Cysfilm

From UNAFF: Water Themes

It’s a rainy day in Palo Alto, CA. The United Nations Association Film Festival has a really nice, intimate atmosphere. I met a filmmaker tonight named Anjoo Khosla who made a short doc film called Wahid’s Mobile Bookstore, the URL is pasted below (10min). It’s about a charming little boy in India who reminds me for some reason of the boy in The 400 Blows – hmm. I guess it’s because they’re both charming self-sufficient kids.

It looks like Iraq is back in the news with the release of all those docs from Wikileaks. It’s good timing for Indentured to come out – I really hope it finds its place in the larger dialog about Iraq.

The rain, new surroundings and film festivities have got me slipping in and out of imaginary film tableaus. I ate dinner in an empty sushi place on an empty rainy street and swore I was in a Wong Kar Wai movie for a second.

Indentured screens tomorrow night at 920pm at the Aquarius Theatre in Palo Alto, CA.

The INDENTURED group on facebook.

Watch Wahid’s Mobile Bookstore here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJYD2U1gjnM

INDENTURED

Indentured screens at the UNAFF on the Stanford campus next Monday night so I’ll be blogging from the road next week. If you’re on Facebook, please join the INDENTURED group at: https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=168400833252

The more people I can get in the group the easier it is for me to prove people care about this subject. I’d love to lay everything out about the film but it’s still under legal review. Here’s a synopsis of the film:

Indentured investigates the living conditions of South Asian laborers working on U.S. military bases in Iraq. Testimonials are presented along side the U.S. government’s guidelines to define human trafficking, which suggest that large-scale labor abuses are happening inside U.S. bases in Iraq.

10 minutes

Jehad Nga: a visual segway from Africa to Iraq

I discovered Jehad Nga’s photography while I was in Iraq and became a fan. Take a look, I think his work is amazing.

Anybody else have a favorite photographer right now? Please share.

New Media Rights

Indentured, my ten-minute doc about labor abuse in Iraq, will premiere next week at the United Nations Association Film Festival. Yeah! But what I want to write about is not the film so much as the help I received to finish it – very important legal help.

San Diego, a city that is not famous for its art scene or progressive cultural movements does have some amazing things going on besides the tacos and weather (double rainbow!). One of those things is New Media Rights. For the media makers and filmmakers out there, bookmark their page because it’s an amazing resource. If you’re creating media, blogging, making video or you name it, sooner or later you’re going to have a legal question you’ll need to address. This organization is working really hard to make sure you know your rights. It’s also worth mentioning the man behind the curtain is a really smart attorney not just an advocate.

So thank you New Media Rights for the guidance through what could have become a complete personal and professional disaster.

Very Sincerely,

Cy

New Media Rights

Links

I have to get ready to shift gears from Bush League/Malawi to Indentured/Iraq, but before I jump off into that, here are some websites I follow for my Africa fix. Some are just curiosities but they’re worth looking at, at least once:

The Good:
http://chrisblattman.com/
http://waterwellness.ca/
http://barefooteconomics.ca/
http://www.buildafrica.org/
The Bad:
http://www.africom.mil/interactiveMap.asp?target=_self
And the money:
http://www.globalrichlist.com/

Ira Glass video

Rachel Jones, who if you don’t know her is a Canadian-American ex-Associated Press journalist turned novelist living in the most dangerous city I’ve ever been to – Caracas, sent me this link, which I love. Thanks Rach:

Bush League is dedicated to Gama

The first time I saw Epton Gama, he was just a few feet away, popping out of the head-high sea of grass that walls the footpath leading into the village of Zolokere. Without a pause he wrapped his arms around me and said “oooohh my brother!” If I felt a little unease in being so far from the world I was familiar with, it evaporated when Gama appeared. Gama worked for Jake (one of the people in Bush League) at his house taking care of all the day-to-day things like carrying water and cooking. This is a normal arrangement for many people in the region and for almost all the Peace Corps volunteers there. As Jake’s visitor, by default, Gama also took care of me during my first two trips to Malawi. He died from AIDS in late 2008.

A few people have asked me why he isn’t in the film, he only appears in a couple shots. The filmmaker part of me will tell you it’s just casting – Gama wasn’t a “character”. He didn’t embody any specific point of view or sector of life in Zolokere like some of the others do. But Gama’s hand really is all over the film. I know that people watching can never know that but when I watch it’s one of the things I see. He is in the film. He was pivotal in making it.

Films (for me) are primarily stories in pictures but they’re also cultural artifacts that belong to specific times and places. I hope that someday Bush League will fall into a canon of western films in which we started to move our narrative of Africa away from the tired tropes and began to see it with more sophistication and respect. But I also know it’s possible that I got things wrong and that in fifty years it may look unsophisticated and uninformed. So I’m dedicating my effort to make the film to Gama not the film itself. Making it has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done and through this labor I wish to express to you Gama that I remember you and I recognize you. Please accept this – it was the very best I could do. It is the least I can do.

Posterized

My innovation for movie posters is to cut tear-off tabs on the sides with a URL to get the screening times. It kind of worked in Vancouver except that they were all covered over with other posters in less than 24 hours. As far as marketing goes, I think my only real shot is to make good films and just tell the truth. Posters are still fun though.

Bush League: Hello Zolokere!

I just got back to San Diego this morning after a really amazing experience at the Vancouver Int. Film Festival. I’ll write more about the festival this week but for now I just want to share this video. It’s the audience at the first screening saying hi to everyone back in Malawi. What an amazing audience, what an amazing experience. This experience will be hard to beat.

There are two extra names in there: Tosi and Judith. I shot lots of material with both of them, which I couldn’t use in the final film but they are still an important part of it.

Bush League Premiere

Bush League opened last night here in Vancouver at the VIFF, what an amazing experience, absolutely amazing.