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Books Still Matter Says ‘The Book Makers’
by Susan Hellman
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Director James Kennard filming 'The Book Makers' at CODEX, a premier book fair in Richmond. image: courtesy InCA Productions)"THE BOOK IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE
book!” That’s the battle cry of the engaging one-hour documentary “The Book Makers” (2020).
By the Mill Valley documentarians behind the wine trilogy “A Year in Burgundy/Champagne/Port” (2014-16), who also produced “California Typewriter” (2016) and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” (2018), “The Book Makers” asks the question, “What should books become in the digital age?”
The answer comes from an eclectic group of artists, authors, and historians, many in the Bay Area. They explore what books are and can be in modern times and make the case for why they are more important than ever. See the film’s web site here, or trailer here.
Director James Kennard, who spent his childhood watching his father David at work making award-winning documentaries at InCA Productions in the 1980s, began his film apprenticeship in earnest on InCA’s wine trilogy. While working on that series, he ended up helping on a short film, “Arion Press: Creating the 100th”, which documented a San Francisco book making cultural icon, (2014). It inspired his feature directorial debut.
Indeed, Kennard has rounded up some of the brightest stars of the book art world. There’s the eminently quotable Berkeley-based fine press printer Peter Koch, who leads the battle to make books “meaner and tougher,” including a 30-pound book made entirely of lead.
Veteran book artist Julie Chen, an alumni-turned-professor at the Mills College of Book Arts in Oakland proves why screens have actually freed up the physical book to do what it does best: be a tactile-intellectual interface. Artist Karen Bleitz, another Mills College alum, employs novel mechanisms to surprise her readers and communicate linguistic and scientific ideas.
Poster for 'The Book Makers', which makes the case for why books still matter. image: courtesy InCA Productions)Typographic artist Sam Winston, for his part, upends traditional linear narratives with his visually striking books which actually transfer digital ideas back to the physical page. Meanwhile, the award-winning children’s author and illustrator Christian Robinson underscores the importance of representation in the stories he depicts.
The film’s personal narratives and intimate artist interviews are balanced by the high-tech future of the book, which is on full display in Brewster Kahle’s mammoth undertaking: to preserve every book ever written in the digital library of his Internet Archive in San Francisco.
Then the film travels to New York, London, and Germany to give a broad view of the book maker scene, culminating at the CODEX Book Fair (co-produced by Berkeley’s Peter Koch) back in the Bay Area town of Richmond, which happens to be the book arts’ world most important event.
Throughout the film, we follow the young book maker Mark Sarigianis, who Kennard first met at Arion Press but has since set out on his own and started the Prototype Press in West Oakland.
Indeed, we are there for every major hurdle in his painstaking, 621-day process of printing a deluxe edition of Charles Bukowski’s “Ham on Rye”, from the start of this passion project, uses hand-set type, through the logistics of sourcing, production, binding, and finally celebrating its completion—typo-free!
For good measure, San Francisco-based authors Dave Eggers (McSweeney’s) and Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket (“A Series of Unfortunate Events”) add marquee value for those not familiar with the legends of the book art world, offering their take on the traditional reading experience as still essential despite our screen-obsessed society.
Kennard’s film about the intimacies of making books by hand and the relationship between books and readers has benefitted from the home setting for the suddenly virtual film festival circuit where it made its debut this spring. This lent an additional closeness to visiting authors and artists in the previously unseen places they do their work.
This extends to InCA’s pre-pandemic decision to also release the film through a less conventional route on public television, where you can see it during National Book Month beginning October 12th on PBS stations.
It airs locally Saturday, October 17th, 8 pm on Northern California Public Media (KPJK); Tuesday, October 27th, 4 pm on KQED WORLD; Friday, November 13th, 8 pm on KQED’s main channel; and nationwide on WORLD, public television’s premier news, science and documentary channel, on October 27th (to find the channel locally, go here).
If this film is any indication, the second generation of filmmaking Kennards in Mill Valley is in a good position to start its fourth decade of award-winning documentaries with James’s first feature. Indeed, his Oxford education in modern history should make for an interesting list of future projects.
On the horizon? More films focused on what Kennard considers the “unsung oddities” of popular culture, like the Italian Disco uprising of the 1980s.
Susan Hellman is a freelance writer based in New York. She can be reached . Posted on Sep 24, 2020 - 03:46 PM
by Susan Hellman
Please support our stories by liking articles—thanks!
Director James Kennard filming 'The Book Makers' at CODEX, a premier book fair in Richmond. image: courtesy InCA Productions)book!” That’s the battle cry of the engaging one-hour documentary “The Book Makers” (2020).
By the Mill Valley documentarians behind the wine trilogy “A Year in Burgundy/Champagne/Port” (2014-16), who also produced “California Typewriter” (2016) and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” (2018), “The Book Makers” asks the question, “What should books become in the digital age?”
The answer comes from an eclectic group of artists, authors, and historians, many in the Bay Area. They explore what books are and can be in modern times and make the case for why they are more important than ever. See the film’s web site here, or trailer here.
Director James Kennard, who spent his childhood watching his father David at work making award-winning documentaries at InCA Productions in the 1980s, began his film apprenticeship in earnest on InCA’s wine trilogy. While working on that series, he ended up helping on a short film, “Arion Press: Creating the 100th”, which documented a San Francisco book making cultural icon, (2014). It inspired his feature directorial debut.
Indeed, Kennard has rounded up some of the brightest stars of the book art world. There’s the eminently quotable Berkeley-based fine press printer Peter Koch, who leads the battle to make books “meaner and tougher,” including a 30-pound book made entirely of lead.
Veteran book artist Julie Chen, an alumni-turned-professor at the Mills College of Book Arts in Oakland proves why screens have actually freed up the physical book to do what it does best: be a tactile-intellectual interface. Artist Karen Bleitz, another Mills College alum, employs novel mechanisms to surprise her readers and communicate linguistic and scientific ideas.
Poster for 'The Book Makers', which makes the case for why books still matter. image: courtesy InCA Productions)The film’s personal narratives and intimate artist interviews are balanced by the high-tech future of the book, which is on full display in Brewster Kahle’s mammoth undertaking: to preserve every book ever written in the digital library of his Internet Archive in San Francisco.
Then the film travels to New York, London, and Germany to give a broad view of the book maker scene, culminating at the CODEX Book Fair (co-produced by Berkeley’s Peter Koch) back in the Bay Area town of Richmond, which happens to be the book arts’ world most important event.
Throughout the film, we follow the young book maker Mark Sarigianis, who Kennard first met at Arion Press but has since set out on his own and started the Prototype Press in West Oakland.
Indeed, we are there for every major hurdle in his painstaking, 621-day process of printing a deluxe edition of Charles Bukowski’s “Ham on Rye”, from the start of this passion project, uses hand-set type, through the logistics of sourcing, production, binding, and finally celebrating its completion—typo-free!
For good measure, San Francisco-based authors Dave Eggers (McSweeney’s) and Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket (“A Series of Unfortunate Events”) add marquee value for those not familiar with the legends of the book art world, offering their take on the traditional reading experience as still essential despite our screen-obsessed society.
Kennard’s film about the intimacies of making books by hand and the relationship between books and readers has benefitted from the home setting for the suddenly virtual film festival circuit where it made its debut this spring. This lent an additional closeness to visiting authors and artists in the previously unseen places they do their work.
This extends to InCA’s pre-pandemic decision to also release the film through a less conventional route on public television, where you can see it during National Book Month beginning October 12th on PBS stations.
It airs locally Saturday, October 17th, 8 pm on Northern California Public Media (KPJK); Tuesday, October 27th, 4 pm on KQED WORLD; Friday, November 13th, 8 pm on KQED’s main channel; and nationwide on WORLD, public television’s premier news, science and documentary channel, on October 27th (to find the channel locally, go here).
If this film is any indication, the second generation of filmmaking Kennards in Mill Valley is in a good position to start its fourth decade of award-winning documentaries with James’s first feature. Indeed, his Oxford education in modern history should make for an interesting list of future projects.
On the horizon? More films focused on what Kennard considers the “unsung oddities” of popular culture, like the Italian Disco uprising of the 1980s.
Susan Hellman is a freelance writer based in New York. She can be reached . Posted on Sep 24, 2020 - 03:46 PM
