“THE SUNFISHER” - CECIL HIRVI aka GEORGE AGUILAR
Aguilar continues his series of virtual films, unleashing his avatar alter ego Cecil Hirvi in Second Life for another installment of “Machinima Poetry.” This episode finds Hirvi finding himself as he gazes into the media mirror, watching old Hollywood footage of young soldier’s uncertain return from the battlefield to the open fields of Wyoming. 15 minutes. Screens Friday at 8:10pm Grand Festival Award

“DIVISION DENIM” - BARRY LEVY
A poor downtrodden kid in a third world country making the low priced clothes we can’t live without, in our buy more, care less society crashes the location for a commercial and it’s payback time - ninja style. 3 minutes. Screens Friday at 7:40pm Grand Festival Award

‘CRACKED GODDESS” – COLIN STILL and OPTIC NERVE - Great Britain
A sunny trip through the studio and sited pieces of sculptor, Amy Evans McClure, with poem by Michael McClure and music by Terry Riley. 7 minutes. Screens Saturday at 8:00pm *West Coast Premiere Grand Festival Award

“HOMELAND SECURITY” - LaDONNA WITMER and MICHELLE M. BROWN
A carnivalesque cinematic poem employs the imagery of Santa Cruz and its boardwalk amusement park as a backdrop for a rumination on communication, honesty and vulnerability. 4 minutes. Screens Friday at 8:05pm Grand Festival Award

“ALT_VIEW” - KENT SPARLING
A portrait of San Francisco made exclusively with mobile devices, juxtaposing unusual visual and acoustic perspectives of S.F.’s iconic locations. 7 minutes. Screens Saturday at 11:44pm Grand Festival Award

“IN THE GRIP OF THE COLD” - ED SHARPE
Cam Stryker falls prey to a pandemic; no doubt the “Evil Doctor Vibe” is romping all over the downtown citizenry. 3 minutes. Screens Saturday at 11:52pm Grand Festival Award

“BEHIND THE WHEEL” - TAO RUSPOLI and LAFCO
Director Tao Ruspoli and his band of Los Angeles filmmaker cohorts outfitted an old school bus as a fully equipped portable production studio and set off across the United States in search of art and artists. The journey takes across the country’s southern states in a quixotic examination of the intersection of the personal and the political. 84 minutes. Screens Saturday at 9:25pm Grand Festival Award

“WORDS OF ADVICE - WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS ON THE ROAD”
LARS MOVIN and STEEN M. RASMUSSEN - DENMARK
Influential experimental artist and writer William Burroughs as few have seen him. Burroughs toured often in his final decades, reading from his work in theaters and clubs, bringing his unique diction and wily humor to bear on his wildly original prose. The prickly aloofness of his image is belied by his bashful charm as he meets and greets his fans, but when the lights dim and the microphone swings into place, the fierce, fiery satirist, sage and starry-eyed dreamer is unleashed, revealing a performer of great wit, drama and strength. 74 minutes. Screens Saturday at 8:10pm *US Premiere. Grand Festival Award

“YOU DON’T KNOW JACK: THE JACK SOO STORY” - JEFF ADACHI
Jeff Adachi, director of the documentary The Slanted Screen, which examined the history of Asian-Americans in Hollywood, takes on the life story of singer and comedic actor Jack Soo. From his childhood in Oakland to his young adulthood in Japanese internment camps during World War II-era, and finally to his breakthrough roles in Flower Drum Song, Valentine’s Day and Barney Miller, the erstwhile Goro Suzuki’s brave refusal to comply with America’s “oriental” stereotypes almost single-handedly broke the mold, recasting Asian Americans in a new light in our popular entertainment. 69 minutes. Screens Saturday at 1:15pm Grand Festival Award

“OH MY GOD! IT’S HARROD BLANK” - DAVID SILBERBERG
Harrod Blank’s life is every bit as much a peripatetic work of art as the eccentric, eclectic art cars to which he has devoted his life. Silverberg’s film tracks the farm boy-turned-artist as he passes through UC Santa Cruz and Berkeley in his single-minded—some would say obsessive—pursuit of self-expression, enlisting a series of girlfriends as sidekicks on a rambling journey that is at times maddening but never less than fascinating and endearing. 75 minutes. Screens Saturday at 5:18pm Grand Festival Award

“THE DEVIL AT YOUR FEET” - BRIAN DARWAS and JENNIFER CARCHIETTA
Ride along with Hot Rod Builder and Award Winning Filmmaker ( The Road to Bonneville ), Brain Darwas, as he travels over three-thousand miles from East to West. Visit Car Clubs, and hot rod builders, with a passion for traditional hot rods, nailheads, flatheads, and the open road. A Hot Rodding movie so intense, it will leave you with grease stains and the smell of exhaust . 61 minutes. Screens Saturday at 6:45pm *West Coast Premiere Grand Festival Award

“KAZIAH, THE GOAT WOMAN” - AMY JANES and KATHLEEN DOLAN
Kaziah Hancock, armed with oils and brushes, celebrates the lives of U.S. Soldiers, killed in Iraq, by painting gift portraits for their families; honoring over 600 American Soldiers. On her remote ranch in Utah, she also raises goats. Born into a polygamist sect, she knows the meaning of freedom, as she’s had to fight for hers. Liberation and discovery of self, is joyfully celebrated in her art and this cinematic document . 25 minutes. Screens Saturday at 4:25pm *Premiere Grand Festival Award

“CIUDAD del FUTURO” - DAMIAN CARNERO and KARIN LOSERT - CUBA * US Premiere
The critical history of a former socialist model town in the outskirts of Havana, told by the adult children of its first inhabitants. 20 minutes. Screens Saturday at 3:02pm Grand Festival Award

“RAINBOW WARRIORS” ( GUERREROS DEL ARCOIRIS )
GABRIELA GONZALEZ FUENTES and LA TAGUARA FILMICA - VENEZUELA
A close-up look into Bolivia’s radical changes, led by indigenous populations and the resistance against them by minority groups holding economic power. 30 minutes. Screens Saturday at 3:23pm *US Premiere Grand Festival Award

“BASKETBALL GURU: The Pete Newell Story” - DOUG HARRIS
An affectionate biography of the legendary basketball coach, Pete Newell, who started at the University of San Francisco and went on to coach for Cal and the U.S. Olympic team. 13 minutes. Screens Saturday at 2:25pm *Premiere Grand Festival Award

“WHITE MOVEMENT” - EMIO TOMEONI
As Berkeley attempts to lead toward Climate Change, a cast of characters emerges with issues of their own. 11 minutes. Screens Saturday at 2:50pm Grand Festival Award

EDUCATIONAL

“DISCOVER YOUR HEALTHY WEIGHT” - CONNIE SOBCZAK
A different view of weight and health, with professionals and ‘real’ women sharing their problems with dieting and methods of living healthier and happier lives. 26 minutes. Screens Saturday at 12:45pm Grand Festival Award

“POLKA FACES” - ANDREA YOUNG
The filmmaker returns to her hometown and gives an affectionate capsule of quilting, concertina clubs, church festivals, and the seasonal cycle of country chores, all with rural Minnesota charm. 6 minutes. Screens Saturday at 4:50pm *Premiere Grand Festival Award

“ZAPOOK OF THE NORTH “ - HOLLAND WILDE
A soci-cultural memory mash up, reviving the tenets of ethnographic surrealism. Please don’t eat the yellow snow! 14 minutes. Screens Saturday at 11:18pm Grand Festival Award

“FOSSIL LIGHT” - TONY GAULT
A little story about the ‘preservation’ of an endangered species. 11 minutes.
Screens Saturday at 11:33pm *West Coast Premiere Grand Festival Award

“I KNOW WHO REALLY SENT THE ANTHRAX LETTERS” - NEIL IRA NEEDLEMAN
What family secrets are hidden in the grainy ghost images of ancient 8mm celluloid? Something to think about the next time you open your mail. 7 minutes. Screens Friday at 7:58pm
*West Coast Premiere Grand Festival Award

“SACRIFICIO” - PETER TURNER
An erotic journey of awakening and surrender; told through layers of shifting realities, images, masks, sound, color, archetypal beings and natural elements. 9 minutes. Screens Friday at 11:05pm *Premiere Grand Festival Award

“WALL TAPS” - CAROL JACOBSEN
Carol Jacobsen’s short documentary roams the perimeter of a women’s prison in what amounts to a sustained traveling shot of fences, gates and barbed wire. Superimposed periodically are the faces of former inmates as they relate their experiences of fear, humiliation, degradation and shame as intermittent glimpses flicker by of life inside the prison gates. 10 minutes. Screens Saturday at 2:39pm *West Coast Premiere Grand Festival Award

“KARMA CALLING” - SARBA DAS
“A fable about hope and love for a family of Hindus from Hoboken,” as the narrator describes, Das’s feature takes place at the intersection of two strands of western-influenced easterners. An Indian family living in New Jersey finds itself stretched thin under the cultural and financial strains of American life. Meanwhile, in India, a young man employed as a call-center info peddler for an American corporation also hears the call to go west in the form of an unexpected long-distance romance. 90 minutes. Screens Friday at 9:35pm Grand Festival Award

“UNDER MY GARDEN” ( SOTTO IL MIO GIARDINO ) - ANDREA LODOVICHETTI - ITALY
In Lodovichetti’s evocative and ominous short film, a boy’s interest in the behavior of ants, paired with the disappearance of a neighbor’s wife and his new affair with a young, nearly naked companion, leads the boy to suspect that a body is buried in the yard in a sort of miniature Rear Window told from a child’s perspective. Golden Globe Award Winner, The Spike Lee Award and over 30 Major International Film Festival Awards. 19 minutes. Screens Friday at 9:15pm Grand Festival Award

“CURSES and SERMONS” - NIC SAUNDERS and 14167 FILMS - GREAT BRITAIN
Nic Saunders’ short film is a mystic reimagining of a Michael McClure poem, “Rainbows Reflected on Sheer Black,” that is both expressionistic and eclectic, ranging from rugged Western to Technicolor dream/nightmare. 15 minutes. Screens Friday at 8:40pm *West Coast Premiere Grand Festival Award

“SCISSU” - TOM BEWILOGUA and ALEX BEIER - GERMANY
A bevy of buzzing lights, visceral electronic noise, pulsing heartbeats and a sort of breathy claustrophobia suffuse this unsettling film of sex, guns, violence and depravity. It is a story told in reverse, constantly stepping backward to fill in the gaps, gradually piecing together a plot consisting of desperate people resorting to desperate means in pursuit of cheap thrills, fleeting pleasures and sensual violence. In German with English subtitles. German Independence Award, Best German Short - Oldenburg International Film Festival (Germany)
27 minutes. Screens Saturday at 10:50pm *US Premiere Grand Festival Award

“AT NIGHT” - MAX LANDES and PHILIP ACETO
A couple watches an erotic mystery on a giant TV. Soon their world and that of the glowing box merge. Who is in remote control? 11 minutes. Screens Friday at 8:25pm Grand Festival Award

“BIRTH CONTROL” - JONATHAN DANE
An extremely quick take on love, marriage, pregnancy and malaise. 3 minutes. Screens Friday at 7:54pm Grand Festival Award

“DIAMOND” - GERALD GUTSCHMIDT and PAMELA WEI ENDIRA
An eleven year old, grows more desperate when his grandmother puts herself in the way between him and his jailed father. 12 minutes. Screens Saturday at 5:05pm Grand Festival Award

“THE EDGE OF THE SEA” - MARIA JOSE CALDERON
Puerto Rican fisherman trying to stop coastline development, privatization and beach erosion. 27 minutes. Screens Saturday at 3:54pm Grand Festival Award

“THE GIRL IN THE WINDOW” - KELLEN MOORE
An innocent young girl, fearful of the outside world, has never ventured outside the comforts of her own home. 9 minutes. Screens Friday at 7:44pm Grand Festival Award

“THE DISGRUNTLED WORKER” - GRETCHEN OLIVERO
A young man starts a new job in an isolated factory with restrictions and odd occurrences, which lead to his termination. 4 minutes. Screens Saturday at 4:58pm Grand Festival Award

“ESCAPE FROM OAKLAND” - DAN K HARVEST
Dan K Harvest’s guerilla-style music video follows a local rapper’s attempt to escape—by car, by bike, by any means necessary—his evil record company’s plan to cast him in a reality show. The clip takes us on a madcap journey through Berkeley and Oakland as the beleaguered hip-hopper tries to buck the corporate hacks and keep it real in the East Bay’s urban jungle. 7 minutes. Screens Saturday at 6:35pm Kustom Kar Kommando Award

“FRIDA IN THE MIRROR” - ADRIAN ARIAS
An experimental music vid-poem with twenty women dressed like Frida to honor the power, force and sensuality of women. 5 minutes. Screens Friday at 7:35pm Grand Festival Award

“OBAMA WON!” - DON ARBOR
Inspired by a dream, an uplifting song, matched with positive images from the campaign. 4 minutes. Screens Friday at 7:30pm Grand Festival Award

“MORE THAN JUST A PRETTY FACE”
CASSIE FOX-MOUNT and EAST BAY MEDIA CENTER’S SUMMER TEEN MEDIA CAMP 2009
A behind-the-scenes look at the fashion industry from the perspectives of various fashion professionals. Exploring themes of body image, personal style, the creative process and social responsibility; delivering stunning visuals, consistent humor and compelling ideas. 28 minutes. Screens Saturday at 12:15pm *Premiere Grand Festival Award

Filmmakers Reception 6:30pm - 7:00pm Landmark Shattuck Cinemas - 2230 Shattuck Avenue - Downtown Berkeley - Filmmakers Awards 7:00pm - 7:25pm

Filmmakers & Attendees Official Hotel- Downtown Berkeley Inn - 2001 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704 Phone: (510) 843-4043 Fax: (510) 843-4046 www.downtownberkeleyinn.com * Mention BVFF and get reduced rates.

Arts & Entertainment:

Film Festival Showcases the Indie Spirit

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet

Thursday September 24, 2009

“An independent cinematic marathon,” the self-description of the energetic 18th annual Berkeley Video and Film Festival, showing Friday night and Saturday at Shattuck Cinemas, seems to be the fairest way to depict the ongoing screenings that bring back something of the feel—the exhilaration—of great film festivals of yore, which these days often hold fewer surprises and discoveries than crowds, high per-show ticket prices and the tired format of a typical official event.

But the low Berkeley Video and Film Festival ticket price and viability may be the clincher: $13 general admission, $10 students and seniors, “valid all day and night.”

“Dodge out and back in—that’s the marathon approach to a festival, the way we like it,” said Festival Director Mel Vapour.

Vapour spoke with enthusiasm about this year’s program, its history and the state of independent video and filmmaking while he and festival co-founder Paul Kealoha Blake were engaged in a marathon of their own, preparing for opening night. The festival is under the aegis of the East Bay Media Center, the nonprofit Vapour and Blake founded in 1980.

This year, the offerings range from feature documentaries to ethnographic shorts and experimental shorts to full-length features.

Jeff Adachi’s You Don’t Know Jack: The Jack Soo Story (1:15 p.m. Saturday) covers the career and travails of the Oakland-born late singer and actor Jack Soo (best-known for the TV series “Barney Miller”). David Silberberg’s doc Oh My God! It’s Harrod Blank! is about Berkeley art car creator, filmmaker and art curator Harrod Blank, son of music filmmaker Les Blank (5:18 p.m. Saturday). Words of Advice: William S. Burroughs on the Road is a Danish-produced doc of the public and private faces of the late, great vernacular satirist as he traveled to read aloud and perform his “routines” (8:10 p.m. Saturday). Holland Wilde’s Zapook of the North is billed as “a sociocultural memory mash-up” (11:18 p.m. Saturday). And Neil Ira Needleman’s I Know Who Really Sent the Anthrax Letters (7:58 p.m. Friday) is an experimental short like “What family secrets are hidden in the grainy images of ancient 8mm celluloid? Something to think about the next time you open your mail.” The festival also showcases full-length features like Sarba Das’ Karma Calling (“a fable about hope and love for a family of Hindus from Hoboken,” 9:35 p.m. Friday) and short features, like Andrea Lodovichetti’s Under My Garden (Sotto Il Mio Giardino), a kind of “miniature Rear Window told from a child’s perspective,” which has won a Golden Globe and prizes from over 30 international festivals, including Cannes (9:15 p.m. Friday).

Films and videos such as these, over a wide range stylistically and in subject matter, are programmatically blended, often back-to-back, with student filmmakers, such as Kellan Moore’s The Girl in the Window (7:44 p.m. Friday) or Maria Jose Calderon’s The Edge of the Sea, about “a Puerto Rican fisherman trying to stop coastline development” (3:54 p.m. Saturday).

“You could do a doubletake, seeing who’s on screen,” said Vapour. “The digital revolution so empowered independent filmmaking—camera technology, editing especially, though high definition will be the equalizer—that independent and commercial filmmaking are on an egalitarian plateau at this point. And so we put a 17-year-old producer up against a seasoned veteran because of the qualitative aspects. Again, you might do a doubletake watching Kellan Moore’s Girl in the Window: ‘A Disney film?’ You just have to shake your head. A teenager has the skill set in their bedroom to be an indie—and I say hats off to the educational facilities doing media training.”

Vapour spoke of the festival’s beginnings and history: “Initially, in ’91 it started as an East Bay-centric sort of affair, a venue for indie and student film and videomakers to show their wares. It was presented in Schwimley Auditorium [Berkeley High School], to a sell-out crowd.”

Vapour, who first submitted a film of his own to a festival in 1965, the third year of the first festival for independents, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, recalled the early days, “when there were maybe four [festivals] total; there have to be two to three hundred now.”

He continued telling of the Berkeley festival’s beginnings. “It started to grow. The audience base had developed more appetite for independent cinema. We expanded into the old UC Theater on University, a 900-seat-plus venue—and we were filling it. We were going beyond our parameters and starting to get a reputation. New festivals were fast germinating: the Film Arts Foundation started theirs in San Francisco; the Mill Valley Film Festival began in Marin.

“We carved out our niche and presentation style,” Vapour went on, “marathon screening, back-to-back. Many fimmakers hit the screen: Nick Saunders, Robert Greenwald, Mark Birnbaum ... We showed at various places on campus, including Wheeler Auditorium—and in what was really our home, the Fine Arts Cinema, with the right amount of seats. Towards the end, we were turning away literally hundreds from screenings of Unconstitutional, Robert Greenwald’s film, which we premiered. It was sad to see the Fine Arts turn into one of Patrick Kennedy’s restaurants. We were in the Oaks Theatre for three or four years—and had been getting a lot of inquiries from Landmark, dedicated to digital cinema, who had locked onto indie cinema as promoters.”

Vapour concluded with a word about the range of what’s available today in video and film: “We’re seeing the emergence, for one thing, of a new documentary format—almost a new documentary entertainment style—like with Tao Ruspoli’s Behind the Wheel (9:25 p. m. Saturday), going through the South in a hi-tech-equipped school bus prior to the election, not on a ‘red’ and ‘blue’ states thing, but an examination of the Southern Heartland on where we’re all going politically, artistically, spiritually; the format very gritty, very real ... So many different approaches—and still today we have a niche for making purist cinema.”

BERKELEY VIDEO AND FILM FESTIVAL

7:30–11 p.m. Friday; noon to midnight Saturday at Shattuck Cinemas, 2230 Shattuck Ave. $13 general, $10 students and seniors. Box office: 464-5980; info: 843-3699 or www.berkeleyvideofilmfest.org.

Claire Burch at BVFF 2008 receiving the BVFF Grand Festival Award for her Documentary "The James Baldwin Anthology"

Arts & Entertainment:

Film Festival Showcases the Indie Spirit

Arts & Entertainment:

2009 Berkeley Film and Video and Festival

September 23, 2009

The Revolution Will Be Digitized

Berkeley Video & Film Festival celebrates nineteen years on the digital vanguard.