SFIAAFF28 2010—Michael Hawley's Documentary Preview

Of the five documentaries I previewed on DVD screener for this year's San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF), my favorite is one doc-purists might disavow. Indeed, when Variety reviewed Uruphong Raksasad's Agrarian Utopia last year they tagged it a narrative feature, while SFIAAFF is showing it under their Documentary Showcase banner. Whatever. Lyrical, advocative and exquisitely shot, this portrait of rice farmers in Northern Thailand shouldn't be missed.

Scenes of rice planting and harvesting are blended with activities like beehive foraging, mushroom cultivation and snake hunting—extracurricular necessities for these farmers who are essentially hired laborers drowning in debt. Raksasad, who is originally from this area, acts as his own cinematographer and what he captures is unforgettable—men hand-threshing rice stalks by the light of a kerosene lamp, time-lapsed electrical storms zooming over verdant paddies, the horseplay of children, the daunting task of training a water buffalo. His "characters" appear unconscious of the camera's presence, making us privy to intimate conversations that frequently revolve around fiscal struggles (and which frequently take place during the acts of cooking and eating). The film is bookended with political rallies that place the farmers' plight in the context of recent upheavals in Thai society. If I have one quibble with Raksasad's film, it's that women's voices are largely absent.

Two other worthwhile SFIAAFF docs fit a more traditional mold, and both concern a Japanese American male with life-changing ties to the U.S. military. Eight years in the army qualified Richard Aoki to become Field Marshall (and an early arms supplier) for the Black Panther Party. Who would have guessed that the iconic marching, drilling and chanting of the Panthers was orchestrated by a self-described "baddest Oriental to come out of West Oakland."

Directors Mike Cheng and Ben Wang filmed Aoki for the last five years of his life and spin a captivating narrative with archival materials, interviews and speeches. Born in San Leandro in 1938, Aoki spent part of his childhood in Topaz Relocation Camp, after which his family moved to Oakland. Following his army stint, he enrolled in Merritt College where he met Panther founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale (the latter appears extensively in this film, along with Panthers communications secretary Kathleen Cleaver). In addition to the Panthers, Aoki was involved in the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) and more notoriously, the Third World Liberation Front, which instigated the largest student strike in U.C. Berkeley history. He would end up spending most of his life in academia, while remaining a staunch and greatly admired activist. Curiously, the film makes little mention of Aoki's life outside his activism.

In 2006, Lt. Ehren Watada became the first commissioned officer in the U.S. military to refuse deployment to Iraq. In her incredibly moving new film Lt. Watada, Oscar®-winning director Freida Lee Mock (Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision) looks at this brave, thoughtful young man and the journey his refusal to be "part of something deeply illegal and immoral" took him on. After graduating magna cum laude with a business degree in 2003, this non-pacifist Eagle Scout, mindful of 9/11, joined the army with a desire to protect his country. In 2006, however, after having researched our reasons for invading Iraq, he decided that deployment there would be a violation of his military oath. Watada offered to resign and twice offered to fight in Afghanistan. The army refused. They offered him a cushy, non-combative job in Iraq, which Watada refused. Mock's film expertly lays out what happened next, detailing three years of court martial limbo during which time Watada continued to speak out and dig his hole deeper. Lt. Watada is part of a SFIAAFF spotlight on Frieda Lee Mock, and after the festival's only screening of the film on March 14, the director will take part in an on-stage interview.

Another SFIAAFF documentary by an Oscar®-winning filmmaker is the North American Premiere of A Moment in Time by Ruby Yang (The Blood of Yingzhao District). Her film looks at the phenomenon of American Chinatown movie theaters—particularly here in San Francisco—and the role those theaters and the films they screened played in the Chinese community. From melodramas that made Chinatown matrons weep, to the kung-fu pics which established new models of Asian masculinity (and whose themes of loyalty and revenge carried over into Chinatown gang life), these films served as a link to the homeland and were a reflection of community not found in Hollywood films.

San Francisco's Chinatown has had as many as five theaters operating simultaneously and A Moment in Time profiles several, including the Grandview (which had its own film studio) and the Great Star (which if memory serves, is where I saw my first Jackie Chan flick, Operation Condor 2: The Armour of the Gods.) At times this doc overreaches by attempting to provide an entire history of Chinese cinema and consequently loses focus. There are also some strange digressions, like the young woman who praises her current boyfriend for the soy and oyster sauces in his cupboard, while bemoaning the ex who had ketchup and baked beans in his. But overall, it's a satisfying look at a bygone era. By 2000 there wasn't a single remaining Chinatown theater anywhere in the U.S. A Moment in Time will screen with Eric Lin's short, Music Palace, which looks at New York City's final Chinatown movie theater.

Sports documentaries are about as far outside my interest zone as you can get, but I checked out Brigitte Weich's Hana, dul, sed… for that rare glimpse of life in North Korea. The film's first half traces the ascendancy of its women's soccer team—culminating in a 2003 Asia Cup win—with profiles of four players and lots and lots of requisite training and game footage. (They get revved-up for a U.S. match by visiting the country's Anti-American Museum). After losing a 2004 Olympics qualifying match to Japan, all four women are forced into retirement. That's when the film gets interesting, as we watch them deal with life as ex-sports stars. While hardly a portrayal of "average" North Koreans (they get to keep their nice state-given Pyongyang apartments and get extra food rations as "Players of the People"), we get to know them and experience the world from their POV: the wide boulevards devoid of auto traffic, the palatial subway stations, a beauty parlor visit, an outing to the National Zoo with its caged dogs and kitty cats, couples rowboating on the Taedong River and a bounty of Socialist Realist poster art (most of it helpfully translated). This film is definitely worth a look.

There are many other documentaries in the festival, which you'll find spread across the Documentary Showcase, CAAM 30th Anniversary Showcase and Documentary Competition sections. One I'm planning to catch during the fest is Tehran Without Permission, a collage of life in Iran's capital city, shot entirely on a Nokia camera phone before last summer's civil unrest.

Cross-published on film-415 and Twitch.

SFIAAFF28: THE FORBIDDEN DOOR (PINTU TERLARANG, 2009)—The Twitch Round-up

You can rest assured that—if it's a genre film—it's most likely been covered by the Twitch team from the moment a glimmer of malice appeared in the filmmaker's eye. Such is certainly the case with Joko Anwar's The Forbidden Door (2009) [site], the midnight screening offered in the International Showcase of this year's edition of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF).

After exchanging email, Todd Brown finally met Joko Anwar (Kala, Janji Joni) at the 2008 Udine Far East Film Festival and hailed him as "the very best of the current crop of directors in Indonesia." He cited the film's official synopsis: "A successful sculptor whose life [is] run by [a] domineering wife and mother discovers a secret organization in which members can watch the lives of [the] most dysfunctional, depraved families in the town which are fed from hidden cameras. When he stumbles upon a channel showing a little boy who's being viciously abused by a crazy couple, he tries to find the kid to save him. But his quest leads him back to a secret door in his own house that could be the answer to many puzzles."

After that meeting, Todd pretty much kept up with every new production still, poster or available trailer for The Forbidden Door and offered them up to the Twitch readership (though, unfortunately, as is often the case with time and other thieves, some of those links are now broken).

Equally an Anwar fan, Ard Vijn picked up the baton when The Forbidden Door had its international premiere at the 2009 Rotterdam International Film Festival, where he reviewed same. However qualified—Ard had difficulty feeling sympathy for the film's protagonist and mean-spirited narrative—he nonetheless found the film's shocking ending a satisfying achievement. Further praise went to the film's stylishness: "Deeming the real Jakarta to be too dirty looking, Joko Anwar ordered a fake, cleaner version to be built using several big sets. Like with Kala this makes it seem as if the story takes place in some alternate universe where everything is slightly more stylish, colorful or menacing. The sheer amount of gloss and polish totally defies the small budget: the film cost less than 600.000 USD to make but easily looks ten times as expensive." In fact, Ard considers the film's "sultry atmosphere" to be "the real star of the movie."

The Forbidden Door went on to make appearances at the 2009 New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) where it was described as "a 19th century gothic novel adapted by Alfred Hitchcock and directed by David Lynch" and "one of the sickest, kinkiest movies" NYAFF had ever screened: "Graceful, gliding and with a Bernard Herrmann-esque score we feel confident when we say you've never seen evil look quite so beguiling."

Canfield reviewed the film at NYAFF and cautioned: "This blood-soaked unpacking of what it means to sell-out should haunt anyone who has ever called themselves artist and asked to be paid for it." He concludes: "Incorporating elements of the Hostel series, film noir and psychological horror this begs to be seen on the big screen where the arterial spray can underline the Shakespearean sensibilities. Part tragedy, part drama, and hard to watch this is dangerous filmmaking made all the more dangerous by the line it walks between exploitation and truth telling."

Guest reviewer Joshua Chaplinsky offered a second perspective, acknowledging The Forbidden Door's "tasty amalgamation of Lynch, Hitchcock, Hostel, Videodrome, Takashi Miike, The Usual Suspects and Shakespeare." Though considerably less impressed than Canfield, Joshua concludes that The Forbidden Door "digs below the surface in an attempt to raise larger questions. Is it an allegory about artistic integrity? A treatise on marital fidelity? A commentary on violence and the media?" Though mystery might be what gives the film its momentum, Joshua cautions: "Unfortunately, as is often the case, the answers cannot live up to the questions asked, and this is where the film falters."

Guest reviewer Teresa Nieman offered a third take for Twitch when the film appeared in Vancouver: "In a nutshell, we get Dumplings meets Videodrome meets Hostel, by way of an Indonesian Tarantino." She summarizes: "The good news about Joko Anwar's follow up to the brilliant Dead Time (a.k.a. Kala, or The Secret) is that it's bigger, more ambitious, and seems to have had a much more lenient editing process. The bad news is that ... it's bigger, more ambitious, and seems to have had a much more lenient editing process. Yep, it's one of those."

Coming full circle, The Forbidden Door was announced on the line-up for the 2009 Udine Film Festival, screened at Toronto After Dark 2009, and won "Best Film" at the 2009 edition of PiFan.

There's not much more to say other than that, clearly, The Forbidden Door continues to reveal Joko Anwar's promise checkered among his faults and it's certainly his promise that excites reviewers (who tend to be willing to overlook his faults). I felt the film couldn't decide what it wanted to be and—though certainly stylish in its look and tone—some of its cinematic waystations worked better than the film as a journey. For example, its resemblances to Videodrome were what impressed me the most—prurience and perversity are always a welcome cocktail—and I have to admit that I was genuinely creeped out by the story of the abused child, which seemed so real and exploitive that I was left no room to feel comfortable. I could probably say the same about protagonist Gambir's stringy haircut. Yeesh. And every time the red forbidden door loomed into view, I thought of that faux trailer Don't from Grindhouse. Don't open that red forbidden door. DON'T!

Aside from Twitch, The Forbidden Door has received favorable critical praise. Richard Corliss at TIME—who caught the film at NYAFF—wrote: "As slick as it is sick, the movie could be Anwar's calling card for international employment, if only Hollywood moguls wanted something out of their own narrow range". Corliss appreciated the film's effort to be something that others "rarely dare to try." At The Hollywood Reporter—as quoted by Misa Oyama in her SFIAAFF program capsule—Maggie Lee opined: "A stylish and teasing chiller that unlocks a chamber of Freudian horrors, The Forbidden Door would make Hitchcock and Almodovar proud" and mentioned that "Joko Anwar accessorizes his creepy suspense-horror with a dazzling array of auteur-homage."

Disclaimer: Reviewed from screener.

Cross-published on Twitch.

DIASPORA BY THE BAY: SFIAAF—The Evening Class Interview With Festival Director Chi-hui Yang

Continuing with my survey of the diasporic dimension of San Franciscan film festival culture, Chi-hui Yang—Festival Director for the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAF)—invited me to the offices of the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) to discuss the Center's mission objectives and the Festival's ongoing relationship with Bay Area Asian and Asian American communities. Chi-hui is a graduate of Stanford University and the founder of the Stanford Asian American Performing Arts Series. He has written about culture, music and film for Spin, Giant Robot, and other magazines and on-line outlets and has curated film programs that have been screened at venues and festivals nationwide, including the Seattle International Film Festival and Minneapolis' Sound Unseen Festival.

The San Francisco-based Center for Asian American Media was founded in 1980. Formerly known as the National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA), CAAM has grown into the largest organization dedicated to the advancement of Asian Americans in independent media, specifically in the areas of television and filmmaking. In 1986, CAAM took over planning, programming and management of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Since then, SFIAAFF has become the largest festival of its kind in North America.

* * *

Michael Guillén: Chi-hui, what prompted CAAM's decision to create the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival?

Chi-hui Yang: When NAATA was founded in 1980, its main purpose was to present works on public television. Then we added the film festival, then our Media Fund which funds documentaries, and then our educational department. Most recently we've added a digitial media department.

The public television work had a national focus. CAAM is one of the five minority consortia funded by the U.S. government through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The funding for the entire organization is relying upon commercial appropriations. The money that we get is the same money that ITVS and PBS gets, committed towards building public media.

Guillén: So, in contrast to several of the other film festivals in the Bay Area, you're receiving funding on the Federal level?

Yang: For the organization. The Festival's resources come from a different pool of money, primarily from earned revenue, corporate sponsorship and foundation grants, which is the same as every other festival. The Federal money that comes into CAAM funds our public television and our film funding efforts.

Guillén: What was the perceived need to develop a film festival?

Yang: At that point in the late '70s, early '80s, there was a loose confederation of Asian American filmmakers. There had been a lot of movement in the early '70s in Los Angeles and New York with community-activist filmmaking happening through Visual Communications in Los Angeles and Asian Cinevision in New York; but, those were very much regional. All those groups and more came together for a convening in Berkeley in 1980 to found a new organization which would try to fulfill the promise of public television, or hold public television to what it promised to do: i.e., offer diverse programming for the entire nation that reflected the composition of the country. At that point there was very little Asian American programming on public television. It was still primarily imported British programming. That calculation was strategic in that—with regard to interest in terms of sheer audience reach—nothing can really compete with a public television broadcast. It couldn't then and even still you can reach millions of viewers through one broadcast, which is the large impact the founders thought they could have. That's the reason why the organization was started: to take advantage of American public television to reach modern audiences with Asian American content.

The festival component came after that when the organization decided that it wanted a local component that built community and interaction in the Bay Area as opposed to just a national broadcast that was beamed into homes but didn't actually bring people together.

Guillén: In determining the content that you wanted to show at the festival, what were you looking for? Was it specifically Asian American representation?

Yang: Yes.

Guillén: Yet, you also profile Asian film?

Yang: Our interest is to look at the continuum that happens between Asian American and the diaspora from Asia, to really see what the connections are because in a lot of ways the original impulse was to offer more diverse views of Asian people with a focus on Asian American filmmakers. There's an interesting tension that happens between Asian American and Asian programming in that—politically, in the U.S.—Asian and Asian American often are conflated to be the same thing. They might presume someone from Japan is the same as a Japanese American, even though they couldn't be more different. With cinema there's a strong tension to disassociate Asian from Asian American as a political statement; but, then there's so many interesting cultural, linguistic, and different types of artistic linkages between Asians and Asian Americans that flow back and forth. Part of our interest is to address that tension and look at what it produces. Also to look at what Asian filmmakers in other parts of the Diaspora are creating to reflect upon the cinema from the U.S. Increasingly, you have Asian American filmmakers who are working not in the U.S. but somewhere else. For example, you might have an American indie that is being shot in a non-English language. Those ideas are starting to blur a bit but are the ideas that we're interested in exploring.

Guillén: By giving Asian American filmmakers the opportunity to strengthen themselves, has that cross-pollinated Asian cinema? Is the tension you're referencing a collaborative tension?

Yang: I think it definitely is and the areas where we see it the most are actually where there are the most Asian Americans returning into Asia to make films. A good case study is Vietnam. There's a strong Vietnamese American film movement happening now. There's a number of filmmakers, including people like Ham Tran who made Journey From the Fall (2006), Stephane Gauger who made Owl and the Sparrow (2007), and others who were raised in the U.S., went to film school in the U.S., grew up within the domestic scene here, and returned to Vietnam to reinvigorate Vietnamese cinema. Vietnam is an interesting example, as is Taiwan where Taiwanese Americans are making investments in Taiwanese films. A different model is Korea where a lot of Korean Americans are finding work in Korea. It's not so much about Korean American filmmakers going back to Korea and changing the film scene there, but more that the Korean film industry has seen a route to finding a market in the U.S. to make money for Korean films; their vehicle being Korean Americans. So there's a number of different interactions happening, some based upon personal dynamics, others more on the global film industry processes.

Guillén: Which addresses the question: do Asian American film festivals provide a distribution/exhibition channel by which Asian films can reach diasporic audiences situated in the U.S.? When you're programming content for your festival, how much are you aware that your audience is more than just Asian American? Especially here in San Francisco where the last census revealed that more than one third of the city's population is of Asian descent?

Yang: Our audience demographics tell us that about 60% of our audiences are Asian and the other 40% is a mix of other communities. Our audience is broad. The films that we show are a mix of English language and a lot of other languages too. The audiences that we have are primarily second-generation. As a rough estimate, one fourth of our audience is first-generation where their first language is a foreign language. That dynamic is interesting because a lot of the films that we show are more independent or artistic in nature. We don't show a lot of commercial films. We found that a lot of first-generation immigrants don't gravitate as much to independent films as to commercial films. There's an interesting barrier there that we are trying to address. At the same time, when we show films like Mother India (1957) or other important classic films for certain communities, we see those folks come out. There were certainly a lot of people from the Indian diasporic community who came out to watch that film.

Guillén: Would you say that—by placing a revival screening within your program—you broaden your constituency?

Yang: Absolutely. What's interesting about this idea of what "Asian American" is, it's a term that some people embrace while other people don't quite know how they fit within it. Certainly, within second-generation Asian people living in the U.S., they are the group that embraces that identity more, which is essentially the identity of the festival. At the same time a lot of the offerings that we present are just as interesting to either first-generation immigrants or other groups which haven't historically identified as Asian American but whom we see as part of that.

About 10 years ago we did a big focus on cinema of the South Asian diaspora. At that point we noted that our audience stats for the South Asian community were fairly low and—from talking to people in research—we understood that a lot of folks didn't identify solely as Asian American; they were more South Asian. So that was our effort to bring in and build connections with that community. That program worked well and was about the time that we started working with 3rd i to build in-roads into that community. In this coming year, 2010, we will have a focus on the Filipino American community. In the Bay Area, after the Chinese community, the Filipino American community is the second largest. It's quite big. For that community, there are a lot of ties to homeland, a lot of movement back and forth, both culturally and linguistically, and in terms of travel. There are a lot of first-generation Filipino immigrants in the Bay Area and so that's another community that we want to build connections with and bring into the festival.

Guillén: Is your demographic data from the last census, now 10 years out of date?

Yang: Yes. But we also do a lot of data gathering at the festival so we have a sense of who's coming matched up against the last census information for the city. Also, we acquire information anecdotally, just from being in the community and understanding where those communities are at. The place we've actually found the most interesting demographic data is with advertising agencies who work with us closely. Their intent is to move into the Asian American market and our festival is actually the largest Asian American arts event in the nation. We offer them a great laboratory and an in-road into the Asian American community in the Bay Area. Those advertising agencies actually have the most up-to-date information because they've done a lot of their own in-market research.

Guillén: Having attended SFIAAF for about 10 years now, I've noted that your festival's audiences stand out as some of the most fun, ebullient and engaged audiences of any film festival in the Bay Area. Clearly, as you've been indicating, you have built this audience through community outreach. Do you have a specific community outreach position within your festival staff?

Yang: Yes.

Guillén: So when you're bringing in Asian American content to your festival, its audience is presumed; but, when you're bringing in Asian content, such as Vietnamese or Filipino, as you've mentioned, how do you shape your audience? How do you reach your first-generation, second-generation Asian audiences? What efforts does your community outreach perform specifically?

Yang: There are a number of different key ways that we do that. We work with ethnic press first. We also connect with community social service and cultural organizations, and we work through them to reach communities who often need to be communicated to in their first language. By example, we create a lot of in-language publications and flyers to the Vietnamese and Korean communities.

During the festival, we usually partner with 80-100 community-based organizations. Our marketing, promotion and community outreach strategies exist both on broad-based publicist PR to mainstream publications, all the way to going to grass roots organizations, going to community events, and working through their lists. We have found that these organizations want to be a part of CAAM and the festival. In a way it's a win-win because it allows them to have exposure at the festival and helps them reinforce their relationships with their communities.

Guillén: How do you fit your community organizations to a specific film? I imagine you have a rolodex of opportunity; but, how do you know which organization to approach to co-present?

Yang: Our approach is to go as specific as we can. For example, we often show films about adoption, and if we show a film about Vietnamese adoption, we'll zero in on the handful of organizations that deal with that and invite them to participate in the festival. We'll send them information about the film and make sure it agrees with their politics, as a lot of these social issues are quite contentious within the community.

Guillén: How about consular assistance?

Yang: Consulate help is usually for resources and hospitality; bringing in filmmakers. For example, we had Kiyoshi Kurosawa this last year and the Japanese Consulate hosted a reception for him and helped with travel support.

Guillén: How much is your festival supported by regional collaborations with sister organizations on the West Coast? Do you pool resources to coordinate the visit, let's say, of high-profile talent to the West Coast?

Yang: Not so much. We're good friends with the Los Angeles festival; but, because of the time gap between our festivals—they're a month and a half after SFIAFF—it's harder to coordinate that way. The main way that we coordinate is that every year at the festival we have a convening of all the Asian American film festival organizers in the country. We usually have about 15-17 cities represented, about 40 people, who all come to our festival because it is strategically the first Asian American festival of the year and the largest. A lot of them come to our festival to look for films to lock into their programs. So we have an afternoon meeting to discuss common challenges, collaborations, the state of the field, and how we can help each other out.

Guillén: With the documented proliferation of film festivals world-wide, there is some concern that there is more competition than collaboration among festivals. As most of them are organized on a similar non-profit model, competition for both economic and demographic resources has become a pressing concern. Though that might be generally true, I seek to suggest that in the Bay Area—with its incredibly high incidence of film festivals—there is a strong collaborative ethic between our community-based film festivals, who often co-present for each other, weaving their audiences into each other. Do you find this to be true?

Yang: Yes, film festival work in San Francisco is much different than other cities where they are more competitive for audiences and films. While we do compete for audiences and films in San Francisco, we have found that we have gained more by cross-pollinating audiences. One study that hasn't been done and would prove interesting is how much overlap there is between audiences from Frameline, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, and 3rd i, to determine what the percentage is of people who attend all these festivals or just a few of them. We don't really know; but, what we do know is that we're all working with a similar group of people that we're trying to engage with film. We've found that if we collaborate or even just communicate programmatically—What are they going after? What are we going after?—it helps save a lot of time and effort. If we co-present, then we get our festival in front of their viewers and give a benefit to our membership too, in terms of letting them know about something that's exciting. A lot of times, a film that we might co-present at another festival is a film that we might have wanted to show but couldn't show because it's showing up at another festival, but which we continue to want to support.

Guillén: CAAM and SFIAAF are ahead of many of the other community-based film festivals for having an active arm of distribution/exhibition, specifically through your public broadcasting. What is the protocol, if any, of determining which films that have played at your festival become eligible for further exposure through public broadcast?

Yang: We look at the organization as, in a way, a full-service organization for filmmakers. There's a particular type of film that might make its way through all strands of the organization. Starting with our funding department, we fund primarily non-fiction films for public television broadcast; for example, a film like Hollywood Chinese (2007) by Arthur Dong or Daughter From Danang (2002) by Gail Dolgin. Often when the films we've funded for public television are finished, we will show them at the festival and then present them on public television, and then follow up with the educational distribution to colleges and universities. Every year there are a handful of films that go through all those phases. Then again, there are a lot of films that don't. For example, we did everything with Hollywood Chinese except the educational outreach; Arthur Dong did that on his own.

Though ordinarily it is the non-fiction films that make their way through these stages, this year we produced Fruit Fly (2009) by H.P. Mendoza. We funded it, produced it, showed it at the festival, and the next step would be whether we get it onto public television or educational distribution, which we're still working out to see if its appropriate for either of those channels.

Guillén: And this opportunity for "full-service", as you say, is specifically for Asian American filmmakers?

Yang: It is, though we have a fairly expanded idea of that. For example, a recent film we funded was City of Borders (2009), a documentary about a gay and lesbian bar in Israel. It's about Palestinian-Jewish communities there. Under the broadest possible definition, you could conceive of that documentary as being Asian American—by way of the Palestinian story, which caters to a very broad definition of Asian—but, moreso, we're supporting a talented Korean American filmmaker Yun Suh who had this important film to make.

Guillén: So you're saying that it's not that the content of the film must be specifically Asian American? That the director is Asian American qualifies its inclusion?

Yang: Our interest is in supporting our audiences and filmmakers. A lot of times those interests will coincide where—though we know our audiences want to see Asian American stories and we also want to support the work of filmmakers—a film may have Asian American content and be made by an Asian American filmmaker; but, there are other permutations.

Guillén: How does SFIAAF address the value added of the spectacular dimension of film festival culture?

Yang: We realize we need a good balance between our offerings. Programmatically, our inclination is to go towards smaller, more director-driven projects, because those are the films that have the least support and which audiences would have the least chance seeing. At the same time, knowing our audiences are diverse with a broad range of interests, we do want to balance with some commercial films, namely blockbusters from Asia. Unfortunately, there are no Asian American blockbusters, though—when they happen to come along—we will show the Harold and Kumar movies or films like that, which have a broader recognition. Above all, we want our audiences to have a good time and in a lot of ways the festival is—speaking of the spectacular—as much a community gathering point as it is a festival. Some people come for the films but just as many, or more, come to be a part of something, which they can't find anywhere else. For that reason, we want to enhance that experience by—not just having films—but providing outdoor screenings, concerts, parties, multiple social events where that kind of community gathering happens. That way we can also take a look at Asian and Asian American artists who are working in different mediums than film to explore what the connections might be in Asian American culture between, let's say, music and film. There are a lot of overlaps.

Guillén: You usually include at least one open air free-to-the-public screening at the festival?

Yang: We usually do two a year. We'll stage one in the summer—which we did last week with Kamikaze Girls (2006)—and then we'll stage one during the festival.

Guillén: I see community building as the participatory and celebratory aspect—the "festive" part—of a film festival. You're saying SFIAFF is committed to that?

Yang: Yeah, absolutely. But it's not just fun-for-fun's-sake either. There's a real social value to creating a space within the festival that allows ideas, creativities and connections to be made. Normally at a film festival, those connections you see are often more business-driven or industry-driven; but, here at SFIAFF, it really is more community-based. You see a lot of film projects or collaborations that might emerge out of a casual conversation. Or we have those 80-100 community organizations involved who become part of the mix and other ideas are born from there too. So the festival is a real gathering point for the community and also for people who are outside the Asian American community to see what else is happening.

Guillén: Absolutely. I have to commend that embrace. As a Chicano, I took great pride when your former cohort Taro Goto invited me to contribute a capsule to SFIAFF because it was an open invitation into your community. By contrast, the International Latino Film Festival never once invited me to write a capsule, and barely acknowledged me as press.

Yang: In a lot of ways it's born out of this idea that the Asian American community is so diverse that it's almost contradictory. It's impossible to sum up. Linguistically and culturally it is vast and growing. Out of that, there has to be this acknowledgment of multiplicity. It's inherent within the Asian American experience.

Guillén: I would say that acknowledgment of multiplicity leans into the future, moreso than adherence to identity politics. Local artist Guillermo Gomez-Peña has deeply influenced me with regard to looking past identity politics to explore questions of allegiance in the future: what do you have when a Salvadorian boy and a Korean girl fall in love, marry, and have a child? To what community will that child identify?

Which leads me to ask, is there a point at which your festival will not be necessary? Is there a point where your community, your audience, will be so woven into the multiplicity of the general populace that it will no longer be necessary to specifically address and express the Asian American experience? Or, alternately, with international film festivals broadening their European predilections to include cinema from Asia and the Global South, will a specific venue for such cinemas still be necessary?

Yang: Well, I look at it in two ways. One is through the lens of a specific ethnic original community. The second is in terms of independent media. I think there will always be a need for venues to show independent media, which is primarily what we focus on. In terms of the Asian American focus, sure, there is more integration and assimilation; but, in terms of representation in mainstream media, it actually hasn't progressed very much. In a lot of ways that goes back to why our audiences are so enthusiastic. If you look at, say, other more identity-based film festivals in the Bay Area or across the country—gay and lesbian, Latino, Jewish—they all have more mainstream media representation than Asian Americans.

Guillén: Why is that? I've spoken with Eric Byler about this. He complains about how Hollywood will fly in talent from China or Japan to star in some blockbuster before they think of casting an Asian American actor. Do you have a sense of why that is?

Yang: It's a complicated dynamic. There are marketing researchers saying that American audiences are more comfortable with an Asian foreigner than an Asian American. It's bizarre; but, people are familiar and accustomed to what they have already seen. They want to see more of what they have seen. What they have seen on television or at the movies is that foreigner. That's the dominating image you see of Asians. So when you see an Asian who's an American, it confuses people a little and—when you confuse people—that doesn't make you money. That's one of the overriding dynamics which controls this. Because, certainly, there's no lack of talent.

Guillén: When I think of mainstream Asian cinema, I think of genre. When I think of genre, I think of audience appeal. Does independent Asian American cinema concern itself with genre?

Yang: I would say independent Asian American cinema is a response to genre, to that pigeonholing. Most Asian American filmmakers aren't interested in that, or—if they are—they're doing it in an ironic way to escape the pigeonholing. What's interesting is that there is this idea of the qualifier. You're watching a film and it's crazy, or it's a new action film, right? It's the same thing as the debate over having or not having a hyphen for "Asian American". The hyphen is a qualification. There's a qualifier that has to happen for people to watch certain things that have an Asian American or an Asian in it. Without that qualifier, it's not that interesting—it's a domestic drama; it's a romantic comedy—but, it's not an absurd, spectacular crazy film that would qualify you to see it, even if it has a non-White cast.

Guillén: Do you think Asian American cinema has any influence on Asian cinema, by way of style, themes?

Yang: I don't think there's a whole lot of that. I think Asian filmmakers are probably looking to some of the big American auteurs. Certainly, I think they might look to people like Ang Lee, M. Night Shyamalan, or Mira Nair, who are well-established filmmakers; but, not so much to independent filmmakers.

Guillén: Shifting to the festival's interaction with press, do you tier press?

Yang: No. But I have encountered that at Cannes.

Guillén: Cannes is the mother of all press tiering, which adheres strictly to their spectacular dimension. I understand what's going on there. You could be Manohla Dargis and have trouble getting into a film.

Yang: I can also understand the administrative, logistical and business aspects of press tiering. If your festival is big enough that you have hundreds and hundreds of members of the press attending, then you need to figure out how to accommodate their various needs. You would probably have to figure out some kind of tiered press system because you wouldn't be able to accommodate all their needs. You'd have 100 interview requests for a single director, which you can't accommodate, so you have to figure that out. That's the only reason I can think of. But, no, we don't tier press. I don't see any reason to. It also has to do with a philosophical approach towards marketing, outreach and publicity. What do you value? We certainly value the mainstream press—television, radio and print—but we know that equally as important, perhaps even more important, is community-based ethnic online bloggers who dictate people's tastes and interactions just as much or more than the mainstream press. There has to be that recognition. That's something SFIAAF really values.

Guillén: So SFIAFF draws no separation between print and online press?

Yang: No, not really. We're aware of the value of having a photo placed in The Chronicle; that's great. That's gaining us a lot of people. But equally important to us is having good, critical, more-in-depth coverage, which a lot of times print can't allow for space issues, which online can. This is not to criticize anyone, but sometimes when you have short pieces in print, it doesn't allow room to go into depth. Online coverage gives good copy to our filmmakers that they can take home and do something with. That's the reality of it.

Guillén: I'm heartened to hear that. Beneath the aegis of film festival studies, consideration of the "written record" of any given film festival has become of importance to me. Much of it is manifesting online where the actual experience of a film festival can be chronicled, relying less on a thumbs-up thumbs-down critique of content. Social networking, microblogging, have become a new frequency of immediate and intense buzz for a festival.

Of related interest:

Want to ask the programmers your own questions? The San Francisco Film Society is sponsoring a SFFS Arts Forum panel on Monday, October 12, 7:30PM—"Meet the Programmers"—at The Mezzanine. Panelists include Nancy Fishman (SFJFF), Jennifer Morris (Frameline), Rachel Rosen (SFFS), Jeff Ross (SF IndieFEST), and Chi-hui Yang (SFIAAF), moderated by SF360's Susan Gerhard.

Film International Special Issue on Film Festivals (Vol. 6, Issue 4)

Film Festival Yearbook 1—A Response to Section One

Film Festival Yearbook 1—A Response to Section Two

Diaspora By the Bay: SFJFF—The Evening Class Interview With Program Director Nancy K. Fishman and Program Coordinator Joshua Moore

Diaspora By the Bay: 3rd i—The Evening Class Interview With Artistic Director Ivan Jagirdar and Administrative Director Anuj Vaidya

Photo of Chi-hui Yang courtesy of Jay Jao. Cross-published on Twitch.

DIASPORA BY THE BAY: SFJFF—The Evening Class Interview With Program Director Nancy K. Fishman and Program Coordinator Joshua Moore

As the 29th edition of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) draws near to wrapping up at The Castro Theatre—its San Francisco venue—and continues on through August 8 at Berkeley's Roda Theatre and Palo Alto's Cinearts, I felt now would be a good time to present the first in a series of research interviews I'm entitling "Diaspora By the Bay." This research is for a paper I'm writing for the next volume of The Film Festival Yearbook, which hopes to explore issues of disaporic content and constituency within the film festival circuit. SFJFF Program Director Nancy K. Fishman and Program Coordinator Joshua Moore were the first to make themselves available for this research project. Peter Stein, the festival's Executive Director, was hard-pressed to launch the festival and apologized for not being able to participate.

Establishing straight off that SFJFF follows the now-standard non-profit model of film festivals, bolstered by public funding, private donations, and supplementary membership/box office income, Nancy Fishman also advised that SFJFF is the only Jewish Film Festival in the United States that receives money from the National Endowment for the Arts. Locally, they receive funding from the San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund.

* * *

Michael Guillén: There has been some scholastic indication that Jewish film festivals were the first to organize themselves internationally with regard to community outreach and collaboration amongst each other, rather than the more customary competition expected between film festivals. Certainly, as I reviewed this year's program for SFJFF, I was struck by the festival's community involvement.

Lately, when I read festival programs, I find myself less interested in the capsules—whose synoptic purpose I respect but whose promotional incentive I've come to distrust—and more intrigued by who is co-presenting and co-sponsoring the films. In laymen's terms, could you state the distinction between co-sponsorship and co-presentation?

Nancy Fishman: Sponsors give us money. We're very grateful to have their money and—especially with individual donors—it makes them feel more connected to the festival because they will often gather a crowd of their friends to come to the film they've sponsored. Co-presenters are the people who help us spread the world about a particular film. Basically, we try to match up films with groups that are organized, fit well with that film, or will help us reach a particular constituency. There are probably 60-65 co-presenters at this year's festival. They cover a spectrum. We try very hard to work with a variety. We work with both Jewish and non-Jewish groups, several film groups like the San Francisco Film Society and the Mill Valley Film Festival. At this year's festival, the Asian American Film Festival is co-presenting A Matter of Size, a film about sumo wrestling in Israel. We also interact with groups across the political spectrum.

Guillén: I'm intrigued by SFJFF's diversity of co-presentation. Reviewing this year's program line-up, I saw more community organizations than consulates co-presenting programs. What is the nature of your festival's interaction with consulates?

Fishman: It's hard to get money from consulates. Consulates often fall inbetween sponsors and co-presenters because they don't have enough money to offer full sponsorship but they often will give us a little bit more. Last year, for example, we did a program on Italian Jews during the Holocaust and the Italian Cultural Institute gave us $5,000. That allowed us to bring in a 78-year-old Italian survivor from Auschwitz. This year the French Consulate—who has been hit by the same economic crisis as everyone else—gave money to the San Francisco International and to the Seattle International, who are part of their Northwestern purview. They try to give us help, sometimes through diplomatic pouches; but, we're not as big fry as the San Francisco International, so they don't give us the same amount of financial help. The Goethe Institut has always been very helpful to us, and sometimes the British Film Council, so we definitely work with them and have a friendly relationship. In the cases where we do a large program like last year's Italian program, we usually have been successful at getting more substantial funding.

Guillén: Without ongoing consular sponsorship, it's all the more remarkable what SFJFF has achieved through community outreach, addressing diasporic constituencies. For example, a year or so back SFJFF had a program on Ethiopian Jews. Quite honestly, until then, I didn't even know Ethiopian Jews existed. I interviewed Sirak Sabahat, one of the actors in that year's closing night film Radu Mihaileanu's Live and Become. I thoroughly enjoyed that revelatory conversation and have, since, begun monitoring how SFJFF constructs its programs to be inclusive of these disparate diasporic communities, both abroad and in the United States.

Joshua Moore: Speaking of Ethiopian Jews, at this year's festival we have an Ethiopian film called Zrubavel, based out of Israel. It's a wonderful film about a young boy who envisions himself as a Spike Lee film director and documents his family. His father is a street sweeper and the film shows this small Ethiopian community within Israel, thereby showing a diverse Israel.

Fishman: It's the first Ethiopian feature film made by an Ethiopian.

Guillén: The comment made about Jewish Film Festivals leading the pack in collaborative ventures and having an existing network they can rely upon, do you find that to be true?

Fishman: It's true to a certain extent, though I would say the Lesbian and Gay film festival circuit is incredibly organized. The Asian film circuit is a little bit smaller. The SFJFF was the first Jewish film festival in the world and now there are about 100 of them; 60 in the U.S. and 40 outside. The Jewish community already existed. If you think about the immigrant status of Jews in this country, Jews have been here for a long time, as opposed to some younger communities. There already was an infrastructure to some degree; but there have also been organizations that have played a role. Our's has been one of them. For a long time on our website we kept a list of other Jewish film festivals around the country and then the Foundation for Jewish Culture—which is based in New York and used to be called the National Foundation for Jewish Culture—has every 2 years over the last 6-8 years convened a meeting a Jewish film festivals from around the country. That really helped Jewish film festivals get organized. But it depends in what context. I go to the Berlin Film Festival every year and programmers from the Jewish film festivals still have to read through every program note and decide: "Could that be Jewish? The name of the director is Jewish or the name of one of the characters is Jewish…." Usually, we all read through the program and meet for lunch and discuss, "What do you think of this one?"

Years ago, I used to work for Frameline, San Francisco's gay and lesbian film festival, and when I went to Berlin for them, it was the same thing. But now in Berlin the Panorama office, which is one of the sections of the Berlinale, they actually do all the work for the gay and lesbian programmers. When they arrive, they're handed a list of every single gay film in the festival so they no longer have to do that "underground" thing of meeting in cafes to determine, "Maybe this is. Maybe this isn't." The same thing is now happening at Sundance. The Sundance press office provides an entire list of GLBT films. Different diasporic film festivals are probably organized in different ways; but, I do think it's true that the Jewish community has an infrastructure in most of the cities where Jewish film festivals are venued. Some Jewish film festivals are part of an institution; the Seattle festival is part of the JCC, for example. And some are independent like our's.

Guillén: It strikes me that SFJFF is commendably concerted in its effort to represent the diversity of the Jewish experience as expressed through diasporic content programmed for the festival. This year, by way of example, you have films addressing—as you mentioned earlier—the Ethiopian Jewish community within Israel, you have another about Argentine Jews, and yet another about the Australian Jewish community. How do you become aware of and acquire films with diasporic content? Do programmers from various Jewish film festivals recommend films to each other? Do you consolidate efforts to bring talent to your festivals?

Fishman: What film festival programmers do is not so different from what acquisition executives do, in that you have a tracking database. You look for films. We don't have very much money so we tend to only go to Sundance and Berlin, maybe one other film festival a year. I obviously wish we had the money to be flying all over; but, we don't. A lot of our programming is accomplished by looking at other film festivals—we keep a tracking list, a chronological calendar of festivals that we're interested in—and then Josh and I (more Josh, actually) go through and look at the websites of different film festivals. Of course, there are the key international film festivals: Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Tribeca, whatever. We also look at Jerusalem, Haifa, and Docaviv—the documentary film festival in Israel—and then we look at the program line-ups at other Jewish film festivals all over the world. We talk to other programmers. We definitely talk to the people at the UK Jewish Film Festival, the Amsterdam Jewish Film Festival, and the Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival. We also talk to programmers from mainstream film festivals and ask for advice. No one wants to do the work for you, but, you develop relationships over a period of time and you can ask about certain things. A lot of it involves maintaining relationships with filmmakers and distributors as well.

Guillén: With regard to interacting with other film festivals in the Bay Area—you've already mentioned a few—how does that collaboration work? Once you've solicited films, recognized their content, and decided to program them in your festival, do you then go through your rolodex to find the organizations or festivals that would best serve co-presentation? I'm trying to get a sense if there is a professional community of festival programmers whose collaboration is distinct to the Bay Area, in contrast to elsewhere. Also, in the process of interacting with other Bay Area film festivals, are you sharing content? Or costs to bring in talent? Or coordinating calendars to maximize the exposure of films and filmmakers in the Bay Area.

Moore: Yeah, there definitely is collaboration between film festivals in the Bay Area. As we mentioned, CAAM is co-presenting a film this year. We're in constant communication with the San Francisco International. If a film has played in another Bay Area film festival, and has already received a lot of press coverage, we will pass on it for our festival because it's already had its moment here. That's a consideration with all the film festivals, knowing what we are programming, so we don't schedule a film that has already played elsewhere.

Guillén: Whereas you do have a notable exception this year with Jenni Olsen's 575 Castro Street, which I believe has already shown at Frameline?

Moore: With shorts we're not so concerned about that. A lot of the shorts do play around. It's mainly feature films I'm talking about.

Guillén: I like how you acknowledge the importance of a film's "moment" within a festival. One of the avenues of film festival studies is an examination of the value of time and space and how it shapes festival experience. Time, and timing with regard to programming any given film for any given festival, speaks to the impact a film can have by being situated in any particular festival at any particular time.

Fishman: Most festivals want premieres.

Guillén: If a film you programmed in the festival is received well by your audiences, do you let other festivals know? Let's say the Seattle Jewish Film Festival was thinking of showing a film you've shown in your festival, would you tell them: "This film really worked for us and, even though it's not a premiere for you, it's worthy content"?

Fishman: I don't know what the San Francisco International's policies are now; but, most festivals want a Bay Area premiere. I don't know if the San Francisco International insists on a U.S. premiere for certain films. For a community-based festival like ours, I just want a Bay Area premiere because—in order to sell tickets—we receive so many films that it doesn't seem fair to give a slot to something that just played, y'know, a month earlier, with the exception of shorts.

There is a lot of communication between festivals. A lot of the programmers from other Jewish film festivals come to our festival; usually every year about 8-10 of them attend. We usually meet with them for bagels and coffee. People call and ask for advice. We don't have a print source list yet on the website so people are calling me and Josh every other day asking us to please send our print sources. The relationship between Bay Area film festivals is collegial. For example, if I go to a festival and I see something but I didn't end up picking it up for my festival, or even if it's not Jewish, I'll call one of my friends at Mill Valley and say, "This is great." I saw this film at Berlin this year about the slow food movement and I phoned Janis Plotkin—who now works at Mill Valley—and I said, "This would be a perfect Mill Valley film. I think people do that all the time.

We can't all show the same films and a lot of it is based on—for especially the more high quality films—that they're more likely to be bought by distributors or are in the middle of being sold. A lot of what films you get is based on the distributors and whether they want to give you the film and whether it fits into their release schedule. It's not that capricious. It's not that they like you or don't like you, or that you have such a great relationship with them or a terrible one. It helps if you've worked with a distributor year after year and also if you've helped them promote a couple of other films during the year; but, a lot of times it's whether it fits into their release schedule.

What distinguishes our festival from a lot of the other Jewish film festivals—not from all of them but a lot of them—is that we adhere to a tradition started by Janis Plotkin and Deborah Kaufmann, continued by Peter Stein who is the head of the organization and also programming, in selecting high quality films. Josh has only been here a year but one of the reasons I enjoy working with him is because he has fabulous taste in film. So we are excited about showing great films. But in terms of competing with other festivals for U.S. premieres, insisting—let's say—that Seattle can't show a film before us, that's not going to help either the film or the filmmaker. And it's not going to help us sell any more tickets.

We love it when we get a U.S. premiere; we're not so kumbaya that we don't care about having some North American or U.S. premiere. It's always nice to tell the press that; but, we're not going to say to a film, "You can't play here because you played in Seattle three months ago."

Guillén: With regard to the spectacular dimension of your festival, how do you negotiate and secure talent?

Fishman: It's usually connected to a film. It's usually hard to bring talent if they're not in a film. It's expensive for community-based festivals to get high-level talent. It usually requires business or first class tickets and I always joke that—when you say the word business or first class—it's like saying "communism" to Senator McCarthy. We have gotten some high profile people here. We had Gila Almagor here and she's the grand dame of Israeli cinema. We've had Amos Gitai who's a major international director. We do try to get high level talent here; but, it's not always easy. Sometimes it involves paying more money for a ticket.

Moore: This year we tried to get Natalie Portman to come because we found her directorial debut, a short film called Eve, which debuted at Venice last year, I believe. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get her.

Guillén: In negotiating for high-level talent, is that where collaboration with regional festivals and local organizations might help?

Fishman: It's very hard to organize. We brought two documentary filmmakers last year—the Heymann brothers—and we collaborated with a museum in Los Angeles. We shared the cost of their air tickets. But it's very hard to coordinate. Most stars want to come for just a day. I used to work in publicity so I've dealt a lot with talent. It can get very expensive and costly. They sometimes want to travel with a spouse or a friend and—though we usually have drivers hired by the festival, driving nice Toyota Priuses loaned to us thankful to Toyota San Francisco—that's not good enough. You have to get a limo to go pick them up at the airport. Some stars require hair and make-up. I've actually encountered stars who only have certain people work on their hair and face so then you have to fly in the hair and make-up person because it's not acceptable to get the best hair and make-up person in the Bay Area. It can get very expensive.

It's hard to collaborate. I think also because our festival is in the Summer, it's more difficult to collaborate with the universities. If we were situated in November, we could call the Jewish Studies Department at Stanford or—not even just Jewish—we could call the Mideastern contemporary, political or film department and say, "Would you like to split the cost?" We are collaborating with the Israel Center and the JCC to bring in Ari Folman in October. That's a case where three organizations said, "Let's split the cost for this." We're going to show Waltz With Bashir and bring him in.

Guillén: Thank you for those examples. I'm glad to hear such collaborations do exist. So once you've shaped your program with its diasporic content, I'm interested in how you then address diasporic constituencies to encourage them to come see the films? How do you get the word out to them, or do you even try?

Fishman: We certainly try. We have an outreach coordinator. We have marketing people. When we did the Ethiopian program, we distributed flyers and I believe we had them translated into Amharic. I live in Oakland and personally went up and down to every Ethiopian restaurant in Oakland and dropped off flyers. With the Russian community, we occasionally translate fliers or emails and send them out. We've made an effort to reach the community. Not everybody is internet-savvy. For a while there some communities were more internet-savvy than others.

Guillén: So hypothetically then, on your rolodex you have listings of local organizations of specific diasporic identities that—when you get a film that has a particular diasporic theme—you're able to readily contact those people and access their mailing lists? And they're cooperative?

Fishman: Yes, they are. We even do co-presentations with the Arab Film Festival.

Guillén: I am much impressed with SFJFF's policy to maintain dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian communities.

Fishman: We enjoy it. They've co-presented films at our festival; we've co-presented films at their festival.

Guillén: I also admire SFJFF's awareness of the social activism potential in film. This year you're even sponsoring a panel "Reel Change: Social Justice Films" wherein social justice is examined as an element of Jewishness.

Fishman: With our help, Peter Stein curated that program. There was a range of high quality documentaries this year that dealt with different issues of social activism. I get a little uncomfortable personally when people talk about Jews having a monopoly on morality or the whole concept of tikkun olam—healing the world—which is something that's deeply engrained in Jewish culture, both secular and religious. I don't believe we have a monopoly on it. I think other communities are also committed to social activism. Perhaps it's more recognized in Jewish culture? It's a tradition that a range of people in the community have been proud of. Peter has done an excellent job of maintaining a commitment to social activism; but, it started with Deborah and Janis. When the festival was founded, it was somewhat exclusive, whereas now we've become a part of the fabric of the Jewish and cinematic communities.

The festival was founded in reaction to the fact that there weren't many positive images of Jews on film, which is so ironic because there are a lot of Jews behind the Hollywood industry. Also because a lot of mainstream Jewish media didn't deal with either the conflict in Israel or Jewish GLBT representation. Both Janis and Deborah were not lesbian but were prescient and forward-looking in terms of actively pursuing gay and lesbian films to share with the Jewish community, which was pretty radical at that time. Twenty-nine years ago no one would imagine that the Jewish Community Federation would have a gay and lesbian section where people paid to go to this work. There have also been environmental films, like the work of Judith Helfand (Blue Vinyl, 2002). Social activism covers a range; but, it is exciting and has always been a part of our festival. It's something we do well.

Guillén: In terms of press tiering, do you have different categories of press for your festival?

Fishman: No.

Guillén: I'm glad to hear that. I'm aware that many festivals have distinct accreditation for red carpet press assigned to handle celebrity journalism and "regular" press covering the films. But when press is accredited for your festival, they're on equal parity?

Fishman: Yes.

Guillén: And you don't play favorites with any local press?

Fishman: No.

Guillén: That's so nice to hear.

Fishman: It is nice. That's part of being a community-based festival. If we had Natalie Portman or Woody Allen, we'd probably get a red carpet—though we ordinarily don't have a red carpet—but, we wouldn't tier the press. We might engage in some more pomp and circumstance, but we wouldn't start tiering.

Guillén: SFJFF is clearly internet-savvy, how about distinctions between print and online press?

Fishman: We don't distinguish, in terms of amount of time we allow for interviews or access to films. Every accredited journalist is on Karen Larsen's press list. The only event where we sometimes don't have room for all of the press is opening night; but we set aside 55-70 tickets. The Castro is huge and it's very rare that press can't get in. All press can come to everything.

Guillén: Why do you use an external publicist rather than handle publicity in-festival?

Fishman: Because Karen Larsen is fabulous!

Guillén: She's the best in the business, isn't she?

Fishman: Also, it's very hard. During a film festival it's like trying to put an elephant through the eye of a needle. We have so much work. There are times when Josh and Peter and I work 70 hours a week just trying to get everything done. I happen to have a PR background, but most programmers are savvy about it but don't develop the year-round relationships; that's another critical reason to hire an outside publicist. I talk to press people at a few festivals a year when I see them or during this crunch period of time, but someone like Karen is on the phone or email with everybody 10 times a day. It makes much more sense to hire a professional.

Guillén: As a festival, what do you expect or hope press will do for you?

Fishman: I hope that they would help us find an audience. I'm a practical person. I like press who are smart and do their homework because we've all worked very hard. Obviously, if you're writing for 7x7 you're writing a paragraph so I don't expect their writers to watch 20 films; but, I love it when press gets something. Occasionally—like when we did a program of Jews on the Hollywood black list—it's clear if a press person has read about the subject, thought about it, watched the films, and they write about them with insights we hadn't even thought about. That's exciting. I love working with press. They're usually smart and interested and excited about what they're working.

Guillén: In the shift towards digital formats—not only in how films are made and projected—but, in how press can access and preview a program line-up, I commend SFJFF for retaining literal press screenings where journalists can watch a film on a screen as it's meant to be seen. These days, however, most festivals are asking journalists to watch films on DVD screener, with which I'm conflicted. Do you ever fear that by asking press to watch films on screener, they're not actually seeing the film? And can't truthfully review it?

Moore: That's always a concern. We sometimes wish we could attach a webcam to journalists checking out screeners to see if they're genuinely sitting down to watch them or if they're doing their laundry and folding their socks while watching them.

Guillén: How did you know I was folding my socks while watching screeners? [Laughter.]

Moore: The hope is that—whether you watch a film on the small screen or the big screen—you can connect to it.

Guillén: I watch films on DVD screener to catch narratives and storylines; but, I often feel I'm not able to comment on the visual elements of a film, for fear that—as James Quandt recently articulated for me—I'm watching a facsimile. In terms of the shift to digital exhibition, roughly how many films in your festival are on celluloid?

Fishman: I would say maybe a third. It could be a little less.

Guillén: Have your audiences noticed or responded to that shift in technology? Do you think they're even aware that they're watching a digital projection?

Fishman: I would say this is where a community-based audience is maybe less savvy than an audience going to, let's say, the San Francisco International. There's HD and Digibeta, and they're looking better all the time, but I think audiences respond to archival prints, especially if the film is not available on DVD. If you actually list the film as an archival print in the program, or that it's a recently-struck new print, audiences are excited. Audiences still recognize the depth of film.

Guillén: That's another thing I've been observing about the spectacular dimension of film festivals: it's not only about scoring talent, but frequently archival prints. The prints themselves have become like movie stars and you half expect cans to come walking up the red carpet.

Fishman: I went to see Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence when it played at the Castro and they had the guy from the UCLA film and television archive come up to talk about the film for five minutes. Here's a guy who's normally behind a desk who suddenly has his five minutes of glory and he was very articulate. It was exciting to hear him talk about how they restored the print. The audience was rapt and hanging on every word. So I agree with you. People who are veteran cineastes have a taste for knowing what that is and how it's changing.

Guillén: When I recently discussed this with James Quandt, he mentioned that familiarity with DVD commentaries has created a necessity for exhibition "add-ons", either talent, parties, scholars….

Fishman: Value added.

Guillén: Has SFJFF felt a need to satisfy that appetite?

Fishman: Yes, to some extent.

Moore: Within our budget, we try to get as many filmmakers as we can, especially for the discussions afterwards. Q&As are what make a film festival more of an event than just going to a movie.

Guillén: How do you go about structuring what you're going to program? I imagine it's a piecemeal process? You've mentioned you attend festivals and catch films there, or gather recommendations from colleagues?

Fishman: All festivals could do a better job. We could too. Sometimes you end up doing retrospectives or sidebars based on zeitgeist. Suddenly you realize there's a whole bunch of films about Ethiopian Jews. That was actually the case that year with the program on Ethiopian Jews. We did not set out to do that program. We just suddenly realized we had several films on the topic, and they were new and important to showcase. Some years we plan programs in advance. For example, the program on the Jews on the Hollywood black list, the one on Jewish boxers, last year's program of Italian Jews during Fascism, sometimes you realize you have a group of films that fit together in a certain way. For the larger events like the Freedom of Expression Award where we're doing a filmmaker retrospective, we really need to plan in advance. Sometimes it's really the programmer's interest because you're slaving away sending emails back and forth and sometimes you need something that excites you. This year Josh created an animation program. When he hired on he said he wanted to do an animation program and I said, "Go for it."

Moore: "Jewtoons" is the first-ever collection of animated shorts; 15 shorts from Israel and the States. Several of these animators are coming out of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and the Minshar School of the Arts in Tel Aviv and they are the future of the animation world. This last year—with Waltz With Bashir being released as the first Israeli animation feature and all the accolades that went along with that—it got me thinking of all the animation in Israel that we don't know about. These young animators coming out of these schools are doing tremendous work and, hopefully, that's indicative of the "Jewtoons" program.

Guillén: Without going film by film, can you state what you are most excited about with this year's festival?

Fishman: I'm excited about Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, the documentary by Aviva Kempner. Some filmmakers make tons and tons of film but she hasn't made that many films—maybe four or five—but they've taken 10 years to research. Her documentary on Hank Greenberg was also like that. Aviva's done a great job with Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg. We're actually showing four archival episodes of The Goldbergs, a television series from 1946-51. I watched about 15-20 episodes and narrowed it down to these four.

Guillén: As a curatorial aside, where did you find those television episodes?

Fishman: Some were housed at the Jewish Museum in New York and some at UCLA's Film and Television Archive.

Guillén: And you, Joshua? Other than your animation program, is there something else you're really excited about?

Moore: I'm excited about our music program actually, which is called the Puppet Folk Revival "Rockin' Puppet Mayhem." It's based off of street performers in Tel Aviv who performed folky-rock songs as puppets. It caught on and they developed a TV show about it called Red Band, about a struggling musician who can only play in Israel because he's so burnt out everywhere else—a '60s rocker washed up—and it's kind of South Park humor meets The Muppets, with Spinal Tap elements.

Guillén: This is the live performance?

Moore: Yes.

Guillén: What is the role of a live performance in a film festival?

Moore: That's a good question. Like Nancy said, it's the value added. It's something else to offer people beside a film. Obviously, it has to have a relation to film and Puppet Folk Revival will have media that they'll be showing as part of their performance. It's more than just a music event.

Guillén: Another "add-on" that I'm finding has become popular among Bay Area festival programmers is the token, free-to-the-public open air screenings. I note that SFJFF is co-presenting an open air screening of Manhattan with the San Francisco Neighborhood Theatre Foundation. Have you done open air screenings before?

Fishman: We have not. It's exciting and should be fun. Hopefully it will be warm that night.

Guillén: The only drawback in San Francisco.

Moore: As Nancy was saying, when we start to program all the films, we notice patterns and evolving themes, and one of those this year was coming-of-age stories, films that focused on teens or people in their early 20s discovering their sexuality or overcoming family tragedies, so we've included several of those films, many of which are from first-time directors.

Guillén: Federico Veiroj's Acné is in that group. Which leads me to another question. Acné premiered last year in the Directors Fortnight at Cannes and then touched down on North American soil at the Toronto International where I found myself wondering who would pick it up for the Bay Area. Would it be the San Francisco International? The Jewish Film Festival? The International Latino Film Festival? It could have been programmed in any of those festivals. How is that negotiated between Bay Area festivals? Do you put out an alert: "I have dibs on Acné?"

Fishman: No, no, no. Sometimes there is some conversation between festival programmers about a film; but, it's rare. Mostly, we just all try for it. My guess is that—with the San Francisco International—it wasn't on their radar or they didn't like it, who knows? Sometimes—with some of the larger film festivals where some of the programmers are more conscientious or may have worked in a community-based festival before—I have called and said, "I want this film for my opening night. Would you consider not going after it?" Some programmers have been very responsive.

Guillén: Interesting. I would say that the programmers with the San Francisco International are "personality" programmers who choose films largely based upon their personal likes and dislikes. You can almost bet that if there's a Latin American film in the festival, it will be a slow-moving character-driven narrative because that's what Linda Blackaby likes. That's a generalization for purposes of discussion and, of course, more power to SFFS. However, what I admire about SFJFF is that it appears the programmers are making efforts to cater to your community. You don't program just what you like.

Fishman: That's what's different about programming for a community-based festival. You have an obligation to think about what the community is interested in. If you program a lesbian and gay film festival and you're interested in slow experimental films but never show a transgender film, you will eventually hear from your community that you're not serving them, or serving part of them. With good reason. The community supports us. As a film festival, we're not beholden to them; but, if you're truly part of the community, you need to keep in mind what people are interested in seeing.

Moore: That being said, we're still looking for the best quality of films that are out there and available. We might not program a film on orthodox Jews simply because there's not one we feel is strong enough. We don't want to throw one in just because we don't have an orthodox Jew film.

Guillén: In terms of new digital platforms, can you talk about SFJFF's New Media Initiative?

Fishman: Yeah, we launched the New Media Initiative when we received some funding from the Righteous Persons Foundation. The New Media Initiative has several components. We are now streaming a short film every month online.

Moore: We debuted with two shorts, which will be up until the end of July. After that there will be a new short every month. The first two are also showing in the festival but it's a chance for people to watch the full version on our website and, hopefully, that will get them excited about the other shorts that we've programmed in the festival this year. One of them is an Israeli animated short called Escapism and the other is a Hungarian short called With A Little Patience.

Guillén: What prompted or motivated the New Media Initiative?

Fishman: The whole world is going in the direction of digital media. It was forward-thinking of Peter Stein.

Guillén: He's pretty smart, isn't he?

Fishman: He's very smart. He didn't want to miss the boat. Over a year ago, he convened a group of new media/new technology people for a visioning session and then he applied for the funding from the Righteous Persons Foundation and received it. It's a phased project. Years ago you could browse our archive, but now it's been updated so that you can browse the entire archive of 1,200-1,400 films that we've shown in the festival over all 29 years. You can look at photos and eventually what we would like to do—though we're not going to go into distribution—we'd like to point people to print sources or advise if the film is available on Amazon, Netflix, or whatever. But it's an exciting resource to be able to search the films by country, language or a specific actor. With most film festival websites, when you want to look up a film that's been programmed in a previous festival, you have to play the shell game and figure out first what year it was in, etc.

Guillén: Does this resource include program capsules?

Fishman: Yes, it does. If someone's doing research 50 years from now, it will be great to look at a film—whether it's Acné or a more political film like Rachel—and compare the program notes from 50 different film festivals, some that were Jewish, some that weren't, to see what people say about it.

Guillén: My final question concerns volunteers. How do volunteers help you run this community-based film festival?

Fishman: We couldn't do it without them. We have more than 200-250 volunteers. We screen at four different venues so we do volunteer solicitation in each community. We gather in our volunteers and do volunteer training. They help us before the festival with office administrative work. They help us by distributing catalogs and the whole marketing effort. And then they help us during the festival taking tickets, showing people their seats, everything. We absolutely couldn't do SFJFF—it couldn't function—without volunteers.

Guillén: Does SFJFF offer internships to young people wanting to break into film festival management?

Fishman: We do. In fact, right now we have probably five or six interns. Sometimes it's for college credit. We have one PR intern right now who goes to Hampton University in Virginia and she's getting college credit by working with us. Some people intern as a way to understand how the festival works. I did some internships when I was younger and the worst thing is to show up and have nothing to do so it's important for a festival to structure its internships so that their interns have something interesting to do.

Guillén: Do you consider SFJFF the mothership of all Jewish film festivals?

Fishman: I'd call it the grandmother of all Jewish film festivals.

Cross-published on Twitch.