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CineSource Collective Narrative
Mise En Scene Jan 11 • Oakland Filmmakers Salute Police Victim Oscar Grant
Yak Films, whose video went viral in 2010, receiveing more than 2 million views on YouTube, have done it again with another collaboration with the dance troupe Turf Feinz. This time it is to honor Oscar Grant, the young father fatally shot by a BART police officer New Year’s Day 2009 in Oakland. The previous video, “RIP Rich D," was for a young man killed by a hit and run driver in East Oakland.
The Turf Feinz performers are shot from across the street with traffic interceding and in the rain lent it particular poignancy. Turf Feinz is a group of young men from Oakland who “turf dance,” a form of movement born in Oakland that stands for “taking up room on the floor.”
“Oscar Grant’s death was a tragedy that affected a lot of people in Oakland, especially youth,” said Kash Gaines, the co-founder of Yak Films who filmed the video. “The video is meant to be a message to everyone in Oakland about the injustices here and how we use artistic expression to deal with it," San Francisco BayView National Black newspaper (1/1/11) Indeed, during the turmoil surrounding the trial and sentencing of BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle, Youth UpRising promoted messages of peace and unity. They made this art as a reminder of the fragility of young lives in Oakland, Calif. – and an artistic celebration of the beauty of youth expression and possibility.
“Two dancers in this new video had been bringing up that we’ve made R.I.P. videos for the deaths of close friends, but there’s bigger incidents that affect us,” Gaines continued. “A lot of people in Oakland need healing. Our dance crew, Turf Feinz, always promote dance as a peaceful expression. We’re showing this is how we deal with the situation.”
Gaines began collaborating with Yoram Savion, co-founder and director of Yak Films, and a hot creative shooter himself, on dance films at Youth UpRising, where Gaines is a photography teacher and multimedia producer, an Oakland-based youth leadership program frequented by the young adults in the dance crew. Youth UpRising grew out a1997 after racial incident at Castlemont High School, a cinderblock palace in East Oakland that looks if not always on lockdown. The young people identified problems including poor educational resources, few employment opportunities, the absence of positive things to do, and lack of community and personal safety. Yak is now a leader in the street-based documentation of the global dance movement.
— D. Blair
San Franciscan's Inside Job
One of the top film industry-awarded documentaries of 2010, and still in theaters now, is 'Inside Job' by San Francisco's own Charles Fergusen. It got a stellar 97% RottenTomatoes.com critics rating, 87% by their audience, and numerous awards from film industry organizations like Writer's Guild and New York Film Critics. Narrated by Matt Damon and distributed by Sony Classics, it is an exhaustive investigation of the Great Recession—the trailer jokes of a budget of $20 trillion due to the financial collapse without which the film could not be made.
Unlike Michael Moore, who likes to crack wise and innuendo, Fergusen gives us just the facts and well illustrated. While overwhelming at times, it is excellently done and makes its points magnificiently. Fergusen also did "No End in Sight," (2007) about the Bush Administration's Iraq War, and "Between Earth and Sky" (2009) about three young Iraqi refugees. In "Inside," Fergusen severely skewers Obama's financial team but also rehabilitates Eliot Spitzer as a Wall Street crime fightier.
A graduate of Lowell High School, Fergusen got BA in mathematics at Berekely and political science Ph.D. at M.I.T. Although he studied with the famous Noam Chomsky, he also went on to consulting to the White House and Department of Defense for Bush Pere. He started Vermeer Technologies, an early Internet software companies, which created the first WYSIWYG Web layout program, FrontPage, but sold in 1996 to Microsoft, for $133 million, whereupon he returned to research, writing and visiting scholaring.
After also studying film ad hoc for over 20 years and attending film festivals, he leapt into the fray himself in 2005, after realizing that there was no major doc planned addressing US policy in Iraq. He soon started Representational Pictures and began what was to become "No End In Sight."
— D. Blair
Bowden's Full Picture Comes Out on DVD
With his deal with Netflix finally finalized, Jon Bowden's quirky rom-com about love, sex, family and mommy troubles in San Francisco is now available—please add it to your queue! As you may know, the more adds, the better his deal.
"The Full Picture" (2010) is a "proven festival crowd pleaser" according to "Variety" and had a very successful run at the Roxie followed by a sold out screening at The Rafael. The reviews were also favorable The Guardian, The Chronicle and an editor's pick from SF Weekly.
Recently, "The Full Picture" was picked up by Gravitas Ventures, a leader in the VOD market, which is scheduling it for release on February 1st through select cable providers.
— D. Blair
Video on Demand Gets Demanding
Independent film producers are following their audience into cyberspace, reported the "Wall Street Journal” recently (1/11/11). Evidently, only 19 percent of 2010’s box office receipts was represented by attendance at theaters screening independent films, while nine years ago that figure was 33 percent, according to a study by Nash Information Services. Nevertheless, while the box office has shrunk significantly, spending on video-on-demand has risen to 1.8 billion for 2010 – an increase of 21 percent from 2009.
Mark Cuban’s Magnolia Films is releasing approximately 12 films a year on VOD prior to their theatrical releases. The company’s “All Good Things” grossed $367,000 during its theatrical fun, but received $4 million from VOD. The Independent Film Channel’s “The Other Woman” starring Natalie Portman was released on VOD a month prior to its theatrical run. Cable’s Starz channel, a quarter of which is owned by The Weinstein Co., is considering releasing some films exclusively on VOD.
Apparently, we indie lovers will soon be required to upgrade our hardware, software, and connections in order to enjoy the riches of the independent film world—and to correspondingly enrich that world—but so be it. At least the variety of material now available through the new mediums is correspondingly immense.
— D. Schwartz
Kodachrome Film Processing to Stop Soon
According to The Associated Press on January 9, 2011a southeast Kansas business will be the last place in the world to process Kodachrome 25 Kodachrome processers world wide, the rich redded stock developed in the 1950s. Indeed, it has been inundated with the color-reversal film as it prepares to halt processing it.
Grant Steinle who runs Dwayne's Photo, the Parsons, Kansas business his father founded in 1956, said he received "a tsunami of film" after announcing they would stop processing Kodachrome at the end of 2010, requiring the stop date for processing the film has been postponed to Monday or Tuesday at the earliest, even though processing went on 24 hours a day, seven days a week due to shipments from as far away as China, Japan and Australia. One Arkansas railroad worker who photographed trains recently picked up 1,580 rolls from Dwayne's to the tune o $15,798.
Kodachrome enjoyed its mass-market heyday in the 1960s and '70s before being eclipsed by video and easy-to-process color negative films, the kind that prints are made from. It garnered its share of spectacular images, none more iconic than Abraham Zapruder's reel of President Kennedy's assassination in 1963.
Kodak gave longtime National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry the last roll after announcing in 2009 that it was discontinuing the slide and motion-picture film. But the distinction of shooting the last roll to be processed will go to Dwayne Steinle, the founder of Dwayne's Photo. with shots of him and his 60 employees. Their T-shirts tout Kodachrome's history but towards the right of the frame say "We developed the last roll."
— H. Johnson
Other State Tax Credits Are Hard at Work
The Associated Press on the last day of the year that the Alaska State tax credit program, which was boosted to 44% in 2008, "helped draw film productions large and small to Alaska in 2010." The biggest of the year was "Everybody Loves Whales," starring Drew Barrymore, which had about eleven weeks of shooting around Anchorage.
Alaska Film Office noted that about 30 productions have pre-qualified for the tax credit, from the TV show "Ice Road Truckers," which spent $1.1 million in Alaska, and received $393,000 in tax credits, to Season One of "Alaska State Troopers," which received more than $30,000, and Season 6 of "Deadliest Catch" which pulled in $584,000. Meanwhile, Grand Rapids Business Journal reports that Michigan is also doing quite well with its regimen of tax breaks.
— D. Blair
Gamers Outgun Hollywood
Computer gaming is gaining on but has not quite eclipsed the film industry. Just last year, "Call of Duty: Black Ops" not only cracked the US$1 billion mark in a mere six weeks after its November release in the US and the UK but it broke the first-day sales world record for any film, book as well as other game. Developed by Treyarch and published by Activision is for PCs using Microsoft, PlayStation 3, Wii and Nintendo DS consoles.
The "Black Ops" shroud of secrecy has both stimulated the imaginations of gamers and developers. The US military has developed a curious synergy with the gamers, even using some off-the-shelf war games to train military personnel and endorsing some products although last year, it banned "Medal of Honour" because of the role played by Taliban characters. The trailer for "Call of Duty: Black Ops" has a businesswoman carrying a handbag and a gun across a very realistic but devastated battleground which gradually fills with other gamers.
Most gamers are male, according to any idiot's observation and a study by the Stanford University School of Medicine. Stanford found that the "reward centres" in male brains were more activated than those in female brains; that there were more "computer widows"—women complaining about their partners colossal wasting of time; and that young professional males sometimes loose their jobs as a result.
Another interest factoid, it is not just teens or out-of-work twenty-somethings since the game costs about $60, and despite the hefty price tag most customers pay in full price rather than take the risk of uploading a corrupted ware.
"Americans spend a lot of time playing games… All generations spend about seven hours a week playing PC games," according to Reineke Reitsma, an analyst with Forrester Research. "But younger consumers top this up with playing games on consoles, handhelds and mobile phones [Meaning] Generation Y [young adults to 35-year-olds] spends close to 20 hours a week." Gamer demographic is one of its greatest strengths and differs drastically with movie-goers.
With the advent of television, Hollywood sought niche markets notably teenagers since they came to compose the bulk of moviegoers. Since they are very prone to leave a house controlled by their parents and indulge in a two hour fantasies, led by males, in gendered packs or leading their girlfriends, Hollywood naturally turned to making action block busters
Alas, they have been sidestepped by A) movie on demand and B) the interactive narrative of games that taps into the primoridal hunt and hide systems that boys so love. Thus has been a blow to the narrative developement, which girls prefer, causing the US film industry loose money except for its occasional achievement of an utterly immersive spectacle.
— D. Blair
S.F. Political Consultant's Debut with Bhutto Doc
In the fall of 2007, a simple inquiry changed Duane Baughman life made him become a filmmaker; made him fly around the world to Pakistan and explore the life of a Muslim woman. A San Francisco political consultant, Baughman was approached by a Washington political advisor to work on the campaign of Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistan prime minister when she returned from exile to run for her old position. Weeks later, Bhutto was assassinated, terminating Baughman's initial assignment but leading his switching careers on a whim and starting the documentary "Bhutto," which is opened theatrically in San Francisco and Berkeley in January.
Well-made and researched, and highly acclaimed ("thorough and involving" said the Los Angeles Times), "Bhutto" cost 2.5 million and provides a dramatic window into Bhutto's life as well as Pakistan's history. For years, Baughman had been a cinephile, annually attending the Sundance festival and soaking in all the documentaries there. But he had never picked up a professional video camera before making Bhutto, which he also produced. Although he hired a co-director and writer, Johnny O'Hara, but Bhutto is his vision.
"I would go to Sundance every year, and all I would do is see documentaries," he says. "I would completely overload on documentaries -- me and my nephew. To me, documentaries are so much more accessible, so much closer to an audience, than feature films. The first year I went, I said, 'Those films are amazing. They really speak to me. These issues are important.' The second year I went, I said, 'These are great, but last year was better.' And the third year I went, I said, 'I could do that.' "
"Ninety percent of life for those who choose to live it the way I do is about having opportunities to do something that nobody else can do," Baughman, 47, says in an interview. "The opportunity rolled up to my feet to make this film." He raised money through his company, a designer of mail campaigns for candidates like Hillary Clinton and Michael Bloomberg. Mark Siegel, a partner at a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm that worked for Pakistan in the late 1980s contacted Baughman an SF resident in the fall of 2007 to bring his election-style razzmatazz to Pakistan from sky-writing to decaling buses.
Bhutto a beauty as well was the first woman prime minister to lead a Muslim country and Harvard- and Oxford-educated always faced long odds in her nearly failed nativer state riven by deadly rivalries and dieties. But if nothing else it was a story that demanded to be told on film. "It wasn't whether or not I'd ever held a camera before; it was whether or not I could get to the people (like Bhutto's family members) that no other Westerner could get to," Baughman says. "That was 95 percent of the struggle."
The struggle was aided by Siegel, one of Bhutto's closest U.S. confidanta and a former deputy assistant to President Jimmy Carter and ghost author of Bhutto's book "Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West," and last but not least co-producer of Bhutto. Within weeks of Bhutto's murder, Baughman and his crew were in Dubai interviewing Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, and his two daughters with Benazir, Bakhtawar and Asifai—insights that drive "Bhutto" from beginning to end. The film had its challenges and dangers. Bhutto features an exclusive interview with former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf, whose lack of security for Bhutto contributed to her death, according to the United Nations says.
In September of 2008, two days after leaving Islamabad, militants bombed the hotel where Baughman was staying, killing scores of people, many of them employees that Baughman had filmed. "It was one of my major fears and one of my major goals to be able to tell a story that was respectful of Islam, that was respectful of a country I had never lived in, that I really had no business making a movie about," he notes. "It drove me to work ten times as hard to distill the facts." The films has already been released in more than 30 countries (including Pakistan) and 60 cities around the United States, opened early January in the Bay Area.
— J. Curiel
China Ontrack to Become Second Biggest Market
Chinese filmmaker rack in 10 billion Yuan although that is only 1.5 billion dollars, not that much for a population over three times the US. "Avatar" is it biggest success thus far albeit taking only about 200 mill US. But other more esoteric fare is in the running like Christopher Nolan's "Inception" which hit 75 million.
Domestic blockbusters, like Feng Xiaogang's "Aftershock" and "Under the Hawthorn Tree," by Zhang Yimou arguably the greates living Chines Director who took international audiences by storm in 1988 with his "Red Sorugum," a saucy tale about arranged marriages where the old fart dies before the young women can be litter-borne home, the former raking in $100 million and the latter only 15million, according to Tang Yuankai of BejingReview.com.cn.
Indeed in 2010, China's film distribution started to change and Beijing-based BONA Film became the first film company listed on the NASDAQ in NY. Since then Chinese filmmakers have developed a strong marketing sense and it has become common for new movies to be promoted with dynamic advertising campaigns.
The number of movie theaters has also increased. The total number of screens in China now exceeds 6,000, with almost three new 450-seat theaters being constructed every day. However, even such rapid construction can only ensure that there is one screen for every 200,000 people, far less than the ratio of one screen per 9,000 people here and a huge market is yet to be tapped. The number of domestic feature films had reached 530 by the end of 2010; at the same time, the number of animated cartoons, documentary films and films of other genres has increased sharply over previous years. Indeed, the Central Government has carried out new policies, which help to stimulate the domestic market at first.
The so-called "New Year movie" demonstrates the heated film market. This phenomenon started in 1997 with Feng's "Dream Factory," a low-budget comedy ($895,522) that grossed $5.37 million. This year over 50 films are competing for box office grandeur in the New Year season from December to February. No wonder, in China's overheated economy, film has become a new investment arena with the number of companies climbing to 1,100 almost double just two years ago