Meg Smaker: the power of stories through disruptive filmmaking

Posted on March 7, 2016 by Patty

Controversy is part of the nature of art and creativity.
– Yoko Ono, Japanese multimedia artist, singer and peace activist

Documentary filmmaker Meg Smaker.

Documentary filmmaker Meg Smaker likes to tell stories about subjects that people think they know about and disrupt that “knowledge” with an “unsuspecting point of view” – and at the same time, upend the perspective shared by a lot of films that deal with the same topic. “I call it the ‘boat theory,'” she explained. People on a whale-watching expedition congregate on one side of the boat, say the right side, and take lots of different pictures – but of the same whale. “I like to hang out on the left side,” Meg counters. “Maybe I see nothing, but maybe I see an orca shagging a mermaid. The point is, the stories I find most interesting are the ones that have not been told…yet – and to find them you have to hang out on the left side.”

In search of the human element
All of her documentaries share that trait – from Methal Island, “a meditation on meth,” to Somalia & the Piracy Bell Curve, which examines Somalia’s political economy and its impact on piracy off the Somalian coast, to Boxeadora: ‘one woman’s revolution in Cuba,’ about Namibia Flores, Cuba’s first female boxer, and her quest for Olympic glory. The latter documentary was chosen as one of six short films for this year’s LUNAFEST film festival, “by, for, about women.” Whereas many films about Cuba tend to be political and often anti-Castro, Boxeadora delivers what these films lack – “the human element, the texture of the culture, and the people’s spirit.” “The human element is the most compelling thing that changes us and connects us,” Meg said.

Meg filming in Cuba.

That human element is often missing in traditional network news, which is reduced to “sound bites and facts,” according to Meg. When journalists file reports overseas, for example, they’re driven to deliver the news first and as a result are handicapped by time constraints, which prevent them from discovering and sharing the underlying stories. Furthermore, some topics are presented from only one perspective – à la the boat theory. Methamphetamine, for example, has been frequently covered in the national news with a majority of U.S. counties reporting that meth is their most serious drug problem, according to the 2013 World Drug Report by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime. “All of the news about meth was totally focused on the negatives, which dehumanized people,” Meg pointed out. Media accounts ignored what drew people to the drug. In Methal Island, therefore, Meg spent two-thirds of the documentary focusing on the benefits of meth.

Scene from Methel Island.

On becoming a documentary filmmaker
Meg, who hails from Brentwood, Calif., and grew up in Oakland, left college after two years and spent the next five years as a firefighter and nearly five years afterwards living in Yemen and Quatar before returning home. Those life experiences fueled her desire to become a documentary filmmaker. Before she earned her MFA in Documentary Film at Stanford, she earned a BA with honors in Political, Legal, and Economic Analysis (PLEA) at Mills College, which provided her with a solid foundation for achieving her goal. “Stories are the most powerful thing in the world – more powerful than statistics or facts. A good story can illuminate a truth that simple statistics and facts alone never could,” she asserted. That said, she went on, “Stories are founded in holistic research, getting the context to really understand the deeper truth.”

Filming her documentary Pistols to Porn.

As a published scholar, Meg has conducted field research in Somalia, The Balkans, and North Africa. The seed for Somalia & the Piracy Bell Curve was an article she had published in an academic journal, which incorporated more than two years’ worth of research on Somalia. Given the small audience drawn by academic journals, she wanted to take her findings and reach a larger audience. To tell the story, Meg employed stop-motion animation, whose inviting yet simplistic style was an ideal medium to help make the subject matter accessible to the masses.

Setting up the scene for Methel Island using Claymation.

Changing the business paradigm for documentary filmmaking
Having a unique, disruptive point of view has its challenges, but Meg’s confronting those barriers head-on. She founded the nonprofit Doc Farm Films in 2014 after Methel Island garnered Best Documentary awards at numerous film festivals but no grants for which it was eligible. The traditional financing vehicles for documentaries are grants and foundations, which award funding to align with their goal of raising awareness of and creating impact for specific issues. While Meg understands the desire of investors to fund documentaries to support various social justice issues, she asserted, “I don’t want to save the world; I just want to understand it. I want to help people understand the world better.”

Changing the human face with Claymation on the documentary Methel Island.

Unfortunately, documentaries that don’t fit in any categories because they aren’t issue based aren’t getting funded. Furthermore, because of lack of funding filmmakers are being discouraged from exploring a whole other world, which ultimately shrinks our global view – something Meg feels is a dangerous and precarious state of being. For all those reasons, she insists, “I got into documentary films not to save the world, but to understand it. And for me the best way to understand something is through stories. When I was young my mother used to read to me, but she never read me bedtime issues, it was always bedtime stories. We are prewired to consume story – and through them expand our understanding of the world.”

Telling Methel Island’s story via Claymation.

She hopes that Doc Farm Films can change the paradigm of how documentaries are funded. Boxeadora, which is the nonprofit’s first project, earned several accolades but did not receive any preproduction grants from the more than 30 applications that were sent out, according to Meg. “Through Doc Farm Films, I want to continue to do these kinds of stories and come up with a new business model moving forward,” she explained. In the meantime, Meg envisions Doc Farm Films to serve as a network for filmmakers who aren’t getting funded because their films don’t fit into any of the traditional grant categories and who want to help foster understanding of the world through their stories. Her ultimate dream is that the nonprofit can grow big enough to financially support these filmmakers’ projects.

Filming a sparring scene for Boxeadora.

Boxeadora’s backstory
Meg met Namibia Flores when she traveled to Cuba to train as a boxer. She took up the sport six years ago after coming back from the Middle East, saying, “I always wanted to know how to fight.” She immediately took to it. Meg admitted that she can’t sit still, so boxing has become her form of meditation, a way to stay centered and relaxed. “You have to be in the moment,” she explained, “or else be vulnerable to taking a blow.” Namibia became her training partner and their relationship blossomed into friendship. After returning to the U.S. after several months of training in Cuba, Meg decided to make a film about Namibia’s story.

Behind the scenes for Boxeadora.

Boxeadora was the most challenging film for Meg to make for myriad reasons. From a technical standpoint, everything that could possibly go wrong did. For instance, on the third day of shooting, her computer malfunctioned, preventing her from uploading her footage, and other equipment broke along the way. She ran out of 9V batteries and discovered that because of the embargo in Cuba, there were no 9V batteries to be had in the country. The other more delicate issue was that it was Meg’s first film to have a friend be the subject of the documentary. “It was hard to separate the roles of friend and filmmaker,” she explained. “I had to remain in professional mode as storyteller.” That said, Meg admitted that some scenes ended up on the editing floor, a result of wearing her friend hat and being caught up in the emotional part of Namibia’s story.

Filming a ringside scene from above for Boxeadora.

Meg had applied for grants before she went to Cuba to film. When she returned, she called to find out why she had been rejected for a particular grant. The male grantor carried on about how a woman couldn’t possibly go to Cuba, with its “machismo culture,” and make such a film. “It is not going to happen,” he bluntly told her. When she explained that she’d already returned from filming, “a long awkward pause followed,” Meg related, and laughed. “There’s a strange preconceived notion that women are not suited to do certain subjects – meth, boxing.”

Meg Smaker, momentarily at rest.

Forging headstrong ahead
In another instance of experiencing gender bias as a woman filmmaker, one Hollywood agent who was interested in Boxeadora asked Meg if her next project would be about kid issues, which is blatantly far removed from her interests, based on her filmography. While a reaction to the audacity of these ill-informed comments, her laughter in recounting these stories reveals a ready dismissiveness of the mentality that perpetuates gender inequality in the industry.

What’s important and what keeps her grounded is “never losing the awe of storytelling,” which can be a challenge given the demands inherent in the film industry, especially the longer one is in the field. “I never lose sight of the magic of storytelling,” she said. Just as important is honoring one’s unique view and incorporating that view and one’s experiences into the film. “What’s out there (in terms of films) doesn’t represent what’s out there (in the world),” Meg said. And those stories need to be told and shared.

Note: You can see Meg’s short film at LUNAFEST East Bay’s screening on Saturday, March 19^th, 7:30pm, at the El Cerrito High School’s Performing Arts Theater. For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.

Sarah Feeley: opening people’s minds through film

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Patty

A film, a piece of theatre, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world.
– Alan Rickman, British actor and director

Sarah Feeley at Well Grounded Tea & Coffee Bar, El Cerrito, CA.

In 2010, reporting of LGTBQ (lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, queer) suicides in the U.S. spiked in the media. The following year, a National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that a staggering 41 percent of transgender and gender non-conforming people had attempted suicide, compared to a national average of 4.6 percent. Furthermore, more than 50 percent of transgender youth will have had at least one suicide attempt by their 20^th birthday, according to the national Youth Suicide Prevention Program. “It [the phenomenon] was so heartbreaking, that I really wanted to do something about it,” filmmaker Sarah Feeley told me in a recent interview. She wanted to know where the positive stories were, finding answers to the question: “Where are the parents who are lovingly and supportively raising LGBTQ youth?”

Still from Raising Ryland (photo credit: Mile Marker Entertainment).

So Sarah went in search of these parents and these families. Among the “amazing group of parents” she met, Hillary Whittington came forward, wanting to share her story, along with her husband, Jeff, and their child. Thus began Sarah’s journey to make the documentary short, Raising Ryland, which was chosen as one of six films for this year’s LUNAFEST film festival. When Sarah set out to make the film, she wanted to “make a difference in one child’s life,” which would define the ultimate success of the film.

The Whittington family (photo credit: Vikki Dinh).

A year and a half into the project, CNN Films contacted Sarah. CNN Films and its partner CNN Digital Studios were looking to support new, original short-documentary content for their new programming effort. Raising Ryland was among the first three films released on CNN.com as part of the program. “CNN Films is very filmmaker-centric,” Sarah explained. “They supported my vision for the film through the entire process and were fantastic partners.” CNN shared the film internally and excitement spread across the organization, with the news department wanting to write a feature article on Raising Ryland. “It shows how powerful sharing a story like this can be,” Sarah pointed out. “We saw it happening right there at CNN.” On the film’s online launch date, March 18, 2015, CNN interviewed Sarah, and an article accompanied the film on the home page.

Seeing our reflection in the universe
The reaction to the film was “overwhelmingly positive,” according to Sarah. “In making this film, I recognized the emotional risk the family was taking and just how vulnerable they are by sharing their story,” she said. “What the Whittingtons did, by sharing their story, takes a tremendous amount of courage.”

Ryland’s self-portrait of himself before he could talk (photo credit: Mile Marker Entertainment).

Sarah was worried that the Whittingtons would be attacked for sharing their story. “I really wanted the audience to feel like it was a positive story that honored Ryland’s identity and Hillary and Jeff’s support,” she said. Some members of the transgender community, however, felt that Ryland’s parents had “outed” him to the world and thus endangered him, and questioned whether the film was in Ryland’s best interest. “One of the reasons Hillary wanted to share this story,” Sarah emphasized, “is because Ryland wanted to share his story.” When the family attended The Transgender Day of Empowerment in San Diego, Ryland, who was five years old at the time, asked his mother if he could go up and tell his story like the other speakers on stage did. “He’s just a remarkable, amazing child,” Sarah said, of Ryland.

A happy Ryland in sunshine (photo credit: Mile Marker Entertainment).

Ryland was born “profoundly deaf,” but wasn’t diagnosed until he was 13 months old. While some members of the deaf community may disagree with parents who choose cochlear implants for their children, Sarah explained, “Hillary and Jeff are a hearing family, and when they found out that Ryland was a candidate for cochlear implants, they wanted him to be able to have access to sound.” Interestingly, people with cochlear implants have reached out in support of the family’s decision, including trans-people with cochlear implants. At the heart of it, Sarah noted, “Everybody wants to see themselves reflected out there in the universe, and for people who have less mainstream identities, it can really be hard to find. That’s why stories like these are vitally important.”

Sarah on Mt. Hood.

A production company of her own: sharing stories, opening minds
In 2014, Sarah founded her production company, Mile Marker Entertainment, which grew out of her last two projects, My Side of the Sky and Raising Ryland. My Side of the Sky, which she sold to Hulu, was a six-episode television show profiling six teenagers who attend Windells Academy, a unique boarding school for skaters, skiers, and snowboarders. When My Side of the Sky was released on Hulu, she began setting up Raising Ryland with CNN Films. Sarah noted that she’s been fortunate to bring in work either with projects like Raising Ryland or more client-based work to keep her company thriving. Meanwhile, Raising Ryland has been making the rounds at film festivals, including Atlanta, Barcelona, Helsinki, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Melbourne. And Hillary’s book by the same name of the film is being published by HarperCollins this month.

Sarah Feeley.

At heart, Sarah says, “I’m a dreamer. I do think it’s possible if we raise our voices, we can make real and lasting change. The key is that you have to share your stories. As a filmmaker, I get the chance to work with people who are brave enough to do that. I hope that the stories that we tell make a lasting impact.” If the reception to Raising Ryland is any indication, Sarah’s hope will surely become a reality. “When people get a chance to experience a story or perspective that’s different from their own, it opens minds,” she said, with a nod to her short film. “On a very basic level, as humans, we all crave the desire to be wholly and authentically known for who we truly are. The world is a better place when all people can live open and honest lives.”

Note: You can see Sarah’s short film at LUNAFEST East Bay’s screening on Saturday, March 19^th, 7:30pm, at the El Cerrito High School’s Performing Arts Theater. For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.

Hanna Maylett: creating films from the ‘margin’

Posted on January 20, 2016 by Patty

I remember my overwhelming sense of anticipation and excitement at the world – the world being My Place by the fallen birch log, with the grass, the insects in the grass, the sky, the sheep and cows and rabbits, the wax-eyes and hawks – everything Outside . . . and the way I was filled with longing for it.
– Janet Frame, New Zealand novelist, short story writer, and poet, from her autobiography, To the Is-Land

Hanna Maylett

When Hanna Maylett was 13 years old, she announced to her mother that she wanted to become a film director. Her three younger siblings were child actors in films and television movies in their homeland of Finland. Although she, too, auditioned for roles, she didn’t get any parts. “I guess the only option for me was to get behind the camera!” Hanna joked. She chose well, given her rich filmography spanning 20 years, which includes seven short and feature-length films and several television mini-series. At the time of her announcement, she also told her mother that she couldn’t go to film school right after high school because “a film director needs life experience.” So she took a year off after graduation to travel before attending UIAH Helsinki (now Aalto University) to study film and graduating in 2000. “I always knew I wanted to tell stories and in a visual way, so cinematic storytelling was really the only option for me,” Hanna let me know in an email interview.

While in high school, Hanna saw Jane Campion’s film, An Angel at My Table (1990), a luminous film based on the three-book autobiography of New Zealand writer Janet Frame, who grew up impoverished, suffered numerous tragedies during her childhood, and was misdiagnosed and committed to a mental institution for eight years before winning a national writing award that literally set her free. The film was, as Hanna relates, her “greatest inspiration professionally.” “I realized it was possible to create worlds and characters that are meaningful and personal to me,” she said. “I have never seen anything as insightful, powerful, and intimate on-screen before. Campion’s film told about a woman’s vulnerability as a creative strength.” Hanna came to realize later that it was the first film that she saw that had “female protagonists taking an action.”

A scene from the television series, The Limit.

A scene from the television mini-series, The Limit.

Hanna’s filmography
Of her television mini-series, her most successful is The Limit (2014), a story of three women at different ages at the turning point of their lives, which was short-listed for Prix Italia (2014) and Prix Europa (2015). Of Hanna’s seven films – including her graduation film Good Girls (2000), Suburban Virgin (2003), Sisters Apart (2008), and First World Problems (2015), the latter having been chosen for this year’s LUNAFEST – two are autobiographical. The silent short The Rose of the Railroad (1996) tells of her grandmother’s choice between two suitors who came from the front of the same train. The feature-length documentary 100 Clocks (1998) focuses on her grandfather’s voluntary enlistment as a 17-year-old in the German army during WWII. In this “very private film” about her and her grandfather, whom she never got along with very well, Hanna related that he was never the same after the experience. He was a watchmaker by trade, and Hanna had childhood memories of the 100 clocks ticking in his office, where she slept when she visited. Clocks served as a metaphor in the film of her grandfather’s “neurotic need for precision,” which Hanna believed was a result of his time served in the German army. “It was my journey into his past, trying to understand him,” she said, of the making of 100 Clocks, which won the Prix Europa prize in Berlin in 2000.

A still from 100 Clocks – Hanna’s brother trying on their grandfather’s uniform – from the IDFA Festival site.

Exploring societal ills
I was intrigued by Helping Mihaela (2012), a feature documentary about Hanna trying to help a 16-year-old Romanian Roma beggar with, as the movie trailer hints, “unexpected results.” With a population of 10 million, the Roma is one of Europe’s largest minority groups, spanning a broad range of communities, tribes, and clans. As a disadvantaged group, it has become the convenient scapegoat for societal ills. Hanna read a newspaper article about a Romanian Roma teenaged beggar, Mihaela, who gave birth at the Helsinki railway station in the middle of winter and, as a result, was deported to Romania. “Her situation really shocked me,” Hanna related. In an interview at the Astra Film Festival Sibiu in Romania in 2012, she said of the deportation, “I thought it was racist. I didn’t think it could happen in Finland.” Like many European countries experiencing cultural, political, and socio-economic upheaval resulting from immigration, Finland was grappling with the recent influx of Romanian Roma beggars coming to Helsinki and facing outright bigotry.

A pensive Mihaela in her home country of Romania.

While a friend suggested that Hanna make a film about Mihaela, Hanna knew that wanted to investigate the events surrounding the girl’s situation. During the filming in Romania, she discovered that she was only seeing the proverbial tip of the iceberg: “The issue isn’t about one group – it’s so much more,” she pointed out in the Astra interview. One of the biggest problems is the “criminality and corruption” of the entrenched “social hierarchical structures” in central and eastern Europe, which adds to the already complex issue surrounding the Roma, according to Hanna. “Every time there is a poor man, there is always someone who takes advantage of him,” she recounted in the interview, “and there is always someone who is poorer than that man.”

The Romanian Roma landscape.

The reaction to the film in her homeland was “diverse,” according to Hanna. The “ordinary” movie-goer sympathized with Mihaela’s struggles, although audience members said they would stop giving money to the Roma beggars as a result of having seen her film. Some journalists, however, took Hanna to task. Offended, they felt Hanna should have “known” the solution and incorporated it into her film to give it a “happy ending.” Responding to critics, Hanna pointed out, “There’s no easy solution.”

Setting up filming Helping Mihaela in Romania.

The filmmaker’s role: defining identity by digging deeper
When I asked her what themes run through her films, she said, “All my films seem to be about defining one’s identity by finding new, deeper or broader layers in who one really is.” More pointedly, Hanna’s films present situations in which “a woman is not fitting in the expected role anymore.” This theme references her inspiration – Campion’s An Angel at My Table. But it is especially true in First World Problems, in which a middle-aged Finnish woman breaks down after losing her car in a car park and has a surprising encounter with a trolley (shopping cart) collector.

A scene from First World Problems.

“In most of my films, the expectations of one’s social role/identity comes from within the character, not from outside,” she went on. “I find this subject endlessly inspiring. You are your biggest obstacle.” Thus far, most of Hanna’s protagonists are female, which perhaps is not accidental. “One seems to make films about those whom they feel emotionally closest, and maybe that’s the reason,” she revealed.

The idea for First World Problems came about when a friend posted on Facebook her failed attempt at unlocking the wrong car in a car park. Hanna went beyond the initial premise when she and her crew realized that “a car park is like a small universe, with all the aspects of a welfare society,” which thematically circles back to the issues Hanna addresses in Helping Mihaela.

A scene from First World Problems.

Whether she explores familial territory or universal social issues, Hanna’s goal as a filmmaker is to elicit a response from the audience – whether it is laughter, tears, confusion, anger, disgust, and/or an understanding – and have the audience connect with her characters. She also hopes audiences “recognize something new and surprising about the world around them.” With First World Problems, for example, Hanna challenges people to “see the ever-so-invisible trolley collectors in a car park as persons with backgrounds.” To Hanna, film is an “empowering form of art: films can soothe, support, comfort, and challenge the audience.” The film has to speak directly to the audience member – “This is what I look for as a filmmaker,” she said.

On being a woman filmmaker: rejecting the gatekeepers and fighting back
In film school, 50 percent of her classmates were women. “I thought we were even with the fellow boys as directors,” she recalled, looking back. But in her 20 years, Hanna admitted that the career path for female directors is “much longer and more frustrating” than for male directors. It took her eight years to make her first feature-length film. Eight years later, Hanna is still working on the financing of her second feature film. In that time, she has also endured rejections for five other projects. To date, her male classmates are working on their sixth or seventh feature, even though, she pointed out, not all of their films have been successful. “I was not aware of the equality issue as a beginning filmmaker,” she confessed. “I naively thought we all have the same chances in the competitive business no matter your gender.”

The wide open spaces - a scene from Helping Mihaela.

The wide open spaces of freedom – a scene from Helping Mihaela.

In a recent bid to obtain financing for her project, a financier said to Hanna, “I think what now happens is that you go home, cry a little, and have a glass of red wine.” Her response was pointedly a different scenario: “I did not cry. I did not drink my wine. Instead, I furiously created a new strategy to get my film financed.” In another instance, Hanna was hired for a project, which featured boy protagonists, but a week later, the producer took it back because she had not experienced a boy’s childhood herself, which he found to be “a big problem.” For female filmmakers, she said, the unwritten rule is that women can make children’s movies and documentaries, but feature films are the domain of male filmmakers.

While Hanna admitted that she hasn’t personally overcome the treatment of women in the film industry, she vowed, “I have not given up. I fight against it every day by making films and having a strong women’s network.” Given that her success and recognition of her films have come from outside of Finland, her strategy has included cultivating an international career. “I try to look for all possible options,” she explained. “If one door gets shut, I knock on the next one.”

A scene from First World Problems.

Being true to yourself
And that’s the advice she metes out to young women who aspire to become filmmakers. “Go for it!” she entreated. “If you need to make films, then you have to make them.” While the industry isn’t evolving fast enough, it is evolving, Hanna said, and at some point women filmmakers won’t have to endure some of the pushback that she endured. “Try to recognize those people who wish you good – hold on to them,” she said. “Make films that look like you, and don’t ever make coffee for guys just because. Don’t fool yourself by being one of the guys in order to be accepted. It will never happen, or if it does, it is not you anymore.”

In a nod to all of her filmmaking efforts, but particularly First World Problems and Helping Mihaela, Hanna said, “Most original stories will come from the margin, so be proud if you come from the margin. If you stay true to your artistic ambition, your films will deliver your soul and message. It will be a bumpy road, but it will be really worth it.”

Note: You can see Hanna’s short film First World Problems at LUNAFEST East Bay’s screening on Saturday, March 19^th, 7:30pm, at the El Cerrito High School Performing Arts Theater.

LUNAFEST 2015-2016: supporting diverse voices and visions

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Patty

One of the common themes you will read in interview after interview is the call to keep fighting for your vision. This is a message to women directors, producers, writers – anyone who wants to work in the business. Your voice counts. Your vision matters.
― Melissa Silverstein, American writer and founder and director of Women and Hollywood, from In Her Voice: Women Directors Talk Directing

When October sneaks up on us, we realize that the light has been changing ever so subtly and the leaves on the trees have been turning colors seemingly right before our eyes. The month also signals the start of the LUNAFEST film festival with the worldwide premiere in San Francisco. The lovely Herbst Theater hosted this year’s event. It’s been years since I’ve set foot in the theater, which features panels of murals painted by Frank Brangwyn for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. It’s a beautiful and cozy venue for such a special event.

The beautiful Herbst Theater.

Kit Crawford, co-owner and co-chief visionary officer of Clif Bar & Company and strategic advisor to LUNAFEST, welcomed the full house to the 15^th year of the film festival, “by, for, and about women.” Four of the six filmmakers made the premiere, coming from Paris and London and Los Angeles and our own backyard of Oakland.

Looking up at the balcony and murals.

Along the side walls of the Herbst Theater.

And the ceiling.

Two years ago, at my first LUNAFEST premiere, Dr. Stacy L. Smith, PhD, director of the Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, was invited to discuss the state of women filmmakers in the industry. This year, Dr. Smith was invited back to talk about Gender & Short Films: Emerging Female Filmmakers and the Barriers Surrounding their Careers. With a grant from LUNAFEST, Dr. Smith and her team gathered data from the 10 top film festivals worldwide – Cannes, Sundance, Venice, Berlin, Telluride, TIFF, SXSW, IDFA, IFFR, and NYFF – from 2010 to 2015, and also gathered data from LUNAFEST filmmakers from 2002 to 2014.

Dr. Stacy Smith telling it like it is.

Women filmmakers: an empirically sobering reality
From the top film festivals worldwide, Dr. Smith and her team focused on short films that were relevant to mainstream directing careers in television and film. Of the 3,933 short films, females filled almost a third of the directing pipeline in short films (32 percent women versus 68 percent men), which is a gender ratio of 2.13 male directors to every 1 female director. Dr. Smith also wanted to determine if storytelling genre was related to gender, which she categorized under narrative, documentary, animated or other. She and her team discovered that females are more likely to direct documentaries (37 percent versus 63 percent of men), but female directors are least likely to direct narrative shorts (28 percent versus 72 percent). Given the activism and interest in women filmmakers over the past several years, Smith and her team wanted to find out if an increase in female directors had occurred. “I’m just going to give you the data plain and simple – there has been no change over the last five years,” Smith revealed.

The data she and her team gathered, which included data from the Directors Guild of America, empirically showed a 10-percent drop in women directing short films to directing independent dramatic features, a 12-percent drop in women directing short films to directing episodic television, and a 24-percent drop in women directing short films to directing studio-level or top-grossing films. “I refer to this deep descent [the career pipeline of female directors from shorts to studio films] as the fiscal cliff,” Smith said matter-of-factly.

An illuminating study.

LUNAFEST directors rock
The other major part of the study, however, was determining how LUNAFEST directors fared in this gender terrain and what the career trajectories looked like for the LUNAFEST alumnae – to date, 115 directors. “The results reveal that the pedigree of LUNAFEST directors is actually very impressive,” Dr. Smith was happy to report. Seventy-two percent have attended film school or a film program, 36 percent have had their films shown at one of the top film festivals worldwide, 72 percent have won awards or accolades for their work, 24 percent have made a narrative or documentary feature, and 25 percent have directed, produced, or written for television.

Where do LUNAFEST directors land in terms of career paths: 25 percent go on to work onscreen or behind the camera in film and television, 27 percent are entrepreneurs, starting their own businesses and freelance enterprises, 20 percent are employees working for a variety of organizations, 11 percent are on faculty at post-secondary institutions, and 16 percent were not apparent from online sources. “Together, 75 percent of the alums are moving into industries and spaces outside of mainstream Hollywood storytelling. Clearly, this is a problem,” Smith noted. “Why? Because women directors, like the ones participating in LUNAFEST from 2002 to all the way to tonight, may actually be the solution to the lack of diversity onscreen that we see in Hollywood film.”

Furthermore, Dr. Smith and her team looked at the demographic profile of characters in the 115 LUNAFEST films and compared them to 2014’s 100 top-grossing films at U.S. box offices. They catalogued every speaking character (at least one word to be included in the analysis – which is, Smith pointed out, “a very low bar”). They measured each character according to demographics characteristics (age, gender, race/ethnicity), domesticity traits (parental status, relational standing), LGBT status, and hypersexualization (sexually revealing clothing, nudity). They compared the top 100 grossing films of 2014 to the 115 LUNAFEST films from 2002 to 2014. Dr. Smith and her team discovered two major findings. In the category of onscreen gender prevalence, 28 percent (4,610) of speaking characters are females in the top-grossing films, only 21 percent of the leads or co-leads are girls and women, and 21 percent are narrators. “This is surprising because the last time I checked women were 50 percent of the population and 50 percent bought tickets at U.S. box offices,” Smith remarked.

Diverse voices for a diverse population
As expected, LUNAFEST films fared better: 63 percent of onscreen-speaking characters are girls and women, 81 percent of the leads or co-leads are girls and women, and 79 percent are female narrators. “LUNAFEST short films feature women onscreen in abundance,” she concluded. But the kicker, according to Smith, is the data revelation outside of gender: 27 percent of the top 100 grossing films were from underrepresented ethnic or racial groups and only 17 percent of leads or co-leaders were from an ethnic or racial group. In LUNAFEST films, however, 38 percent of speaking characters were from underrepresented ethnic or racial groups and 37 percent of leads or co-leads are of minority status. These findings are important, Smith emphasized, because 37 percent of the U.S. population can be classified as coming from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group and these individuals bought 45 percent of the tickets at the U.S. box office. Additionally, approximately half of the zero to five age population in this country are not white. “When females are behind the camera, they not only increase the depiction of girls and women onscreen, but they take other groups that are marginalized and make them move from invisible to visible,” Smith noted.

We learned a few things from the study. “We now know where the career pipeline starts for female directors and we know what it means to their career trajectories,” Smith said. “We also know how female directors’ content is unique from what we see in mainstream storytelling. Together, we understand more where problems start for female directors and why it’s so important to support them, especially financially and early in their careers. In doing so, as the data illuminates, diverse voices working behind the camera can change the landscape of what we see on the screen.”

Jeanne walking off stage after her talk, as Kit Crawford asks for and is easily obliged with a round of applause for Jeanne.

Turning on the ‘advocacy gene’
Dr. Smith is a tough act to follow on stage, but when Jeanne Rizzo, RN, president and CEO of the Breast Cancer Fund, takes the stage, you know you’re in good hands. I had the honor and privilege of interviewing Jeanne last year for my blog (in two parts, no less, because she’s such a wonderful and inspiring role model), as she was a special guest at LUNAFEST East Bay 2015. So I knew we the audience were going to be treated to a rousing narrative. “Tonight is a perfect example of women expressing their own form of advocacy and being nurtured and supported in telling their stories, our stories,” she began.

Jeanne talked about her Aunt Minnie as a nurturing and supportive role model for her when she was growing up and the advocacy gene that was inherent in the both of them. When Jeanne was a child, she wanted to play Little League with the boys, whom she played with in the neighborhood. When she was told she couldn’t, Aunt Minnie told her to start her own team and give a piece of her mind to those who said no to her. “Give ’em hell,” Aunt Minnie advocated. So Jeanne cheered the momentous event when the first girl was admitted to Little League and with the passage of Title IX, which states in part that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

Jeanne and Pali Cooper’s advocacy genes were turned on when they had to fight for the right to be married in California. Fittingly, it was Aunt Minnie who was the first in Jeanne’s large Italian Catholic clan to welcome her partner, Pali, into the family. After Jeanne helped to make a documentary film about a women’s climbing expedition in Denali, AK, and helped to establish subsequent climbing expeditions on Mt. Shasta, she continues to honor her Aunt Minnie. Every year, she asks one of the women climbers to carry her Aunt Minnie’s wedding ring. “I want her to know that it [the ring] goes as high as it can, carried by a strong woman, one step at a time, to remind us all that we have power and strength and we have both the privilege and the obligation to help carry each other,” Jeanne said.

“We stepped up, channeling the rights in Women’s Voting rights, the women who pushed corporate ceilings to try and get into the film industry,” she went on. “LUNAFEST embraces the advocacy work of the Breast Cancer Fund and our work on behalf of women and women’s health and environmental health through LUNAFEST and its proceeds.” She paused and took in the room full of people who gave her their rapt attention. “Aunt Minnie could never have imagined a film festival by, for, and about women. Consider what else we all can imagine together, and let’s do it,” she entreated.

And now for 6 inspiring stories
I won’t say too much about the fantastic lineup of movies this year because we want everyone to come to our March 19^th screening. But I will give a brief intro to each film:

Anna by her poster.

Finding June by Anna Schumacher of Los Angeles. “Through the eyes of a deaf woman just diagnosed with breast cancer, communication’s role in understanding one another is explored.” Anna is the daughter of our fellow committee member, Laurie Schumacher, and we are just as excited and proud as Laurie is!

Balsa Wood by Dominique Lecchi of London. “A lighthearted slice of life about two mixed-race siblings visiting their extended Filipino family for lunch.”

Boxeadora by Meg Smaker of Oakland. “One woman defies Fidel Castro’s ban on female boxing to follow her dreams of Olympic glory and become Cuba’s first female boxer.”

Raising Ryland by Sarah Feeley of Los Angeles. “An intimate look at parenting with no strings attached – a journey inside the transgender experience as lived by a six-year-old boy and his two loving parents.”

First World Problems by Hanna Maylett of Helsinki. “A tired housewife loses her car in a shopping mall – sometimes problems can open a door to a whole new world.”

Beach Flags by Sarah Saidan of Paris. “A young Iranian lifeguard, determined to participate in an international competition in Australia, experiences an unexpected obstacle when a new team member arrives.”

City Hall at twilight.

Interest piqued? Save it and save the date! It’s going to be an even better LUNAFEST film festival this year.

City Hall at night, across from the Herbst Theater.

LUNAFEST East Bay 2015: a pictorial

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Patty

What woman doesn’t love to go to the movies with her girlfriends? Film is such a great way to bring women together, so it made sense for LUNA to create this opportunity to connect women filmmakers and their audiences with causes they care about.
– Kit Crawford, co-owner and co-chief visionary officer of Clif Bar & Company

It’s been a week since our LUNAFEST film festival and before I bid adieu to our LUNAFEST season, I wanted to share my LUNAFEST pictorial – a narrative in the form of photos and captions. As they say, a picture is worth a thousands words. And I have a lot of pictures from that memorable evening.

Our VIP event, hosted by our chair Joann Steck-Bayat, prior to the film festival featured our guest filmmakers Emily Fraser and Katherine Gorringe, posing with their Lady Parts LUNAFEST poster.

Our VIP event, hosted by our chair Joann Steck-Bayat at her lovely home prior to the film festival, featured our guest filmmakers Emily Fraser and Katherine Gorringe, posing with their Lady Parts LUNAFEST poster.

Our piano player for the evening - tickling the ivories.

VIP guest Jeanne Rizzo, RN, president and CEO of the Breast Cancer Fund, and Joann, chatting with guests.

Our VIP event piano player, tickling the ivories.

A beautiful spread of cheeses and fruits.

Private chef Sirona Skinner Nixon making those heavenly deviled eggs for the guests.

Sirona’s wife and partner of S&S Foods, Sinead O’Rourke, making the crostini.

Joann trains our superb raffle ticket sellers, from let to right, her cousin Annika, Isabella, Mateo, and Wyatt, in front of the prize board.

El Cerrito High School’s IT Academy students volunteered to serve food at our VIP event: service with a smile and lamb sliders.

Jeanne, Emily, and Katherine in a lively conversation.

It may have been March 21st, but we were able to throw open the French doors and spill into the backyard and grab a drink from our friendly bartenders.

It may have been March 21st, but we were able to throw open the French doors and spill into the backyard and grab a drink served by our friendly bartenders.

Which bag shall I put my raffle ticket in? The GoPro camera or the Kindle? We had so many wonderful donated gifts to raffle. Committee member Rebecca Boe made our sharp raffle boards.

New this year – Taiko drummers perform as attendees arrived in front of the high school. They were mesmerizing!

A tribute to Mae De La Calzada, owner of Lady Parts Automotive - a beautiful bouquet and photo of Emily and Katharine and Mae De La Calzada.

A tribute to Mae De La Calzada, owner of Lady Parts Automotive – a beautiful bouquet and photo of Emily, Katharine and Mae.

Committee member Rebecca Boe made this wonderful poster announcing our guests Jeanne Rizzo, Katherine Gorringe, and Emily Fraser in the lobby of ECHS's Performing Arts Theater.

Committee member Rebecca also made this wonderful poster announcing our guests Jeanne, Katherine, and Emily in the lobby of ECHS’s Performing Arts Theater.

As expected, Jeanne Rizzo delivered a rousing, inspired, and educational welcome. Joann rocked as master of ceremonies and Melody Shah, representing the ITA, let us know how much the ITA appreciated being a beneficiary of our LUNAFEST fundraising.

As expected, Jeanne delivered a rousing, inspired, and educational welcome. Joann rocked as master of ceremonies and Melody Shah, representing the ITA, let us know how much the ITA appreciated being a beneficiary of our LUNAFEST fundraising.

I was honored to interview Emily and Katherine on stage and listen to them talk about the making of Lady Parts and the connection they formed with Mae.

We had nearly 300 attendees at this year’s LUNAFEST! They enjoyed complimentary coffee by Well Grounded Coffee & Tea Bar during our post-screening Dessert Circle.

This year we had a very popular photo booth with props, which was the brainchild of committee member Anja Hakoshima. Thanks, Anja!

Returning with their yummy cupcakes and chocolate chip cookies were Pamela Braxton and her son Zachary of Braxtons' Boxes.

Returning from last year’s inaugural Dessert Circle with their yummy cupcakes and chocolate chip cookies were Pamela Braxton and her son Zachary of Braxtons’ Boxes.

Group photo! Emily and Katherine, flanked by many members of the LUNAFEST East Bay Committee. Until next year!

10 Reasons to attend LUNAFEST

Posted on March 7, 2015 by Patty

A woman is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture, and transform.
– Diane Mariechild, American author and lecturer on women and Buddhism

Only 14 more days until LUNAFEST! The one-evening women’s film festival, hosted by the LUNAFEST East Bay Committee, will be presented on Saturday evening, 7:30pm, at the El Cerrito High School Performing Arts Center, 540 Ashbury Avenue, El Cerrito, CA. If you haven’t gotten your ticket yet to this inspiring film festival, let me offer you 10 inspiring reasons to go.

1. Come to the VIP event preceding LUNAFEST at 6pm, 638 Clayton Avenue, El Cerrito, CA, a block away from the film screening. Mingle with our honored guests, Jeanne Rizzo, RN, president and CEO of the Breast Cancer Fund, and filmmakers Emily Fraser and Katherine Gorringe. This year, personal chef Sirona Skinner Nixon and her wife and partner, Sinead O’Rourke, of S&S Foods, are creating amazing food for our event, which is being paired with wine and beer, donated by local businesses Grey Fox Vineyards (90 Grey Fox Lane, Oroville, CA 95966, 530.589.3920), Trumer Brauerie (1404 4th St., Berkeley, 94710, 510.526.1160) and Lagunitas Brewing Company (1280 N. McDowell Boulevard, Petaluma, CA, 94954, 707.769.4495). Get your VIP tickets here, or contact me.

Sinead and Sirona cheffing a 30-guest dinner.

2. While at the VIP event – or if you are just going to the film festival – find a friendly raffle ticket seller and buy tickets to try to win some amazing prizes, including a Kindle Fire HDX 8.9, donated by the Whittier Education Foundation, and a GoPro HERO3+ Black Edition, donated by GoPro. The LUNAFEST East Bay Committee has been incredibly fortunate to have wonderful local businesses support our fundraising efforts with donations. Check out our raffle board to see other bundled prizes.

3. This year, Tatsumaki Taiko, a group of women Taiko drummers, including breast cancer survivors, will be entertaining attendees before the film festival, in front of the ECHS Performing Arts Center, beginning at 7pm. Taiko is an ancient Japanese form of percussion using large drums that has evolved into a complex musical art form that features tightly choreographed movements that are aligned with Japanese martial arts. Linger outside and appreciate the loud, hard, and fast music!

4. The main beneficiary of the traveling LUNAFEST film festival is the Breast Cancer Fund, whose tagline is “Prevention Starts Here” and whose mission is “to prevent breast cancer by eliminating our exposure to toxic chemicals and radiation linked to the disease.” Please learn more about what this important nonprofit organization – backed by peer-reviewed scientific research – is doing to educate and protect women about the dangers we face in our environment. As the Breast Cancer Fund entreats: “Together we can stop this disease before it starts.” Get educated and be an advocate. Do it for yourself and your friends. Do it for your daughters and granddaughters – and, really, your whole family.

Jeanne Rizzo with Gwen Collman, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, at the Breast Cancer Fund Heroes Celebration.

5. Support El Cerrito High School’s Information Technology Academy (ITA), the main local beneficiary of the LUNAFEST East Bay Committee’s festival. In the past, LUNAFEST proceeds have enabled the ITA to provide its students with a classroom set of digital drawing tablets, cameras, lights, and a 3D printer. This small learning community is supported by TechFutures, a nonprofit organization established by Mr. and Mrs. Ron Whittier to give underserved West Contra Costa Unified School District students an opportunity to have career-focused courses in digital art and computer systems management subjects. To boot, ITA teacher Melody Shah is also a LUNAFEST East Bay Committee member.

6. Be inspired by our LUNAFEST welcome, which will be given by Jeanne Rizzo, RN, president and CEO of the Breast Cancer Fund. I was honored to have interviewed her in February and learned about her incredibly full life and the passion and compassion fueling it. Learn about her here. Be inspired by her in person. And by all means, meet her in the lobby after the screening. You will go home wanting to fulfill, or continue fulfilling, your own life!

Jeanne Rizzo, RN, president and CEO of the Breast Cancer Fund, giving a TED talk.

7. Filmmakers Emily Fraser and Katherine Gorringe, whose short film “Lady Parts” was chosen for this year’s LUNAFEST, will be featured in a brief on-stage interview before the film screening. They will discuss the making of “Lady Parts” – “in an industry dominated by men, Lady Parts Automotive brings a woman’s touch.” Read about these amazing women and what inspires them, and meet them after the screening.

Emily Fraser, Mae De La Calzada of Lady Parts Automotive, and Katherine Gorringe, taking a break from filming.

8. See eight great short films “for, by, about women.” This year’s selections once again celebrate the diversity of women’s lives and viewpoints as shared through the eyes of nine women filmmakers. One of the goals of LUNAFEST is “connecting women through film,” which is especially urgent and poignant in an industry where women representation is shamefully low. Let’s support women in film – from story to subject to filmmaker to producer to every other aspect of bringing a film to a hungry female audience – and celebrate their creativity, poetry, courage, and perseverance.

Behind the scenes: Emily and Katherine capture Mae's warm and upbeat personality on film.

Behind the scenes: Emily and Katherine filming “Lady Parts.”

9. Stay a bit in the lobby after the screening and engage in conversation with family and friends about the eight great short films we all shared together. Enjoy a fresh cup of complimentary coffee donated by Kevin O’Neil and Jen Komaromi of Well Grounded Tea & Coffee Bar (6925 Stockton Ave, El Cerrito, CA 94530, 510.528.4709), who have generously supported LUNAFEST and other local fundraising efforts. Indulge in a cupcake or cookie baked by Pam and Ron Braxton of Braxtons’ Boxes, who were part of our Dessert Circle last year and sold out of their wonderfully baked goods. A big shout-out to Zachary Braxton, who charmed attendees with his big smile and great customer service. Support our local businesses on the 21st and beyond!

Delicious cupcakes and cookies at the Dessert Circle - oh my!

Delicious cupcakes and cookies at the Dessert Circle baked with love by Braxtons’ Boxes and served by Zachary Braxton.

10. Seize the evening! Make a women’s night out of LUNAFEST. Share a special evening with your daughter (and/or son!). Bring your whole family. As women – multitasking nurturers and caregivers – we often don’t take time out for ourselves because we’re so caught up on making sure everyone else is fine. Do yourself a much-needed favor and enjoy a relaxing evening full of art across many different forms, beauty, knowledge about our health, friendship, family and community – all of which contribute to making our lives full. We have a lot to be thankful for, so celebrate big.

So this is what it feels like to have a "red-carpet moment." I'll take it!

The LUNAFEST East Bay Committee is ready to roll out the red carpet for our March 21st event. See you there!

The Dress at 50

Live the creative, meaningful, and full life

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