If you haven’t seen Mimi Chakarova’s powerful, deeply personal
documentary, “The Price of Sex,” about sex trafficking in eastern
Europe (to Turkey, Dubai and the West),
don’t miss its San Francisco debut this Saturday, Nov. 5 at 6:45 pm at
the SF Film Society’s Cinema by the Bay Festival.
I am proud to be the executive producer of this film, which was shot
by Adam Keker, edited by Stephanie Challberg, and sponsored by the
Center for Investigative Reporting.
Post-production by Video Arts.
This is a film you’ll never forget.
Mimi has already won the Daniel Pearl Award for “The Price of Sex”
from the International Constorium of Investigative Journalists and the
Nestor Almenedos Award for courage
in filmmaking from the Human Rights Watch Film Festival at Lincoln
Center in New York. It’s a brave and artful film.
Don’t miss this wonderful article from SF360 and the San Francisco Film Society, profiling Irving Saraf and Allie Light, great friends and treasured filmmakers.
Essential SF: Irving Saraf and Allie Light
Michael Fox October 19, 2011
Saraf and Light’s work is marked by an unwavering appreciation for underdogs and outsiders.
Everything changed, and nothing changed, when Bay Area documentary filmmakers Allie Light and Irving Saraf won the gold statuette for Best Documentary Feature on that March night in 1992. From that moment forward, their names would be preceded in practically every circumstance and situation by the honorific “Academy Award-winning.” And yet the unpretentious, unassuming couple would be unaffected by the top-of-the-world success of their beautifully crafted crowd-pleaser, In the Shadow of the Stars.
Now a cynic, or a realist, might point out that an Oscar doesn’t come with a magic password for raising money for the next documentary, let alone the one after that. But Saraf and Light’s continued adherence to a filmmaking approach, and ethos, was never dictated by external conditions but by who they were and what they stood for.
Their extensive oeuvre is marked by an unwavering appreciation for underdogs and outsiders. They have displayed an extraordinary sensitivity to the plight of women in America, in particular, from unsung artists to mistreated patients to incarcerated murderers. Their candid and moving follow-up to In the Shadow of the Stars, Dialogues with Madwomen, received a national Emmy Award. For their skill behind the camera and in the editing suite, their uncompromising moral and ethical standards, and their myriad contributions to the Bay Area filmmaking community, Allie Light and Irving Saraf are honored in the 2011 class of SF360.org Presents Essential SF tributees.
Continue reading the rest of the article here.
Green Fire Blog Tour
Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for our Time
Green Fire was produced in partnership between the Aldo Leopold Foundation, the Center for Humans and Nature, and the US Forest Service. The film provocatively examines Leopold’s thinking, renewing his idea of a land ethic for a population facing 21st century ecological challenges. Leopold’s biographer, conservation biologist Dr. Curt Meine, serves as the film’s on-screen guide.
Green Fire describes the formation of Leopold’s idea, exploring how it changed one man and later permeated through all arenas of conservation. The film draws on Leopold’s life and experiences to provide context and validity, then explores the deep impact of his thinking on conservation projects around the world today. Through these examples, the film challenges viewers to contemplate their own relationship with the land community.
Read the team’s blog as they tour the Northeast US, screening their film and creating dialogues across the country about connecting conservation history to contemporary land stewardship efforts, and to the challenges that the next generation has already begun to face.
To keep up with Green Fire, follow their journey on their blog and on Facebook.
When the documentary Miss Representation premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, audiences were riveted and OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network acquired its broadcast rights.
The film explores how the media’s misrepresentation of women has led to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence. It will premiere in the US on Oct. 20th at 9pm ET. Miss Representation will air on OWN: the Oprah Winfrey Network, immediately followed by a special episode of The Doc Club with Rosie O’Donnell featuring Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Watch it with us.
Video Artisan Steffen Frech just completed his latest video short “Freddy McGuire - Down to the Sea”. It’s a surrealistic boat ride on a sea of hands to a beautiful poem written and sung by Anne McGuire. The tunes were created by Wobbly.
Original Minds air date
Moira Productions new film, ORIGINAL MINDS, by Tom Weidlinger is airing on San Francisco’s KQED public television station at the following dates and times.
In ORIGINAL MINDS five teenagers stigmatized by being in Special Ed. struggle to articulate how their brains work and discover they are smarter than they thought. In a one-size-fits-all educational system, kids with learning disabilities suffer from lack of self-esteem. They become alienated and drop out. But the protagonists of the film buck the trend. They work intensively with the filmmaker to tell their own stories. Their narratives reveal the unique approach to learning that each must discern and claim as his or her own if they are to succeed in the world.
Tom Weidlinger came to Video Arts for Mastering and Color Correction consultation for his film. Don’t miss this film’s premiere on PBS this week!
Trust: Second Acts in Young Lives will screen at the Smith Rafael Film Center this Sunday, October 2nd at 7pm
Moving, intimate and celebratory, Trust follows the teenage actors of Chicago’s Albany Park Theater Project as they transform their lives through courage, storytelling and community. When Marlin, an 18-year-old Hondureña shares traumatic details of her childhood, amazing things unfold as her peers make her story into a daring, original play. Trust is about creativity and the unexpected resources inside people who are often discounted because they are poor, young or of color. Wrote Rick Ayers in The Huffington Post: “… (It) reminds us what documentary does best: captures small, specific stories which illuminate much broader issues and themes.” This is the third in a documentary trilogy by Bay Area filmmakers Nancy Kelly and Kenji Yamamoto about the unexpected roles art plays in the lives of individuals and communities.
Child of Giants screens at the Oakland Museum tonight!
A documentary by Thomas Ropelewski
Several biographies unfold from this story of two of America’s most original and maverick artists, told from a uniquely personal perspective. In Child of Giants, Daniel Rhodes Dixon, the elder son of Southwestern painter Maynard Dixon and acclaimed Depression photographer Dorothea Lange, wrestles with the gifts and curses of his birthright. As a child he came to recognize his parents’ unique forms of genius, but his view of them changed dramatically when he and his brother John were placed in a series of foster homes, never knowing when they might see them again. A memorable and talented personality emerges as Daniel charts his own path in life from under the shadow of two formidable parents.
The film will be screened tonight, September 16th at 7pm at the Oakland Museum. The film screening is included with museum admission. Free to OMCA members. Child of Giants is also showing at the Wine Country Film Festival, September 14th-20th.
Congratulations to Tom Ropelewski for winning Best Feature Film at the Glen Rose Neo-Relix Film Festival in Texas! We were pleased to work with such a wonderful team and assist them in all their post-production needs!
Connectedpremieres Friday September 16th in San Francisco!!
Have you ever faked a restroom trip to check your email? Slept with your laptop? Or become so overwhelmed that you just unplugged from it all? In this funny, eye-opening, and inspiring film, director Tiffany Shlain takes audiences on an exhilarating rollercoaster ride to discover what it means to be connected in the 21st century. From founding The Webby Awards to being a passionate advocate for The National Day of Unplugging, Shlain’s love/hate relationship with technology serves as the springboard for a thrilling exploration of modern life…and our interconnected future. Equal parts documentary and memoir, the film unfolds during a year in which technology and science literally become a matter of life and death for the director. As Shlain’s father battles brain cancer and she confronts a high-risk pregnancy, her very understanding of connection is challenged. Using a brilliant mix of animation, archival footage, and home movies, Shlain reveals the surprising ties that link us not only to the people we love but also to the world at large. A personal film with universal relevance, Connected explores how, after centuries of declaring our independence, it may be time for us to declare our interdependence instead.
Connected premieres Friday at the Landmark Embarcadero Theater. Tiffany and her team came to Video Arts for all their post-production needs and we were happy to help them finish off this wonderful project!
All We Could Carry
Steven Okazaki’s ALL WE COULD CARRY premiered at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming on August 20, 2011. The short film explores a disturbing chapter in American history when the President and the nation let hysteria and racism override the Constitution. Twelve Nisei, children and young adults at the time, tell the story of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center where 14,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II.
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Okazaki, whose own father was sent to Heart Mountain, captures this essential piece of history in a way that is both compelling and relatable: providing vivid accounts of daily life in the camps as well as the resilience of those who were imprisoned there. Steven came to Video Arts for Digital Post-Production, including Online Editing and Color Correction. Congratulations to Steven on such a wonderful film.
