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Oakland Cooking Cinematically by Doniphan Blair
Oscar Grant, played by Michael B. Jordan, encounters cops in a new film about his life by Oaklander Ryan Coogler. photo: courtesy R. Coogler
OAKLAND IS COOKING CINEMATICALLY
despite some problems, like the Oakland Film Center closing. "Fruitvale Station", the biggest Oakland-identified film in memory, opens in select cities nationwide on July 12th; the Oakland Film Office reported more shoot days last year than ever; the Oakland International Film Festival had a stellar year, including showing some intense and polished local features, and there are scores of ambitious new projects, like the Film Stammer Movement just announced by this magazine.
"Fruitvale Station", which won at Sundance and was nominated at Cannes, is by Ryan Coogler, a 26 year-old writer/director from Oakland who attended USC film school. Produced with help from Forest Whittaker and the SF Film Foundation, among others, it stars Michael B. Jordan as Oscar Grant, who was shot in the back by a BART policeman in 2009, and Octavia Spencer, who won an Oscar for "The Help" (2012), as his mother, see CineSource's previous story.
The film covers Grant's last day, a trope which puts his senseless killing in the context of a complex life, as a pot dealer and loving father, and complex city. As it happens, this is in keeping with the call of CineSource's Film Stammer "to highlight the structural ambiguity of Oakland."
The filming of "Fruitvale Station" last year helped push the number of film days in Oakland to 248, well over the 220 of 2011, I was informed by Jim MacIlvaine, of the Oakland Film Office. That is almost double the 130 average of the mid-2000s. Other features included "East Side Sushi" by Anthony Lucero, see CineSource article, a crisply written dramedy about a woman who wants to become a sushi chef.
Indeed Oakland's International Film Festival in April screened a spate of super-pro local indie features like the well-received "Licks" (97 min, 2013), by writer/director Jonathan Singer-Vine, and the similarly strong "Against the Grain" (87 min, 2011), by writer/director Elias Maels, both freshman outings from twenty-somethings.
The latter was set in Oakland but not shot here, hence added to Oakland's expanding iconography but not film days. "We didn't have the funds to come up from LA," Maels, who recently graduated from UCLA's film school, told me when we talked by phone recently.
Elias Maels on set with Vaughn Wilkenson in 'Against the Grain'. photo: Raymond Liu
Maels' film concerns an inner city young man, played by the up-and-coming actor, Vaughn Wilkenson, who goes to college and hopes to become a neurosurgeon, despite the obstacles of his 'hood and blue-collar father.
It is subject close to Maels, who grew up on 18th and Market in West Oakland, with Eritrean immigrant parents, and was kicked out of a couple high schools before finding his way. "I was rebellious and gave my teachers a hard time."
Actually, Maels also had a learning disability—he stutters—which caused him both identity and peer problems but also inspired him. "Because I have a stutter, I naturally got into writing and communicating visually—I used to draw and paint."
When I told Maels, we were calling our attempt to coach the incredibly diverse Oakland film scene into the Film Stammer movement, he agreed he might well be our poster boy.
"I had several teachers at El Cerrito high who pushed me along and got me to apply to film school in UCLA. It was the best thing that happened to me. I finally felt comfortable. My whole life, I was looking for a home and I found that at film school. Now I find that in writing and directing."
Mayon Denton, Maels' producing partner and fellow student at UCLA, raised the resources to shoot and is now looking for distribution while his cinematographer, Jeanne Tyson, also "did an amazing job." They shot in LA after finding a neighborhood that looked similar to Oakland; indeed, family members and friends couldn't believe he didn't shoot here.
Maels just got back from the Africa Movie Academy Awards in Nigeria where "Against the Grain" was nominated for the Best Diaspora Feature. It also just played the African Film Festival in Cannes and a festival in Cleveland and he is waiting to hear from 25 more.
In a scene from 'Licks', the polished freshman film from Jonathan Singer-Vine, his hero walks alongside the Burning Man sculptures of West Oakland. photo: courtesy J. Singer-Vine
"The 'Licks' turnout was amazing," the director of Oakland's International Film Festival David Roach told me. "It was good to see the young folks who were part of the film supporting it as well as the people of Oakland," Roach said, noting that wasn't a typical film about gang bangers.
"Yeah. I would never do a movie one way, I like hybrid genre blending," writer/director Jonathan Singer-Vine, a 25-year old from Berkeley (who happens to be white), told Meridith Alloway (on the Script Lab site), chalking up another point for the Oakland Stammer which advocates race, class and gender as well as genre integration.
"Licks" tells the story of a young black man returning from two years in a maximum security prison and trying to get on with his life while constantly being confronted by the harsh reality of Oakland.
"Growing up in Berkeley, we all—starting in elementary school—were able to befriend kids of all backgrounds," Singer-Vine continued. "I’ve always been interested in the African-American community. Hip hop influenced me and my brother so much. It’s even in the way I speak—some people think I’m from the South!"
Singer-Vine did some serious research, talking to people who had done time, reaching out through friends and associates. "The hood is a tragic place, and a lot of people give up and fall victim to it," he said. "Some people’s reactions [to my movie was:] 'Is it really that bad?' I thought it was PG compared to what’s going on!"
"You gotta stay as positive as possible. The characters in 'Licks' are real people, and if you’re shocked by their actions, I hope people will understand how they got that way."
Due to "Licks" and "Against the Grain", "it was one of our best festivals," Roach told me. Last year, they were hosted by the Oakland Museum, which didn't participate this year, but that didn't diminish proceedings, he said.
In addition to the films, "(t)he highlights were the panel discussions we had at various cafes and restaurants on Saturday, a whole day event. Away from the screens, you really had a chance to talk to different people," Roach said.
Knocking over a liquor store, in another scene from 'Licks', thereby the films title. photo: courtesy J. Singer-Vine
"Darrien Gipson, National Director for SAG Indie, was there and she shared a lot of information on how filmmakers can utilize SAG actors in their lowbudget films. Others shared how people can use Kickstarter and Indiegogo to make their films."
Another great asset for Oakland cineastes is the Oakland Film Office.
"Ami [Zins] and Janet [Austin] really did set the tone by establishing a quality website, with easy online permitting— exactly what the film industry is looking for," MacIlvaine, an upbeat, enthusiastic gentleman who took over when the office was downsized in 2010, told me (contact him ).
"We are continuing to provide information, location requests and permits in a prompt fashion and connect filmmakers with neighborhoods, Oakland Police, whatever resources are necessary to make films—everything from small student documentaries to major Hollywood studio features." In fact, rates are cheap: an Oakland parking space for a full-day use permit costs about one quarter of one in San Francisco.
Also shot here last year were a number of television shows, like "I Solved a Murder", "Mythbusters", and "Baron Ambrosia", and lots of commercials, including for Toyota, Scion, Motorola, Esurance, Chrysler and T-Mobile, featuring the girl in pink who roars her motorcycle through lots of Oakland.
Unfortunately, the Oakland Film Center, a project started by Zins and Tim Ranahan in 2003, specifically to bring film work to Oakland, is closing in June, displacing over 30 film businesses and professionals.
"The city never came through with any reasonable options," Ranahan told me, neither in reversing the City's faltering support for its Film Center nor finding them another suitable location.
Hence, many of the film businesses that were located on the old Army base are moving to near the Saul Zaentz Media Center, in Berkeley. In fact, Berkeley intends to begin promoting the city as a great place to make films, according to Ranahan.
"We offered to build them a building... but not to build it out [to their specs, since] it would change the rent," the army base's developer Phil Tagami told me, insisting he tried to reach an accommodation but the two sides failed to agree and there was nothing more he could do.
"It is a shame they got rid of Ami Zins. She did more for bringing the business and film community in alignment than anyone before her," he continued. "I think [film] is a good business for Oakland."
Unfortunately, not enough Oakland councilmembers agreed and the extra effort required to retain and relocate the OFC was not made, a lamentable but perhaps understandable situation in a city so strapped for cash.
The Colonnade on Lake Merritt, a wellknown Oakland landmark, being lensed by Paul Kalbach and his Red at magic hour. photo: D. Blair
There is also an identity problem. "Are we going to help rich filmmakers when our people are suffering?" many people were probably asking. That dilemma would be offset by a vibrant film scene if it not only imported film projects but exported narrative, increasing the visibility of Oakland, which was named fifth in the NY Times article, "45 Places to Go in 2012", above Tokyo, Tibet and, thankfully, San Diego.
But that is just commercial film production, which is only one of the twenty sectors of our media community, while Oakland's other cine sectors are healthy and even increasing.
The New Parkway Theater on 24th Street has brought back the comfortable couches, good food and indie movies of the old Parkway, which closed in 2009, albeit in a nice new, warehouse space triplex.
The Great Wall of Oakland, which shows international alt-film on a six-story wall near the Oakland Murmur the first Friday of every month, is also expanding. Its next project, the Oakland Internet Cat Video Festival, will be held on May 11 on its wall (on West Grand between Broadway and Telegraph) to benefit the East Bay SPCA.
Samm Styles, a local indie, has just finished two films, "Just One Night" and "Milk Money", which he will be premiering in May. The first is a powerful film about a young lady who must make a life or death choice—abortion—based on a choice she made one evening with a little less introspection, while the latter concerns a young man living in the future who must dabble in crime to support his aunt.
Meanwhile, Lisbon Okafor has finished "Oakville" and is showing it around, including at the Oakland International. It is a feature concerning interracial relationships in the post-Obama era, see previous CS piece. Okafor was also very enthusiastic about this year's Oakland International, especially the seminars.
Given all this, from three powerful first features by twenty-somethings—"Fruitvale Station", "Licks" and "Against the Grain"—to the rise of film days and this magazine's declaration of the Oakland Film Stammer, the state of the cinema in Oakland seem rather promising if not downright fantastic.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, filmmaker, graphic designer and fine artist living in Oakland and he can be reached .