean dating scene from the Western is the fact that couples are either in inter-city relationships, or don’t have time during the week to meet because of work. Therefore, when they do get together, they spend the entire day together. This typically includes lunch, coffee, an activity, dinner, and then dessert.

Another difference between Korean and Western culture is the problem celebrities have publicly dating without excessive scrutiny. However, fans often speculate that dating is secretly happening all the time among people in the Korean entertainment industry. Celebrity couples rarely go public with their romantic status, because there are often consequences.

Contrary to the Western entertainment industry, dating is not something fans enjoy swooning over in Korea.

For example, just this month it was revealed that Hyuna, who could be called the Rihanna of South Korea, was dating E’Dawn, the lead rapper of the boy group, Pentagon. When the news was announced, many fan websites dedicated to E’Dawn immediately shut down, and 500 tickets for an upcoming Pentagon fan meeting concert were returned.

Shortly thereafter, E’Dawn was noticeably absent from events that Pentagon attended. Then came the news that he would be taking a hiatus from the group. Clearly, dating does have ramifications in the K-pop world.

Despite the realities of romance, K-pop style, it’s still the most marketable concept in mainstream entertainment. Ironically, people love watching or hearing about celebrities being in love.

In fact, there is a very popular TV show in Korea that is precisely about the wedded life of celebrities. Entitled “We Got Married”, the show selects two celebrities, and has them role-play as a married couple for a week. Perhaps the fake nature of this program is the reason audiences are OK with it, but it also goes to show there is more to Korean romance than a simple disliking of dating.

There is also a common concept in both the K-pop and Western music world called “shipping”, where fans pair up members who they think would make a cute real-life or even imaginary couple. These ships are often the inspiration behind fanfiction, which was once posted on forum websites, and is now popular on Tumblr among teenagers.

Even with all such shipping, daydreaming and living vicariously through imaginary romances, the reality is, Korean adults are less and less likely to get romantically involved or married, let alone have children.

As with any developed country, at a certain point, women start prioritizing their own career goals and achievements above all else. But, making money to support your family is still the underbelly of drives.

But not having children is bound to bang into another unstoppable Asian force. In most Asian families, attending to parental wishes is of the utmost importance, one of which is undoubtedly grandchildren. Turning to parents for council and direction is common, as opposed to the individualistic motivations or peer pressure more standard in the West.

The film “Crazy Rich Asians” grasps this notion completely: the “American” mindset is very focused on personal happiness, while the “Asian” mentality is to put others, specifically parents and family, before the self.

In my own family and culture, I have witnessed this time and time again. My father loved animals growing up, and was intent on majoring in zoology in college. However, his parents convinced him otherwise, stressing that he needed a major that would provide him with a job, like electrical engineering.

Being the good son that he is, he changed his major, but he didn’t like it. Still, this was the necessary sacrifice he believed he must take in repayment for all his parents had done to provide for him. He put his feelings and preferences aside out of respect for his parents.

It will be interesting to see where the future of Korea lies, especially if they will plateau on their success, or find more happy, balanced medium, in accord with the romantic dreams proselytized by their own, now very popular, musical art form.

Lauren Jiang, an entertainment and lifestyle journalist, was born and raised in the Bay Area and is passionate about strengthening community, expressing herself through performing arts, and Korean culture—indeed, she recently lived there for a year. Jiang can be reached . Posted on Sep 01, 2018 - 03:48 PM
Christian Films Arising!
by Joanne Butcher

Writer, director and Christian filmmaker Rhyan LaMarr. photo: courtesy R. LaMarr

SOME TWENTY YEARS AGO, WHEN I
was Executive Director of IFP/Miami, I had a meeting in Beverly Hills with a film producer. He was in his sixties and had been making films for 20 or 30 years. He told me that the majority of films he had made were Christian films. I had to believe him: his office walls were filled with posters from his many movies. My mind was blown! I had no idea there was a Christian film market.

Most filmmakers set out to make their first feature without consideration for the marketplace. However, a really smart way to think about how to proceed with a first feature is to look at where there is actually a demand for content. One of the genres where there is demand, and where filmmakers starting out might have success without much money and without big names, is faith-based films.

Today there are numerous claims for what marked the beginning of the Christian film movement; some writers say it started with Mel Gibson’s, “The Passion of Christ” (2004). Some that it started with unexpected hits, with no-name actors such as “God's Not Dead” (2014) and “Fireproof” (2008). I don’t claim to know when it all began, but I do know at least one producer who was making a living decades ago from films in this niche!

It’s normal these days to see box office returns as regular front page news. What people really mean when they look at when the Christian film market began is when did Christian films begin to make enough money that other people (namely Hollywood) started to take notice? “The Passion of Christ” made $370M. (I would argue that that may have had a lot to do with the fact the Bob Berney was the head of Newmarket Films that released “The Passion”, but that’s a story for another time.) “Fireproof”, about a porn-addicted fireman, made $33M from a $500,000 budget.

So what exactly are Christian films? That might seem to be an easy question to answer, but not necessarily. At the most basic level, they are all films that are free from graphic violence, harsh language, sex and nudity. They come in several genres: drama, family, comedy, thrillers all exist within the umbrella of faith-based.

Looking at this from a filmmaking perspective, what I like is that this is a genre that filmmakers can enter in earlier stages in their career when they don’t have much in the way of resources to bring to the table beyond a great script, enthusiasm, good friends and a little money. This is a genre where there are consistently good production values, occasional celebrities, good acting, but the script is really the key to the films.

LaMarr directing Bryshere Y Gray during the shoot of 'Canal Street'. photo: courtesy R. LaMarr

Also from a filmmaker’s perspective, one of the most significant elements is that the storytelling is truly coming from a religious perspective. The stories, whether they are dramas, comedies, thrillers, romance or family films, all tell stories of people who use their Christian faith to address challenges in life.

As with any other genre of film, it would be important for a filmmaker making a film in that genre to study the other films in that genre before attempting to make one. It would be as foolish to say “I’m a Christian so I can make a Christian film”, as it would be to say, “I’m not a Christian and I can make a Christian film.”

There are now many websites available to find films that are classed as Christian or faith-based films. Pureflix launched in 2005 and by 2013 was claiming to be the industry leader. There is also Cross Flix, Up Faith and Family, Christian Cinema and Dove Channel

The Christian Film Database lists all the distribution companies interested in distributing faith-based films. There is an audio CD by Rich Christiano (interesting name for a filmmaker who has made a lot of Christian films) called “How to Market and Distribute a Christian Film,” about his work making and distributing Christian films from $50,000 to $1M, including the extremely popular, “The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry” (2008).

One of the most rewarding aspects of working in a particular niche or genre such as this one, is that it’s very manageable to learn who all the players are very quickly, and find simple ways of meeting everyone! There are several Christian film festivals, but less than 10, and that’s a lot more manageable than working in many other genres.

One of the aspects of faith-based films I have been mostly pleasantly surprised by is the multiculturalism and diversity seen in many of the films. There seems to be an equality between white and black characters in the films that is certainly not the way American stories are presented in other films and television series.

In mainstream movies, diverse casting is not the norm. Mainstream films tend to focus on white characters, with African-Americans playing drug addicts, hookers, criminals, sidekicks and the characters who get killed first. But in Christian films, there is quite a bit of diversity, both in the selection of films on the sites, and in the films that achieve the greatest success.

However, more rare in faith-based films are films that overtly look at race. The recent “Canal Street” (2018) is certainly one of those. This is the film that inspired me to look more closely at Christian filmmaking. I saw it at the American Black Film Festival, in June in Miami Beach, Florida.

Writer, director and Christian filmmaker Rhyan LaMarr. photo: courtesy R. Lamarr

I spoke to “Canal Street’s” amazingly enthusiastic director, Rhyan LaMarr, after he had just finished Day 19 of a 21 Day shoot! Amazingly, he was full of energy and joy to talk about his work for God. I had already learned that there are definitely wide varieties within the umbrella of faith-based films and LaMarr even challenges the name faith-based.

“Faith-based films,” he argues, are for people who’ve already found Jesus. My films are faith-driven, and they aim to meet people where they are at.” LaMarr, like many other Christian filmmakers, see their work as a ministry. LaMarr just sees his ministry as being to people who don’t necessarily have faith yet.

LaMarr had already made several films by the time he directed “Canal Street.” From “The Dirty 30” that went straight to DVD, to “Restored Me,” that opened on between 100 and 200 screens, to now a movie opening on 500-1000 screens. (That’s another element of interest to filmmakers, Christian films really work the theatrical distribution angle—something to think about.)

LaMarr had been working on the script for “Canal Street” since 2005, and finally got financing in 2015. “We sat there in the production office in 2005 with no money, and I just created a vision board. We just asked. In Hollywood there’s a pitch packet with the actors the producer wants. But if there’s no money IT NEVER WORKS!”

“In the end, we got actors who were interested and believed in ME. They are not interested in ‘Canal Street’, or such and such particular project: they’re interested in you and your career! “

I was curious how LaMarr had managed to get such a large number of exceptional actors: Lance Reddick and Jamie Hector from “The Wire”, Mykelti Williamson, best known as Bubba in “Forrest Gump” and from several great TV series, Mekhi Phifer, whose screen debut was leading Spike Lee’s “Clockers” (1992), Bryshere Gray, from the TV series “Empire” and “The New Edition Story”, who plays Kholi, the embattled youngster at the center of the action in “Canal Street.” And this is not a complete list.

“The first actors we attached with money. We paid them. It’s called ‘Pay or Play.’ It means that if you don’t make the movie, the actor keeps the money. Everyone else we just asked them. As Mykelti Williamson said: ‘The script is the star.’ Nobody is bigger than your script.”

“We went after the big names,” LaMarr continued. “Woody McClain was the easy one. He was gambling on me and I was gambling on him. Also, with these names, you have to be confident. ‘I am confident that I can shoot you out in four days.’ Mekhi Phifer in five days. Lance Reddick in one day.”

“We shot the entire film in 16.5 days. And we shot it for PEANUTS!!! We shot it for ‘Mission Impossible’’s coffee budget!”

Rhyan LaMarr directing on the set of 'Canal Street'. photo: courtesy R. Lamarr

“Canal Street” definitely is different as a Christian film. According to LaMarr, the mainstream church does not speak to racism, or homosexuality, or a lot of other very important topics.

“’God’s Not Dead’, ‘The War Room’ and Tyler Perry have done amazing things for the community,” he told me, “but they represent only one part of the body of the church. For so many people, when they come to Christ, it isn’t a beautiful event: ‘I was on a toilet and I heard a voice.’ ‘Someone died and I saw God.’”

LaMarr asks: “How do you save a part of the community that isn’t being ministered to? Jesus did not minister to perfect people. He ministered to the outcasts, and he did so even though he knew one of them would betray him. The audience for my films are woke Christians, diverse Millennials, because I’m a millennial.”

It’s Day 19, and LaMarr is coming to the end of a 21-day shoot on a film that delves into mental health issues, a psychological thriller.

“We do a lot of projects that inspire. It’s all to bring about thought, to have a conversation. I want people to not escape reality. This is my prayer. We are scrappers and hustlers. I’m working on 7 projects, including TV shows. ‘An American Tragedy: the Sean Bell Story’. We just wrapped a dark comedy: ‘North of the Ten’. We just wrapped a dark comedy that’s getting buzz on social media.”

LaMarr has a LOT of energy!

“We’re supposed to be fishers of men. For the lost. For the unsaved. We filmmakers need to open up the spectrum a little bit. To not create projects that are safe. When did we get so entitled? We can open up and bridge the gap. Bishop Jakes, Tyler Perry, Pureflix have all been trailblazers and have allowed me to make my films... for millennials.”

Canal Street

The dynamic vitality of this film makes absolute sense now that I have spoken to LaMarr in person. It tells the all-too-common story of a young black man accused of a crime.

My favorite part of the film is how there are repeated fast-cut sequences of radio talk show hosts—some very well known—discussing the case. They act like a Greek chorus commenting on the action. Only in this case, they often pass judgment. They are the voices in our heads, condemning, judging. Each time the “chorus” comes back, the already exciting film turns up a notch.

Well drawn characters. Believable story. Issues of gun violence, racism, solving life’s challenges with faith. Some of the characters in the film are very grounded in their faith, some are not and come to find that faith works.

Fireproof

In this story set against a backdrop of a team of hard-working firemen, a porn-addicted husband about to get a divorce, is persuaded to use spiritual practices to find his way back to love.

The story is well told. The firemen’s crew is great! It struck me that it is rare to see a group of good people doing their jobs in films. Especially in Hollywood.

Again well drawn characters. Believable story. Addresses issues of marriage, infidelity, love, solving life’s challenges with faith. The main character, the husband, is not a man of faith, but he comes to faith and his life dramatically improves.

God’s Not Dead 2

I imagine this is the kind of film that LaMarr is striving to not be. The characters are basically caricatures. Two dimensional is being kind. The story tells of a high school teacher who answers a high school student’s question about Jesus, and is punished as a result. The film apparently represents a debate between freedom and oppression.

But in every scene, for example, when there are crowds represented, the crowd of Christians behaves in a quiet and meek way, while the opponents protesting for the separation of Church and State are depicted as screaming and rabid.

The teacher is shown as infinitely kind, meek and not wanting to cause any problems. There were some good lines as she meets her lawyer for the first time: “You don’t look like a lawyer.” To which he replies: “Thank you.” “I don’t think that was meant as a complement,” she says. “I decided to steer it in that direction!” he says jovially.

The lawyer who opposes her—and who is perhaps part of the ACLU—is actually characterized as the devil. He has a speech talking about why he does what he does, and he talks of HATRED: hatred of Christians.

If this wasn’t obnoxious enough, there is an anti-Christian TV news presenter who speaks very personally and tells people to go out and protest against Christians. The whole film struck me as being dishonest and, frankly, creepy. It purported to be about questions about religion, but it barely spoke about that and focused instead on how Christians are being victimized by the devil—that is the ACLU and the government—and that they have to stand up now and fight before they are completely destroyed.

A couple of days ago, I was chatting with a friend who would describe herself, I think, as a fundamentalist Christian. And we were talking about the topic of addiction, she said, "I think of addiction as a spiritual problem. There's a problem with evil. I call that 'The Devil.'"

We were discussing a topic about which she uses language she knows may be different than mine. She went to define the term "devil" in a way that we could share. I nodded agreement.

In "God's not Dead 2", there is no such discussion. The lawyer who fights for separation of church and state is The Devil outright; his reasons for his legal position are stated as being hatred of Christians. For me, this is dishonest.

It has become so tiresome to hear the complaint of victimhood, which has become so commonplace in contemporary culture, and how victimization justifies attacking the enemy by any means necessary. Painful!

Two-dimensional characters. Poorly told story. Addresses issues of religious rights, solving life’s challenges by standing up for religion against the enemy.

Hopefully, these three summaries give you a small sample of the range of films that are included under the umbrella of the genre Christian or faith-based filmmaking. The barriers to entry are relatively low, and as long as the purpose of the film is to spread the message of Christ, the doors are pretty wide open for filmmakers to fit into this very broad genre.

Joanne Butcher is a business coach for filmmakers working on sales, fundraising, business and money. You can reach her via or her website.

Posted on Aug 14, 2018 - 12:42 AM
Fantasy Closes, Zaentz-Fogarty Still Open
by Steven Middlestein

Creedence circa 1968 (lf-rt): Stu Cook, Tom Fogerty, John Fogerty, Doug Clifford, and (seated) Saul Zaentz, owner of Fantasy Records, about to launch Fantasy Films. photo: courtesy H. Emigholz

FANTASY STUDIOS CLOSED IN
September after a 60 year run, which took it all the way from small digs South of Market, in San Francisco, to West Oakland and finally Berkeley. It was there that its creatively-connected CEO Saul Zaentz built a eight-story, block cement building that looks like a US embassy in Malaysia, say, and was sometimes called "the house that Creedence built."

Along the way, Fantasy had hits with jazz artists, like pianists Dave Brubeck and "Peanuts" composer Vince Guaraldi, comedians, like iconoclast avatar Lenny Bruce, and rock and roll, albeit only two bands: the very hippie Fugs, from New York's Lower East Side, and the clean-cut Creedence Clearwater Revival, from San Pablo, north of Berkeley.

Although Fantasy Studios supposedly had enough bookings and was doing well, the sale of what is now called the Saul Zaentz Media Center by Wareham Development, who acquired it in 2008, will undoubtedly generate a rent hike and Fantasy wanted to go out on an upswing.

In this light, they are loathe to mention Fantasy's biggest downswing.

From KQED to the SF Chronicle, luminaries lauded the cinematic successes of Zaentz, who switched from music to filmmaking in the '70s and burst on the scene with the radical AND Oscar-winning “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1975. Always looking for literary properties and arty directors, to which he was dedicated with unmatched zeal, Zaentz went on to many, many more stellar achievements, notably the nine-Oscar-winning “English Patient” in 1996.

Little mention was made, however, of the tragedy that transpired at Fantasy, starting around 1971.

So little in fact, after hearing rumors about it for decades, cineSOURCE felt compelled to initiate its first piece of long-form journalism in 2014 with "The Jew and the Cowboy: Saul Zaentz and Creedence Clearwater". A six-month project eventually penned by Doniphan Blair, it was based on extensive research and interviews, including with Jeff Fogarty, John's nephew, and Hank Bordowitz, a rock writer out of New York, who did the enlightening Creedence book, "Bad Moon Rising" (2007).

Although there were other problems like rock and roll egos, off-shore accounts and "accounting irregularities," as the neologism goes, its pretty clear there was some exploitation. After Creedence became the biggest band of the San Francisco Sound, with 16 chart-topping singles IN A ROW, Zaentz and his lawyers forced them to abide an early-'60s low-ball contract, while he siphoned inflowing millions into his new film business.

Indeed, the Fantasy-Creedence story stands as a fascinating study in the romantic dreams of both Zaentz and John Fogerty and his fellow band members, but also basic human relations and throwing people under the bus.

“Come, come now," some might ask, "why air dirty laundry at this late date?” To be sure, in the face of so much horror daily, it can seem over the top.

Alas, the moral turpitude, ethical fungibility and history denial so rampant today came from somewhere.

In point of fact, it exists right here in music and film business in the supposed cradle of free speech and civil rights, although, since the Zaentzes have yet to release the full transcripts, many of the details and motivations remain a mystery.

Steven Middlestein is a writer, editor and movie fanatic and can be reached .
Posted on Aug 13, 2018 - 05:36 PM
Nervous Breakthroughs: Heinz Emigholz’s Films
by Gerry Fialka and Will Nediger

Filmmaker Heinz Emigholz in one of his subject buildings. photo: courtesy H. Emigholz

IF YOU'RE FAMILIAR WITH HEINZ
Emigholz’s work pre-2017, it’s probably through his architecture films, formally rigorous works which explore the nooks and crannies of modern buildings through canted angles and a precise, patient camera.

Those films have a laser-sharp focus on the architecture. Even when their subject is, say, the bustling “jewel box” banks of Louis Sullivan (2001’s “Sullivan’s Banks”), people are always merely in the background. Aside from occasional title cards identifying the buildings, there are no words in the films. So if you’ve seen those films, “Streetscapes [Dialogue]” will come as a surprise.

Dialogue is part of a four-film series that Emigholz calls “Streetscapes”, which also includes two films made in the mold of his earlier architecture films: “Dieste [Uruguay]” explores the work of the Uruguayan architect Eladio Dieste, while “Bickels [Socialism]” is about the buildings that Samuel Bickels designed in Israel, mostly for kibbutzim.

Unlike in Emigholz’s other architecture films, the relative lack of a human presence in “Bickels” sends a clear message. Many of the buildings Emigholz shoots are abandoned, as if to point out the failure of the socialist ideals alluded to in the title. Even more atypically, “Bickels” includes an epilogue in which a voiceover tells of the decline of the Vio Nova kibbutz in the Crimea.

“Bickels”, then, prefigures Dialogue, which melds the formalism of Emigholz’s architecture films with some features of (duh) more dialogue-driven films. For “Dialogue”, Emigholz turned his sessions with his therapist into a series of dialogue scenes in which a filmmaker (unnamed, but based on Emigholz) talks to a therapist about his artistic process, his mental blocks, and eventually about the creation of “Dialogue” itself. These scenes take place inside various buildings in Uruguay, filmed with Emigholz’s trademark Dutch angles, as if his characters have been transported into one of his previous films.

The poster from Emigholz’s 2017 film 'Streetscapes [Dialogue]'. photo: courtesy H. Emigholz

It’s often tempting but usually pointless to try to psychoanalyze an artist on the basis of their work. The work, after all, can speak for itself. But “Dialogue” is such a relentlessly self-reflexive work, above all about Emigholz’s own mind, that its invitation to speculate on its creator’s psyche is difficult to resist. You get the impression that filmmaking is a compulsion for Emigholz (okay, Emigholz’s fictional avatar, but in such a candid film it’s relatively safe to elide that distinction). At one point in the film he describes his work as an evasion, which is an arresting statement for an artist, especially a filmmaker, to make. We often think of the creation of art as a way to confront or to heighten reality.

One of the four questions from the “tetrad” that Marshall McLuhan would ask about any medium was “What does it enhance?” Many filmmakers would say that the camera enhances vision, is an extension of the human eye (e.g. Dziga Vertov’s Kino-Eye), but Emigholz talks about the camera as something that gets between his eye and the world around him, as if to shield him from reality. He tells us that “the camera is not the eye,” challenging the viewer to rethink how this tool extends the human sensorium.

Emigholz talks about his notebooks, filled with clippings of advertisements and other cultural ephemera and surrounded by his own writings in dense, tiny text. Parts of those logs are shown in the fourth movie from the “Streetscapes” series, “2+22=22 [The Alphabet]”.

There’s a “horror vacui” in their pages, whose every inch is filled. Maybe his fear of unmediated reality is related to his fear of the blank page. “The artist cures his neurosis himself,” says Emigholz, suggesting that his art is a way of working through his psychological issues the best way he knows how.

He continues, “There’s this recurring theme: how can this good feeling last followed by my idea of death changed?” In other words, his work is a far cry from abstract formalism; it implicates some deeply personal issues. In one sense, then, it’s perhaps surprising that he manages to produce works of thorough formal precision. On the other hand, it’s clear that he’s entirely uninterested in most of the trappings of the film industry as an industry, maybe because his art has such an intensely personal origin, maybe because of his fear of success, failure or some other hidden factor.

Building from Emigholz's 'Bickels [Socialism], 2016, a survey of 23 structures in Israel by Samuel Bickels, who was raised on a kibbutz. photo: courtesy H. Emigholz

He talks at length about his disdain for having to appear at film festivals to represent his work, and about how, when his works are praised, he remains deeply distrustful of their reception, as if he’s pulled the wool over the critics’ eyes and is afraid of being unmasked. The result is a hermetic body of work that follows its own internal set of rules but isn’t beholden to anything else. It is all the more powerful because of this freedom.

Early in the film, Emigholz quotes the old line about “turning breakdowns into breakthroughs." It’s the most clichéd line in the film but nevertheless an apt summary of “Dialogue.” Ironically, the obsessively inward-turning “Dialogue” opens up the rest of his oeuvre, giving us a new way into what might otherwise be entirely sealed off. With his art, he tries for that steely transformation of rejection into redirection, weakness into strength.

Gerry Fialka and Will Nediger are currently writing a book on the future of the history of avant-garde film, see their site here, or reach Fialka or Nediger .
Posted on Aug 13, 2018 - 05:04 PM
The Story of K-Pop
by Lauren Jiang

Seo Taiji & The Boys kicked off K-pop in 1992: (lf-rt) Yang Hyun-suk, Seo Taiji, Lee Juno. image: YG Entertainment
NOTE: After years observing the fantastic K-pop phenomena from afar, cineSOURCE connected with the talented Lauren Jiang, who followed K-pop for years, lived in Korea for one year and penned a quad of incisive articles. The other three are: "South Korea: Where’s the Romance?", "Adventures in K-Pop Fandom" and "Can (G)I-DLE Make It in the Tough K-Pop World?".

LAVISH MUSIC VIDEOS, BRIGHT COLORS,
trainee programs, military-precise choreography and seemingly-random English phrases are the elements which combine to make what’s taking the world by storm: K-pop.

Despite its seeming recent appearance, K-pop has been around since the 1990s. The first act to make their mark was Seo Taiji & The Boys in 1992, a trio which introduced rap into a music scene previously dominated by bumble gum or patriotic songs.

In fact, one of the Boys, Yang Hyun-suk, would go on to create YG Entertainment in 1996, Korea’s second most famous entertainment company after SM Entertainment, which was founded a year earlier by record producer Lee Soo-man. When Park Jin-young, a K-pop solo artist, established JYP Entertainment in 1998, K-pop had its entertainment trifecta and the race was on.

As it exploded on the peninsula, K-pop also caught fire in Japan, which was in the throws of its economic “Lost Decade” and craving upbeat and romantic art. Soon K-pop was in demand and the entertainment companies began aggressively recruiting talent through referrals and auditions but also right off the street at public casting calls.

Once the “trainee” is admitted to a company, they spend between three months and ten years learning their craft and honing their image. With their regimented schedules and living environments, even their romantic life is highly regulated, somewhat ironic since so much of their music concerns love. When the company finally deems them fit, they debut as an “idol”.

Scene from EXO-K's mega-MTV for their hit 'Overdose'. image: SM Entertainment
With the establishment of SM, YG and JYP talent factories came the phenomena of the K-pop idol. While idol seems like a synonym for singer or star, the public truly came to idolize them. Placed on the pedestals of fame, they are looked upon as flawless individuals, who never make mistakes, at least not publicly.

The perfect K-pop idol is an elusive combination of on-screen charisma, vocal talent—if you can’t sing, but can dance, they’ll make you a rapper, and, of course, good looks. Idols in turn are combined into groups, each fulfilling a specific role: for example, the most attractive is called the “visual.”

Unlike in American celebrity culture, idols are openly judged for beauty. On the talk shows, idols are literally asked to rank each other from best to worst looking.

Sometimes an individual is the “face” of the group, the most recognizable member. They often go on to pursue a solo career because of sheer star power (think Beyoncé in Destiny’s Child).

The “main vocal” is, of course, the best singer and the “main dancer,” the best at dancing, but the “happy virus” is the person with the most personality and energy.

There is almost always a leader, often the most trained in media relations, who starts most songs and handles the group’s introductions. With any combination of these elements, a strong K-pop group can be formed.

Most idols subject themselves to plastic surgery, although it doesn’t have the negative, fake connotation it does in America. Women and men alike go under the knife for “double-eyelid surgery,” which gives them Caucasian-like eyes, or nose jobs, the two most common procedures in Korea.

Suho (Kim Jun-myeon), the leader of the K-pop Chinese-Korean band EXO, performing in their MTV for 'Overdose'. image: SM Entertainment.
It’s often argued that the beauty ideal in Korea is based upon European standards: large eyes and a small nose, which tends to be the exact opposite of natural Asian features. While this argument is of interest to academics, idols consider plastic surgery purely transactional: the price you pay for success; the more attractive you are, the better you sell.

Idols are commodities in Korean culture, objects for consumption. That’s why they never speak out about political issues, or seem to rebel against the status quo, and are always loyal and obedient to their entertainment company.

In a very real sense, they sell their soul for fame and stardom. Contracts are commonly seven years or more, with clauses that control everything from dating to hair color.

As outsiders looking in, many international fans or observers criticize the entertainment companies as completely commercial, on the one hand, or dysfunctional and corrupt, exploiting and taking advantage of artists, on the other.

But many within the system view it as a temporary period of struggle that will help them become more resilient, almost like joining a fraternity or sorority. The first few years of fame is the “hazing” period before they become a fully vested member of the entertainment family with what it takes to be a successful K-pop artist.

The regimentation, overw