LUNAFEST: ladies’ night out

Posted on February 13, 2016 by Patty

Girls, y’all got one
A night that’s special everywhere
From New York to Hollywood
It’s ladies night and girl the feeling’s good
– Kool & The Gang, from Ladies Night

Today is Galentine’s Day, a day where you meet up with your girlfriends at a restaurant and have a gals-only leisurely breakfast. No cooking or baking. No clean-up. Much-needed R&R. Who needs Valentine’s Day when you have Galentine’s Day? But once this special occasion day is over, it doesn’t mean you have to wait until February 13th to have an annual get-together with your girlfriends.

Think ahead to March 19th, and start planning a fabulous Ladies’ Night Out. Make a long list. Pick up the phone. Blast an e-mail. Send out a text. Gather all of your girlfriends and tell them about LUNAFEST – a traveling film festival of award-winning short films “by, for and about women.” LUNAFEST seeks to “connect women through film,” which makes it the perfect destination for you and your women friends.

LUNAFEST premiere, September 2013. An awesome women filmmakers’ night!

But the film festival is more than just a fun night out, though there is a lot of emphasis on fun. Established in 2000 by LUNA, makers of the Whole Nutrition Bar for Women, the film festival raises funds for its main beneficiary, The Breast Cancer Fund, a national organization dedicated to “preventing breast cancer by eliminating our exposure to toxic chemicals and radiation linked to the disease.” When organizations across the country host their LUNAFEST film festival, they also support local nonprofit groups. So when you attend, you’re supporting a community-wide fundraising event. The LUNAFEST East Bay Organizing Committee, in its ninth year, is raising funds for the El Cerrito Community Foundation and El Cerrito High School’s Information Technology Academy (ITA), a small learning community supported by the nonprofit organization, TechFutures. ITA integrates core academic classes with the technology field, comprising digital art, web design, and computer systems management.

LUNAFEST ladies' night at the 2014 premiere in San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts.

LUNAFEST East Bay Committee’s ladies’ night at the 2014 premiere in San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts.

For the third straight year, we’re hosting a dessert circle after the film screening. Local small-business Braxtons’ Boxes will be tempting you and your friends with cookies and cupcakes. Well-Grounded Tea & Coffee Bar (6925 Stockton Avenue, El Cerrito, CA) is graciously donating complimentary decaffeinated and regular coffee, completing the local community aspect of LUNAFEST in the East Bay.

Get inspired by the filmmakers’ unique visions and artistry. Support worthy causes and organizations. Seek elimination of breast cancer. Commune with your girlfriends. Meet new friends. Be a part of the local and larger community. Prepare to be delighted, touched, and engaged. All in one magical evening.

Women filmmakers and performers at the 2014 LUNAFEST premiere in San Francisco.

Doors open at 7pm, with the event starting at 7:30pm, at the El Cerrito High School’s Performing Arts Center, 540 Ashbury Avenue, El Cerrito, CA 94530. 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.

Sarah Saidan: embracing the freedom and magic of animation

Posted on January 5, 2016 by Patty

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.
― Rosa Luxemburg, Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist, and activist

When filmmaker Sarah Saidan was in her last year of Graphic Design at Azad University in Tehran, she took her first course in animation. In an interview via email, she told me that at the time she didn’t know what to expect from the class, but by the end of the semester, she discovered what she wanted to do “forever.” “I saw my drawings move and become alive,” she enthused. “Animation is magic. It contains illustration, film, and music all together. Animation gives you the freedom to tell any story, express any feeling, and experience something new.” Sarah’s short film Beach Flags was chosen for this year’s LUNAFEST film festival and is the only one of the six films that is animated.

Beach Flags poster.

One of the benefits of being an animator is that it allows Sarah to make a film by herself and in her own workspace. “I know the production can be exhausting sometimes, but you know it is always worth it in the end,” she noted. Her technique is usually 2D drawn animation. When Sarah was in La Poudrière in Valence, France, where she studied animation, she experimented with stop-motion (see footnote 1), cutout animation (see footnote 2) for two projects. “I absolutely loved doing that; it was so much fun,” she said. “But at the same time, stop motion has its limitations. You have to think about those limitations beforehand, when you are doing your storyboard.” While Sarah is more comfortable with drawn animation, many of her favorite films are cut-out animation, particularly the works of Yuri Norstein.

Sarah at work on A Foreign Genie, a one-minute, stop-motion, cutout film she made while studying in La Poudrière in 2011.

Working on her stop-motion, cutout film.

Sarah doesn’t take on many commissioned assignments, but despite working within a tight budget and timeframe, she happily accepted a TED Ed short film project because the topic – What are Human Rights? – was of great interest to her. “First of all, I have to say that I love what the TED Ed team is doing!” she said. Sarah and her fellow animator friend Amin Haghshenas worked off of a voiceover of the lesson, which was written by Professor Benedetta Berti, who is a TED Fellow and human security and foreign policy consultant, and recorded by the TED Ed team. Within eight weeks, Sarah created the storyboards and graphics, while Amin did the animation and composition for the video. “You can create a short film in a day, and you can make another one in two years, like my film Beach Flags,” Sarah pointed out. “It depends on so many things – the budget, deadline, complexity of the work, writing, and so on – so each project is different and has its own conditions.”

Sarah working on her graduation film, Quand le chat est là, in La Poudrière in 2011.

A close-up of her work.

Production time.

An image from Quand le chat est la.

Animation: the ideal platform for Beach Flags
Although the last few years Sarah has been working in France, she has lived most of her life in Iran. In her country, women athletes cannot participate in international games. Furthermore, female swimmers cannot be seen in public in swimsuits. Sarah was preoccupied with this inequity, and she related, “I really needed to talk to these women and hear them.” When she interviewed them, they told her about beach flags, a lifeguard game that is played on the sand and doesn’t require females to wear swimsuits, which then allows them to participate in international games. It was also a game at which Iranian girls have historically excelled and won many prizes.

Pre-production of Beach Flags in Folimage in 2013.

Sarah in pre-production of Beach Flags, doing storyboard and animation.

“I was so happy to hear that, but suddenly I had this ironic feeling – imagining swimmers running on the beach by the sea, but not having the right to go into the water,” Sarah said. “That image really drove me to write a story about it.” Animation was also the perfect vehicle for making Beach Flags into a film; it enabled her to go into places where the camera is not allowed or restricted – the women’s swimming pool and the women’s beach, in this case. “Animation gave me the freedom to tell a story without any obstacles,” Sarah noted.

Sarah at work on the production of Beach Flags in Ciclic (Chateau Renault) in 2013.

Sarah at work on the post-production of Beach Flags in Folimage (Valence) in 2013.

An image from Beach Flags.

Beach Flags, which was produced by Sacrebleu Productions in Paris and co-produced with Folimage in Valence, has been officially selected by more than 80 festivals around the world. The short film has amassed numerous prizes along the festival route, including the Amnesty International Prize at the Giffoni International Film Festival in Italy; Grand Prize at the BIAF Animation Festival in Korea; Grand Jury Prize at ANIMA, Córdoba International Animation Festival in Argentina; Grand Prize at the Tindirindis Animation Festival in Lithuania; Jury Prize at the International Festival Séquence Court-Métrage in France; Best Film Award at the International Animé awards in Japan; Best Screenplay at the International Animayo Festival in Spain; and Best of the Show at the Animation Block Party film festival in Brooklyn. Clearly, Beach Flags’ message has resonated around the world.

Inspiring work ahead
At this point in her career, Sarah doesn’t have plans to make a feature-length film, partly because of the financial burden and time investment required to make such a film. Referencing one of her friends who spent nine years working on a feature film, she said, “I don’t know if I want to do that yet! But upon reflection, she added, “I think I need to gain some more trust in myself for such responsibility.”

Sarah collaborating with her colleagues.

In the meantime, Sarah is currently “writing something very personal but at the same time very universal.” She tackles another feminist topic but from a different point of view. “It is a challenge. I am very excited about it,” she said. Sarah was also commissioned to produce two videos. Despite not usually taking on commissioned work, she was offered “such amazing and inspiring projects that it was impossible not to accept them.” The two videos are for a project that promotes reading aloud to children in Syrian refugee camps in Jordan. “I really hope these videos help. That would be the biggest gift,” she said, referring to the crisis of refugees fleeing Syria in record numbers.

An image from Beach Flags.

I asked Sarah what advice she would give to girls and young women interested in pursuing filmmaking, and her response reflects the themes in her work: “Believe in yourselves and never let anyone make you feel unworthy. Becoming a filmmaker is not just about learning the techniques of filmmaking; a good filmmaker is someone who knows exactly what they want and what they believe in, and most of all someone who doesn’t surrender to anything less than their expectations of themselves and their team.”

Note: While we wait for Sarah’s next project to come to the screen, you can see the trailer to Beach Flags here, and then see her short film in its entirety at LUNAFEST East Bay’s March 19^th screening, 7:30pm, at El Cerrito High School’s Performing Arts Theater, 540 Ashbury Avenue, El Cerrito, CA.

Footnotes (courtesy of Wikipedia):
Footnote 1: Stop-motion animation is a technique that physically manipulates an object that appears to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence.

Footnote 2: Cutout animation is a technique for producing stop-animations by using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric, or even photographs.

Positively Filipino book review of A Village in the Fields

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Patty

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.
– Anais Nin, French-born novelist and short story writer

Elaine Elinson, coauthor with Stan Yogi of Wherever There’s a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California and the United Farm Workers representative for the grape boycott in Europe, wrote a “thorough and insightful” – quoting my good friend Kimi – review, which was posted on Positively Filipino, “the premier digital native magazine celebrating the story of Filipinos in the diaspora of nearly 13 million expatriates.”

You can read the review here. Elinson originally wrote it for the AmerAsia Journal, which is published by the Center Press out of UCLA and is the leading interdisciplinary journal in Asian American Studies. The review will appear in AmerAsia Journal’s upcoming Winter 2015-2016 issue. Stay tuned for that.

Elinson brought up a couple of issues in her review, which I’m grateful for her pointing out. I erroneously stated that Larry Itliong’s hometown province was Ilocos Norte, which is unforgiving, given the amount of painstaking research I conducted. While embarrassing, the error can be (and will be) easily fixed in the next edition.

Reading at the Fremont library during Filipino American History Month in October.

The other issue she brought up, which is just as critical if not more critical to fix, is my not using the real name of a Yemeni farm worker who was an important picket captain in the union. As it was my first novel, I was unsure of how to approach real people in a fictional world. Initially, I wasn’t comfortable characterizing the famous people of the era, but somehow their very status helped me overcome the discomfort. I fictionalized in name and characterization these two other characters because I didn’t know much about their personal lives and I also wasn’t sure what my liability was if I did use their real names. But Elinson provides a compelling argument for using the Yemeni’s real name. The novel celebrates the “little people” of the grape strike, the ones who sacrificed and lost so much, and whose lives the world knows little about. So in the next edition, I will include information in the Notes section about who he was and his contributions. While I am deeply grateful for Elinson’s kind words about my novel, I am most grateful for her pointing out areas that need to be addressed because it means the novel will get better.

Where it all started on Labor Day Weekend in Delano for the 50th Anniversary of the Delano grape strike.

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.

The Dress at 50

Live the creative, meaningful, and full life

Category Archives: Women Artists

LUNAFEST: ladies’ night out

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Sarah Feeley: opening people’s minds through film

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Hanna Maylett: creating films from the ‘margin’

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Sarah Saidan: embracing the freedom and magic of animation

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Positively Filipino book review of A Village in the Fields

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LUNAFEST 2015-2016: supporting diverse voices and visions

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