 | ||||||||||||||
 synopsis cast/crew making-of photos: movie frames photos: filming trailers poster read the script film festivals contact links | |
SAN FRANCISCO INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL 2006
YEAR had its world premiere on Friday, February 3, 2006, at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival. Also known as Indiefest. The screening was a small one in The Women’s Building auditorium. We were very happy to have Blair and Judy Leatherwood there to join us in representing the film. Judy, amazingly, had still not seen the movie, holding out to see it the first time on the big screen. The screening began with a wonderful introduction by Alicia R. Perre-Dowd, one of the film programmer for the festival and who made the initial call to us informing us that YEAR had been accepted. Alicia had told us that over a thousand films had been submitted to the festival and that she alone had screened 400 of them and that YEAR had been a very welcome breath of fresh air – and quality. She described YEAR and the short film TWITCH, which precedes it, as being the epitome of what the San Francisco Indiefest, and what they consider true independent film, to be about. [YEAR is being run with a short film called TWITCH (twitchthemovie.com) which is a real honor for us. Last year the Independent Film Channel ran a documentary/reality series called Film School profiling several students of the NYU film school making student films. One of the filmmakers featured was Leah Meyerhoff as she directed her short film TWITCH about a teen-age girl’s strained relationship with her mother, who is in a wheelchair - bravely played by Leah's own mother Toni Meyerhoff. It’s a very interesting, mature and disturbing film about this difficult family relationship that has played successfully in film festivals around the world. Bonnie and I are both proud to be in the same program with TWITCH.] The presentation and projection was perfect. Sound was clear, the picture in focus, the color absolutely right. Audience attendance at this first venue is almost always modest, about thirty people, but they could not have been a better audience. They picked up on every one of the jokes, many of which are very subtle, and nothing escaped them – which is a good indicator that they were hooked into the story and the characters. I would watch the faces and their were wide eyes and big smiles during the good parts and a few tears even at the end during the death scene and, surprisingly, during the singing at the end when the ashes are dispersed.
The people putting on the San Francisco Independent Film Festival are some of the nicest and most professional we’ve ever met. Very warm, very personable, very excited to have the best films they can find up on the screens – so it’s very complimentary to all of us to be a part of it. YEAR at the ROXIE, Monday, February 6, 2006. A great day and a great evening. Bonnie and I drove in early to catch some of the other films that were screening in the afternoon at the Roxie. The cool thing was walking up to the cinema and seeing the poster for YEAR in the window in front of the cinema as the main feature of the day. It was interesting to see what other filmmakers were making with significantly more money and small or full-sized crews. Needless to say, the acting in our film, I felt, stood out by far. On the technical side, one thing that struck me after listening to several other films was how clean our sound and dialogue was. In fact, one of the visiting filmmakers asked me how much of our sound track was ADR – Additional Dialogue Recording, or dubbing. When I told him I only changed two lines, he was speechless. He had hired a two-man sound crew. YEAR ran at 7 PM on Monday evening. Representing the film with us was Savannah Swain. Her parents Sabrena and Scott had both taken the day off from work and gave Savannah the day off from school so she could see herself on the big screen in San Francisco.
Before the film I’d watched one couple standing outside, looking at the poster for YEAR and a smaller poster for TWITCH, the short that ran in the same program, and went up to them and said, “You’ve picked a great night to come to the festival because these are both great films.” Later, going to our seats, I was thrilled to see them in the audience. The screening was flawless and the audience could not have been better. There were around 100 to 120 people in the audience, and it was really gratifying to have that many people, who knew nothing about the movie except what they’d read in the San Francisco Chronicle or from the film festival website, make the effort to come to the film. It was amazing to watch the film, shot with a digital camcorder, projected across the length of the theater onto a full-sized screen. It looked like any other movie. In other words, a real movie. And to sit in an audience and watch the movie with rows of the tops of the heads of people watching the film across the bottom of the screen. And everybody was getting it. In both screenings of YEAR at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, the audiences were with the movie – laughing at the big lines, chuckling with the small lines, even laughing at the small character moments – such as the uncomfortable dinner scene when Miles (Eric) had made dinner for Sydney (Christine) but she’d rather go out to eat. When he says, “Where do you want to go?” Sydney: “I don’t know. You decide.” Miles: “Well, it was your idea.” Sydney: “Yeah, but you’re the man.” There was a round of laughter at that, and after one screening a person mentioned that scene and said how mean she was. It was just extremely gratifying to have an audience of strangers watching the film that we had all put so much effort into - and seeing that they like it. And they cared about the people in the story. After the film finally faded there was a wonderful round of applause from the audience and the festival programmer Alicia R. Perre-Dowd called up Bonnie and myself to the front of the theater. And then she called out “Savannah Swain”. Savannah’s eyes went wide – she had no idea that as a member of the film she would be asked to participate in the Q&A. It was great to stand before this wonderful audience alongside Savannah and Bonnie and represent our work. During the Q&A several people didn’t want to ask questions but wanted to express their reactions to the film, which were all very positive – about the sensitivity to the female characters, seeing a good film with a good story that featured adult women and their issues, and seeing a film that was very realistic and closer to what the members of the audience’s own lives were like. Several people wanted to know when it would be out on DVD. One of the recurring questions that comes up in the Q&A of all of the films is, “How much did the film cost?” and we had heard various answers, “$30,000” “$70,000” “$200,000.” Eventually the question was put to me: “How much did the film cost?” “Well, how much did it look like?” “I don’t know, it looked really good.” “$8,000.” To which the audience responded as no other audience had to the answer – they applauded. Eventually, it was time to move us out to let people in for the next screening. But an important thing about our Q&A was that almost the whole audience that saw the movie stayed to hear about how it was made. As I was leaving the couple – My Li and Federico – who had been looking at the poster out in front of the cinema a few hours before came up to me to say that they had thought I was with the festival when I had encouraged them to see the film and had no idea that I had made it – and that they were glad I had come up to them because they “really loved it”, that it was “very sophisticated” and “European”. Afterwards, outside the cinema people continued to come up and talk to us and Alicia, who has championed YEAR from when she was screening the submissions back in October, insisted on having a picture of herself with us in front of the poster. Alicia was particularly taken by Savannah’s performance because it was a serious and complicated performance for an actor so young. It was a truly great evening. A few days later I went back to see some of the other films on the last day of the festival and a woman named Alexis picked me out to say that she had seen YEAR at the Roxie and that the next day she found herself thinking about her own life over the past year and how things had happened to her. And she wanted to know more about the characters, what was going to happen to them in the next year. Alexis was so grateful that the film did not wrap up too neatly because it made her think about what she thought the people would do. This was one of the goals all along.  YEAR is booked in two more festivals at this moment: LOS ANGELES in the REEL WOMEN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Rwiff.com In the plush 250 seat screen room/theater at RALEIGH STUDIOS on Melrose Avenue at Van Ness, across from Paramount Studios. Friday March 24 3:15 PM SACRAMENTO in the SACRAMENTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Sacramentofilmfestival.com In the T STREET THEATER at 26th and T Street Friday March 31 8:30 PM Hope to see you there. MIKE CARROLL | ||||||||||||
| [ Back to Top ] | |||||||||||||
