Children of Men

Children of Men, the new movie by Alfonso Cuaron. Go see it. I will be trying to interview the brilliant Cuaron for Death + Taxes this year, as he is also doing the movie of my new favorite book, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. I have never used this blog to make recommendations for you all, but here it is. A new year. Check it all out as soon as possible: Children of Men, Alfonse Cuaron, and A History of Love. Enjoy.

12.17.06: Hardcore Hanukkah

Happy Hanukkah, Hipsters!

This looks to be one of the best Chanukahs ever...thanks to the Hardcore Hanukkah tour!

(Brooklyn's Golem Makin Chanukah Look Good)

The lead up to the tour was pretty good in and of itself...with the Film Arts holiday party at a pub where my team kicked arse at pub-wide trivia and won ourselves each a whopping $5! That was Wednesday night, and Thursday rocked even harder at the "Vodka Latka" party where punk-klezmer band Golem blew me away (I never knew the accordion could be so foxy!), following a set by Conspiracy of Beards (I kid you not--a men's choir that covers Leonard Cohen tunes), at the great evening put on by some of my favorite Jewish entities: Reboot, JDub Records and the Progressive Jewish Alliance.



But Jewish Subculture Junkies, Listen Up, Cuz You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet! Friday and Saturday were the first two days of the first Hardcore Hanukkah tour, seriously one of the coolest, funnest, rock-the-dreidel events ever! As part of the Workmen's Circle's Hanukkah Tour, we were lucky enough to screen Jericho's Echo clips amidst the Hebrew hijinks of Australia's Yidcore, New Orleans's Zydepunks and the Bay's very own Jewdriver.

What these bands may lack in mainstream appeal, they make up for in originality and Jew-tasticness. We all know that Jews formed the backbone of punk rock in the US (See The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's if you don't) but Jewdriver and Yidcore just come out and shout it, albeit in the silliest ways possible. Yidcore dresses up shtetl-fabulous and does fast and furious punk rock Fiddler on the Roof covers, Bette Midler tunes, traditional Jewish songs, and my personal favorite, the Arabic-Hebrew peacenik number, "Od Yavo Shalom." Jewdriver, a spin off on the neo-Nazi skinhead band Skrewdriver, does Jewish pride songs taking the piss out of their fascist counterparts. Sporting kilts, Fred Perry shirts, yarmulkes and pais, they chug Manischewitz and dodge the audience pelting bagels during their sets.

(Bram Yidcore and Ian Jewdriver Lighting the First Candle)

We had planned to have a little Chanukah party at our place after the first night's show at Balazo, but our travelers were far to weary so we ended up with only the lovely Bram, Rory and Myki from Yidcore who we were putting up for the night and somehow we managed to eat 15-persons worth of latkes between the five of us the next morning! What can I say? Growing boys and a Yiddishe Mama are a natural combination. Anyway, we didn't get too much time for sightseeing with our guests, what with their priorities being laundry and shopping for sleeping bags (someone forgot to tell them they might need those on tour--woops!) but we did spend lots of quality time. I think they are my favorites of the gajillions of bands we've hosted over the years, and not just because of those adorable accents. They really are awesome dudes who have more going on than just the band (Myki runs Vice Magazine in Australia and Bram is a law professor and book critic, for example) and I hope we can visit them down under one day.

So the second night's show was at 924 Gilman Street. This legendary place gave rise to so many bands, including most famously Green Day and Operation Ivy. (Did I mention that one of the members of Jewdriver was IN Operation Ivy?!?! Seriously.) As Bram described in his blog about the tour, "924 Gilman Street is the home of the whole independent California punk scene. It is to the West Coast what CBGB's was to the East, except Gilman is a collectively run, non-profit community centre run by kids for kids." I have witnessed a bunch of bands playing their first show at Gilman, including one of Seth's old bands, Breaker Breaker, and it is always really exciting to feel their energy in a house of legends. I guess it's sort of like a Catholic praying at the Vatican, but then, what does a Jew know of such things?

At any rate, it didn't really hit me until the projector started flickering that *I* was now having my 15 minutes to shine at this place. It was really amazing to see a bunch of punks, in the middle of a show, quiet down and gather around to watch some clips of Jericho's Echo. I think some of the guys in the movie would have been really proud...after all, this was sort of like their chance to play at Gilman! Also, I have screened the film at so many festivals in front of a "certain crowd," while the kids at Gilman are really the intended audience. I actually had one skinny little dude in a huge leather jacket come up to me and say that he saw the whole movie in Berkeley last year and has since gone to Israel and hung out with some of the guys in Dizengoff Square. Fucking awesome!!

Oy, I still have more to tell but the last candle just burned out and I seriously have to go to bed. I promise I'll finish this post eventually!!

11.30.06 Happy Birthday, Film Arts!

I promised I'd write about the Film Arts 30th Anniversary bash from the last post, but next thing you know, I was too full of turkey and stuffing to get anything down on virtual paper...

The gist of it is that the event was a smashing success...and made me feel quite proud to be part of such a venerable institution that has aided so many truly independent filmmakers, in a city where Hollywood renegades come to forge their own paths. (Sorry for the melodrama--just watched Lord of the Rings.)

The theme of the evening was Past, Present, Future and the programming reflected this. Past was represented by OffOn, an experimental short from 1972 by one of the Film Arts founding members. Present gave us the "Best of Film Arts Members One-Minute Films" that I mentioned, of which my little movie "ericka" was one. The one-minute films were fantastic, and spanned genres from comedy to animation to doc to experimental. I had an ongoing battle with my friend Shane King (from the Girls Rock! movie) about whose one-minute film was going to mop the floor with whose...and I have to admit his was pretty awesome, but neither of us won the audience choice award, which was clearly fixed ;)

The Future section presented two works-in-progress. The first was clips from an upcoming documentary--Strange Culture--about the messy world of art and politics and a bizarre government conspiracy to squash artists' rights. One of the producers is the dynamic Lise Swenson, who founded TILT, the organization I am now running. The film just got into Sundance--congratulations!!!

The main feature of the evening was a rough cut screening of a new doc about the bustling Nigerian film scene (Who knew?). This isn't Hollywood, or even Bollywood...This is Nollywood, baby, and it is pure inspiration. For someone who considers herself a guerrilla filmmaker, this really put me in my place. These West Africans churn out hundreds of movies with extremely limited resources and have made themselves a massive homegrown entertainment industry. I think everyone in the audience was impressed and energized by the film. I can't wait to see the final cut!

So I didn't even *get* to the who's who of the guest list, which included such local luminaries as former Film Arts diva Gail Silva, Oscar-nominated doc director Sam Green, film publicist extraordinnaire Karen Larsen and about 800 others, but now that my Thanksgiving has digested, it's already time to grate my latke potatoes. See you on Chanukah!

11.3.06 Sacto, Film Arts and other updates

Hello, my long lost friends!
My, it *has* been a while. And Lizzie has been busy!

The foremost occupier of my time has been a fabulous new job as the Youth Coordinator at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center, home of Frameline (SF LGBT Film Festival), SF Jewish Film Festival, Center for Asian American Media (Asian American Film Festival) and the venerable Film Arts Foundation. It is at this nexus of the local independent film community that I am running a program called TILT (Teaching Intermedia Literacy Tools), which teaches media literacy through hands-on production. In other words, we do awesome, soup-to-nuts filmmaking workshops with underserved youth all over the Bay Area. Woo-hoo! Youth voice represent!

On that note, A one-minute film that I made about one of TILT's youth filmmakers is screening at the not-to-be-missed film event of the season, the FILM ARTS FOUNDATION 30th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION, next Wednesday at the incredible Castro Theatre. The evening features an eclectic mix of films for film-lovers, and the one-minute films section is an audience choice awards, so if you're in town please come and vote for my lil' movie, "ericka"! It is going to be an outstanding night, and I'll be sure to write about it here. if you can make it, tix are available at www.filmarts.org/30years

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the Sacramento screening. This blog is supposed to be chronicling Jericho's Echo adventures, after all. So there have been some incredible screenings recently, in places as varied as Prague, Mexico City and the Turks & Caicos islands. Due to the aforementioned new job, however, I have slowed down on the galavanting around the world a bit. That's one reason it was so nice to have a local-ish screening in California's capitol, Sacramento, last night. The other reason it was so nice is that it was hosted in a new Microcinema that is starting up thanks to the fine folks at Shiny Object Digital Media, who also happen to be the Video-on-Demand (VOD) distributors for Jericho's Echo.

The crowd was funny and a bit surly, but mostly appreciative. The first question was a drunkenly blurted, "Are you single?!", which I ignored, and later I got a brand new one:

Audience member: "I am pen pals with someone in the movie."
Me: "Oh, really? Who?"
Audience member: "His name is Barak."
Me: "Hmmm. I'm not sure there *is* someone named Barak in the movie."
Audience member: "Oh yeah. He's at one of the shows. He hates you."
Me: "Uhhhhhhh, ok?"

I later remembered that the person he was referring to is a disgruntled member of one of the bands who was pissed about not being interviewed (even though I never met him when I was there shooting). He approached me at the Tel Aviv screening, screaming until he was red in the face and demanding a free DVD. I even gave him one! But apparently he's still holding a grudge. Wow.

In other news, I have been writing some more film articles (Look out for my year-end music doc roundup in the winter Death + Taxes and my coverage of Good Vibrations Erotic Films Compeition in the next Release Print!) and teaching a class at FAF for filmmakers called "Building Buzz Around Your Film."

Like I said, Busy Lizzie! I promise not to wait so long til the next entry, and in the meantime, I hope to see you next Wednesday, November 8 at the Castro!!

PS The Henry Rollins article mentioned in my last post is out on the shelves in the current Oct/Nov ish of Death + Taxes!

07.22.06 My Morning with Henry

A few months back, the up and coming indie music magazine, Death + Taxes, featured a piece about Jericho's Echo. During the interview, I was shooting the breeze with Managing Editor Stephen Blackwell, and I suggested that the new mag add an indie film column to its well-rounded music coverage. "Great idea," he replied, "Why don't you write it?"

So that's how I ended up in Henry Rollins' Hollywood office earlier this month. I know. You're thinking,"Office?! I would expect Henry Rollins to have some sort of lair or batcave where he broods and comes up with elaborate plans to save the world!" Me, too.

In fact, I was downright nervous to meet him, and not just because he was the lead singer of Black Flag, has produced a whole boatload of interesting work in his lifetime, and is best friends with one of my heroes, Ian MacKaye. It was sheer intimidation. After all, one of the most iconic images of Henry features him painted Satan-red and screaming, "LIAR!" straight into a TV camera (in a Rollins Band video ca. 1995).

My fears were squashed the minute Henry answered the door. I had arrived way early in anticipation of LA traffic and made the mistake of walking to get some coffee. Mistake because A) LA is not very pedestrian friendly and B) It was hot as balls. By the time I approached the office, I'm afraid I was a bit of a mess. The first thing he said, kindly, was, "Can I get you a glass of water?" I have to admit that I immediately thought,"Wow! You sound just like Henry Rollins!"

The office was in a modest, residential-style house filled with media--tapes, CDs, videos, plus Henry's desk, a sound editing station and, much to my delight, a single framed photograph of Henry and Ian. A CD of tuvan throat singing greeted me along with Henry's water-offer, so we started with that and didn't have a lull in conversation for the next 2 hours.

Henry was charming and entertaining and not any less intense than I expected. I mostly aimed to focus on movies, due to the nature of my column and the fact that he currently hosts a show on the Independent Film Channel. We covered a lot more ground than that, though...from the "War on Terror" to what its like to present at an award show to what a twisted city Los Angeles is to how he'd rather read quality literature than eat. I even got a show-and-tell session that included such gems as listening to a voice message from Iggy Pop ("Hey Henry, this is James Osterburg..."), and previewing the incredible jazzy-spoken-word-collaboration between Henry and the one and only WIlliam Shattner (of Star Trek fame).

I really wanted to give Henry a hug at the end but I settled for the above photograph. He was even kind enough to let us try it again when my face got cut off in this one, but the next one came out even weirder. After the interview, he was off with the director of his latest film to check out Clerks2 since he was going to interview director Kevin Smith for his show, and later that night he was introducing a new Ramones movie to the group assembling to watch it in a Hollywood graveyard. Ah, the life of a punk rock media mogul.

Thanks, Henry, for a lovely morning. The rest of you can read Henry's insights into the movie biz in Death + Taxes issue no. 3, due out this fall.

What John Cusak Movie Are You?

OK, so I never post these online quizzes, but since I am still recovering from the Germany trip, I wanted to at least say Hello to you all...and hey, it's movie related!

I just took this quiz this morning and found it amazingly accurate (unlike the "FInd Your Inner Rock Star" quiz which assured me I was Britney Spears!!). I saw High Fidelity and CRIED, even though it was sposed to be a comedy...guess it hit a little too close to home.

So what's yours?

Your Life is Like

High Fidelity

What John Cusack movie are you?

04.25.06 Germany: It’s a Wrap

After four flights in two days, I descended through the clouds back into drizzly San Francisco. I’ve now had a little over a week to catch up on sleep and reflect upon the incredible set of experiences that made up Jericho’s Echo’s first European tour.

The last few screenings whizzed by in a blur. We had my record-setting longest Q & A (a full hour!) in Trier, and met excellent people in Aachen, where we also had the first ever forcibly removed audience member—a drunk punk shouting in slurred Polish. Overall, there are so many things that unexpectedly astounded me about the trip, even on top of the fact that little old me made a movie that people living 6,000 miles away from me came by the hundreds to see.

The first and most wonderfully surprising thing is the friendship that developed between Johannes and me. You can read a few entries back how anxious I was about spending 24/7 in a car for over 2 weeks with a total stranger who gave the impression of stereotypical German frigidness. Continue reading, however, and you can see that within a few days together, we were inseparable not by circumstance, but by choice.

(My friend Johannes)

Aside from all of our meaningful cultural exchanges (For example, did you know that Scrooge McDuck is called, “Uncle Duckleburg” in Germany?), Johannes was an excellent cultural interpreter for some of our weirder moments. We spent a lot of our time laughing, and in more serious, business-related, or just plain exhausting tour circumstances, we gave each other the necessary support and space. In short, a perfect tour relationship.

As each screening actually had a guarantee, I thought I might make a profit on this tour for once, but I never expected that the biggest gain would be a lifelong friend.


The other main point of interest for me was the curious relationship that Germans have with Israel. I felt like I was really doing something important by bringing the somewhat controversial issues in the film to the forefront for discussion among Germans, because Israeli/Palestinian issues touch a much closer nerve in German society than I expected.

I already mentioned in the Nuremburg entry the surprising (to me) split among the German left regarding Mideast politics. In the U.S., speaking from personal experience, I’ve found that one is considered somewhat of a pariah if they practice left-wing politics and still support Israel. In Germany, it seemed to be the most radical left who were most supportive of Israel. I had folks showing up at screenings in full anarchist regalia—head-to-toe black, dreadlocks, etc, with the addition of a button or baseball cap proclaiming, “Israel: We love you.” What?!

I don’t think I am the one to make it, but a documentary could definitely be fashioned about the complex, contemporary German-Jewish-Israeli dynamic.

Now that I am back and dealing with reality again, the next big step is to get the Jericho’s Echo DVD into stores and video shops and thereby into people’s personal DVD collections…publicity, publicity, publicity…ah, the fun never ends!

4.11.06 Germany: Munster

Things lightened up considerably after Weimar. The drive to Munster was one of our longest, but I think we were both happy to put the experiences of the previous day far behind us.

The screening was at an upscale arthouse cinema (cleverly named "Cinema Munster") and we had a 50+ person crowd. Johannes and I remarked at what a wide variety of venues we've screened in on this tour...everything from broken down squats to fancy art cinemas to music festivals and concert venues. How wierd! Somehow we've managed to get by in all of these different environments.

The guys who put on the show were really cool--Muscha and Carsten (one of those tall, blonde, attractive guys who tries to make himself into a nerd by wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses), from Green Hell Records. Green Hell is one of the largest indie music distributors in Europe and Johannes was saying there must be something in the water in Munster because it is the hub of so much German punk activity.

Carsten also worked for one of the best known venues in town, the Gleis22, so we headed over there after the screening to catch the end Swedish pop outfit "The Shout Out Louds" set. It's awesome to have made a movie that pairs up so nicely with live music, because we've screened prior to so many band performances. At the festival in Bregenz, we got to see Irrlicht, the Austrian punk band with occasional tuba interjections and a wild Cologne-based screamo band, Das Krill. I already mentioned Dog Soldier, the Portland punkers who followed us in Neuebrandenburg. And lest I forget the energetic Berlin/Montreal funkpunk duo The King Khan & BBQ Show who played at our Solingen venue or the female-fronted, Polish, hardcore-with-violins band who played after us in Weimar. It kind of encourages me to make another music doc.

(Irrlicht at the Never Conform Festival)

We got a chance to see some of the city in the morning. It seemed to be the bicycle capital of Germany, with two-wheeled vehicles piled up outside every door, and despite the fact that I was devastated to discover there is actually no such thing as Munster cheese, I really enjoyed the time we spent there before heading off to the final leg of the tour. As we explored the old city together arm in arm, it dawned on me what an amazing friend Johannes had become, and how much I was going to miss him when I returned to the US.