Member News & Notes

Jason Black’s Common Sky, a feature documentary that follows a cross-section of American combat veterans, screened at the Delancey Street Theater, accompanied by a Q&A with the featured veterans.

Jim Granato’s D tour—named Best Bay Area Documentary at SFIFF52—has been selected to air as part of PBS’s Independent Lens in November.

Jennifer Maytorena Taylor and Hamza Perez, the subject of Taylor’s film New Muslim Cool (SFIFF 2009), were interviewed in August on The Today Show.

In August, President Obama selected Harvey Milk to receive the Medal of Freedom Award. Bay Area filmmaker Rob Epstein, the director of the Academy Award–winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, was invited to attend the ceremony. Epstein commented, “I am awed, overwhelmed and so very proud of Harvey.” Epstein is currently in postproduction on Howl, a narrative feature detailing Allen Ginsberg’s poetic behemoth.

Steve Child’s documentary And We Will Dance premiered at the Real to Reel International Film Festival in July, where it won the Audience Choice Award.

Joseph Cashiola’s A Thing as Big as the Ocean, winner of the 2008 IFP Finishing Funds Grant, had its world premiere at the Woods Hole Film Festival. The film played both opening and closing nights and was nominated Best Narrative Feature.

The Judge and the General received an Emmy nomination in the Outstanding Historical Programming category. The documentary, produced and directed by Elizabeth Farnsworth and Patricio Lanfranco, premiered at SFIFF 2008.

Full Grown Men, by David Monroe and Xandra Castleton, was released on DVD in August by Liberation Entertainment. The film won the 2007 Undiscovered Gems Indiewire/Sundance Channel Audience Award, which gave it a theatrical release and Sundance Channel deal.

ACM SIGGRAPH has named Lynn Hershman Leeson as one of two recipients of its first Distinguished Artist Awards for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art, to be presented at the 2009 SIGGRAPH conference in New Orleans.

John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson have received a Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship. They will spend six months in Japan meeting artists, working on their documentary about crows in Tokyo and developing a new project.

Joel Garber’s short film The Strange Rebirth of Andre Weil, an SFFS fiscally sponsored project, screened at the LA Shorts Fest in July. It will also be part of the upcoming SF Shorts Fest in September at the Red Vic Movie House.

American Soil, a film by Terry Lamb and Videosyncracy, screened in August at the 2009 Indie Fest USA. The film also will screen in September at the Napa-Sonoma Wine Country Film Festival.

Melinda Darlington-Bach will premiere her new film The Faeries of Farthingale at the 2009 Mill Valley Film Festival. In preparation, she has been awarded finishing funds from the nonprofit CPCollaborations to work with Michael Semanick on the final sound design at Skywalker Sound.

Eve A. Ma will be presenting a selection of her work at the El Cerrito Public Library September 11. In addition, Ma currently is in negotiations to air her show Of Beauty & Deities: Music & Dance of India on Egyptian TV this fall.

Nancy Kates, an SFFS advisory board member, and Yoav Potash, an SFFS FilmHouse resident, were selected for the Sundance Institute’s 2009 Documentary Fund grants. Kates was awarded the grant to develop Regarding Susan Sontag, a chronicle of the late writer’s life, while Potash’s current project is Crime After Crime, a look at female prisoners. The two projects were selected from nearly 900 entries.

Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider’s film Speaking in Tongues will screen this fall at the Kansas City, New Orleans, U.N. Association and San Diego Asian film festivals, as well as at the Northwest Film Forum.

Chris Ohlson’s short film Expecting will screen in September as part of Rooftop Films 2009 Summer Series in New York City. Expecting won the Director’s Choice Award at the Dallas Video Festival.