Community Cinema Rocks the Bay Area

Sara Brissenden-Smith, regional outreach coordinator for the Bay Area, gives us highlights from a season of Community Cinema screenings.

I just completed my first full season of Community Cinema — that’s 18 screenings, with more than 30 community partners, 40 panelists, and more than 1,000 audience members.

A DJ spins at the Copyright Criminals screening in Oakland

Copyright Criminals brought out some of our most energetic and diverse viewers. People flooded into the theater and almost immediately lost themselves in the music.  Maybe it’s because I’m a hip hop fan, but having youth DJs mixing Lauryn Hill and Tribe Called Quest started my night off right. Law students, hip hop enthusiasts, teenagers, established authors, and DJs all contributed to conversations about artistic expression, creative ownership, and the overall impact on hip hop.

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Tags: between the folds, community cinema, copyright criminals, documentary, garbage dreams, Oakland, PBS, Young@Heart

It’s a Wrap! A Look Back at Independent Lens Season 2009/10

There you have it folks, another gem-filled season of the Emmy Award-winning series Independent Lens is done and dusted. What a ride! We thought we’d take you back to some of the highlights, and point you to where you can catch up on any of the films you missed.

The season premiered with a fan favorite, Herb & Dorothy, about the unassuming Vogels of New York City who amassed a remarkable modern art collection on his salary as a postal clerk and hers as a librarian.

Between the Folds, Vanessa Gould’s visionary film about artists and scientists who are using origami to articulate concepts from quantum physics to the meaning of creativity, aired this winter. We heard from many viewers who found the film mind-bending and impossible to tear themselves away from. The film garnered Gould a Peabody Award this spring.

No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo & Vilmos had something of a cult following in our offices. James Chressanthis’s appreciation of Hungarian cinematographers and lifelong friends Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond (winner of the inaugural Independent Lens Vanguard Award) introduced us to industry legends who — from behind the camera on films such as The Deer Hunter and Easy Rider — literally shaped the look of American cinema in the 1960s and 1970s.

Young@Heart was another viewer favorite, chronicling a season of performances with the eponymous senior citizens chorus. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen octogenarians rocking out punk classics from The Clash.

Garbage Dreams — a beautiful film about trash — aired this spring around Earth Day. It was shortlisted for the Oscar in documentary features, and came equipped with one of our coolest interactive games to date.

We rounded out the year with the grand finale — our only fiction film of the season: Goodbye Solo. This award-winning film from Ramin Bahrani (who Roger Ebert has called “the director of the decade”) told of a Senegalese cab driver who tries to talk his fare out of a one-way ride to his death.

You can go to the Independent Lens website on PBS to revisit your favorites of the year, and vote in the Audience Award finals (beginning June 14). And super good news for you, our viewers — if you missed any shows this year, some of them are available to watch in their entirety on the PBS video player right now! And lucky for you, a number of other films from this season and from seasons past are available on iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, Snagfilms and YouTube. So go out there and watch something mind-expanding.

Tags: between the folds, documentary, Emmy, garbage dreams, Goodbye Solo, Herb & Dorothy, No Subtitles Necessary, Vanessa Gould, Young@Heart

Vanessa Gould Tours Los Angeles With Her Film BETWEEN THE FOLDS

Director of the Community Cinema documentary selection BETWEEN THE FOLDS Vanessa Gould spent the past few days at a series of screening events for the film in the greater Los Angeles area. In addition to the two unique screening and folding events at the historic Aero Theatre in Santa Monica and at the Frida Kahlo Theatre in downtown Los Angeles, Ms. Gould attended a very special screening of the film at the LA County Sheriff’s Pitches Detention Center for close to 200 inmates. She shares her deeply moving visit with us. [No photographs were allowed in or near the detention center for security reasons.]

Vanessa Gould (producer/director) of BETWEEN THE FOLDS

As we walked into LA’s Pitches Detention Center, the sky was deep blue and a long flock of birds flew calmly with the wind above. The series of heavy gates and barbed wire fences ahead gave me a pit in my stomach. Behind the barriers, I soon saw men of all ages – hundreds in royal blue jumpsuits – working, standing, exercising outside.

I was there with Desiree Gutierrez, the ITVS National Community Cinema Coordinator for the Southern California region, to answer questions about BETWEEN THE FOLDS, which a group was watching as we arrived. I had strong doubts as to whether they’d connect to a film about paperfolding, worrying it was trivial in light of the gravity of their own personal situations. How would the film be relevant to them? What could I possibly say or do that could be genuinely useful?

A stock photo of a typical inmate gathering provided courtesy of the LA County Sheriff's Department

Desiree and I entered the room with Deputy Bates and a few other staff members just as they had finished the film. It was a crowded room with about 200 men seated closely, gathered around a single television.

As soon as the lights went on and I looked up – despite my insecurity – it was quite possibly the most enthusiastic reception the film has ever seen: a room brimming with almost-rowdy excitement and big smiles, a few thumbs up and hands on hearts. Even some paper hats and paper stars made out of the local county newspaper were floating around. Deputy Bates introduced us, and I filled with warmth, relieved that the film had perhaps given them an escape from their daily routine.

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Tags: between the folds, filmmaker, Los Angeles