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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 - 11:34 PM