12.2.08 GREAT WALL

If I'm being honest, I really wasn't that excited about seeing the Great Wall of China, as compared to other sights planned for the trip. It's probably because the only other "wonder of the world" I've seen--Stonehenge--was a little underwhelming. Pile of rocks. Whoop-de-do. However, low expectations have served me well in the past and yesterday was no exception.

Seth was kind enough to take the "easy route" with me, while most of the group took the "challenging route," and holy crap, I was so glad because the easy route nearly killed me. It really IS a wonder how this thing was built, because it winds over the top of the craggidiest mountain peaks I've ever seen. (Craggidiest? You know, very craggy.) The workmen obviously didn't have the benefit of the ski lift that we took 3/4 of the way up! Ammy told us that at a time when the population of China was 5 million, 4 million people were working on the wall.

One of the amazing things about visiting in wintertime, during an economic crunch, is the relative lack of other tourists. In this case, we had one of China's greatest attractions almost entirely to ourselves. Our only other companion on the entire ski lift in either direction was our trip-mate, Joan, a 48-year-old mother of two from Scotland who recently put her daughters through college, sold her house, and is now on a year-long trip around the world. Go, Joan!

The lift ride was breathtaking for its beauty, with bright-blue sky capping seemingly endless miles of ancient brick ahead of us and an almost ethereal purple mountain range to our rear. The only mar to the scenery was poor Seth, whose face was turning a disturbing shade of green while we swung tenuously in our little metal cart high above the rocky landing pad.

We made it to the top, Seth managed to keep his breakfast inside his stomach, and the climb began. Admittedly, after the first several flights of stone steps and rocky inclines, my old-lady hip tried to convince me to be satisfied with viewing the wall from a distance, but I'm glad I didn't listen. Actually, it was pretty good teamwork. I helped Seth calm down after the cable car ride, Joan and Seth encouraged me to get to the top, and Seth and I aided Joan--who happens to be afraid of heights--on the way down.

(It really is pretty great.)

The wall is actually a series of stone towers, strung together by pathways with walls on either side. The towers were used both as shooting/guard posts and as means by which to send smoke signals all the way across China (Think Lord of the Rings.) We made our way between about six of the towers and then hiked all the way down, rather than putting Seth through the cable car experience again.

Now, the downside of being the only tourists is that we were also a magnet for the aggressive tchotchke vendors. We were warned that locals would approach us on the wall and "befriend" us in order to eventually suck us dry via useless Great Wall memorabilia. We did meet three such ladies on the way up and, being the only tourists in sight, we literally had no way to avoid them without jumping off into inner Mongolia. In the end, however, communicating with them turned out to be one of the most interesting parts of the trip. Their English was limited (they were not educated but actually learned just through speaking with tourists) but they were able to convey a lot of interesting info about the wall and to help us navigate the trickier bits. They walked with us for the better part of an hour, and hey! We needed some postcards anyway. :-)

The part of the wall we were on was "only" about 600 years old, and probably my favorite image of the day's journey is of Seth videoblogging with his new Flipcam atop this structure three times older than the United States. How China is that?! The very, very old meets the very, very new on a sunny afternoon.

(Seth vlogging on the Great Wall)

BEIJING!

Ugh. Jetlag. It's 3:37 AM. Should be sleeping. Might as well take the opportunity to start writing!

We haven't even officially started the first day of our trip with Intrepid Travel--which begins in about 4 hours with a visit to the Great Wall--and there is SO much to say already!

First of all, I am really proud of myself & Seth and our "accomplishments" so far. Our first day and a half in China have already alleviated much of our anxiety about the trip. Our very long flight (15 hours) flew over the North Pole (didn't see Santa) and landed in Beijing safely. We got to our hotel, have found ourselves a couple of delicious vegetarian meals, and spent an awesome day wandering around Beijing's 798 District--a gaggle of contemporary art galleries. OK, so we didn't win the Nobel Prize or anything, but this felt like a great start in a place where we know no one and can't speak or read the language.

(Outside at the 7-9-8 Art District, a former factory)

Oh! The wonder and excitement of traveling again! When even a trip to the grocery store is a cultural experience, something to marvel at, and you take nothing for granted.

We did have one funny snafu. We thought that the flight attendant told us that "thanks" is pronounced "SAY SIEN" in Mandarin. Turns out that it's actually "SHAY SHIEN," but "SAY SIEN" means "goodbye." No wonder people looked at us funny when we thanked them profusely--ha!

We were sort of over-warned about some of the difficulties of traveling in China, so things like jostling crowds haven't seemed so dramatic yet, which may be partly due to the fact that we're in Beijing which was just flooded with Western tourists for the Olympics and whose public was apparently trained in the ways of being a polite host city.

There are certainly subtle reminders that we are in a Communist country, like the "no smoking" signs that proclaim: "It's your patriotic duty to stay in good health," or the bleeping red eye of video cameras EVERYWHERE, or the fact that our Chinese trip leader explained with wide-eyed fascination that Hong Kong is still so different from the rest of China because you can "say whatever you want to about Mao."

---The very next day---

Finally fell back asleep , not having finished yesterday's entry. Now onto another adventure, en route to the Great Wall on a bumpy bus ride!

So the 798 Art District, our first day's outing, was an awesome introduction not only to Beijing, but to the many contradictions of modern day China. The area consists of gallery after gallery of contemporary art, housed in old factory buildings. There are 100 galleries, at least, and the art truly is contemporary, as abstract painting and sculpture is a relatively new phenomenon here. Displaying this type pf work publicly was apparently illegal until about 20 years ago. The Chinese government has realized that in order to accelerate their society, progress must not only be made in commerce and technology, but in culture, as well, and so suddenly art is sanctioned. However, the content of the work is still restricted. So--contradictions. Artistic expression vs. government regulation.

The tension between art and commerce is already apparent, too, despite the relative infancy of the modern scene. Smack in the middle of this artistic hub was an enormous brick factory building with an imposing Nike swoosh on the side. This entire "gallery" was devoted to a multimedia exhibit on the life and times of an American NBA basketball player, LeBron James, and encased in glass at the back was his new line of Nike basketball shoes. Weird.

Though the content of the work was stifled, Seth and I agreed that most of the paintings and sculptures were beautiful and/or interesting. In gallery after gallery we preferred the work over what we had seen at last year's Whitney Biennial--supposedly the creme de la creme of American artwork. All in all we felt like we got a sense of modern China by viewing its long unleashed creative expressions.

(Yums!)

We ate the most delicious lunch at a lively little dive filled with locals. Spinach with vermicelli and garlic sauce, and some kind of diced pancake with shredded vegetables--both absolutely bursting with flavor but not the slimy "white sauce" or salty soy sauce that I'm used to from Chinese food in the US. (And PS including drinks the grand total came to $3. Holla!) One thing we noticed was that the place was filled with chit chat, but as soon as the food hit the table, it was down to business. Some people came in, ordered, ate, paid, and left before we had eaten half of our meal. Definitely different than my experiences in, say, Italy, where one meal could last for hours!

Wow. Am I really still writing about the first day?!

So we went back to the hotel to rest before our organized trip would officially begin with a group meeting. Our group of twelve seems friendly and interesting, and our group leader is absolutely adorable. She is like a Chinese Bjork--a pixie-like energy ball called Ammy. She seems really excited about her job and this trip in particular, which in turn made me even more excited for the adventures ahead. We were hoping that the group would not be all American, and our desires were more than met. We are, in fact, the only Americans present (and thank G-d Obama won so I can easily show my face in internationally mixed company again) and we are joined by some Brits, Aussies, a Kiwi, a Scotswoman and an Austrian.

If the first day was any indication, it should be a pretty awesome few weeks.

Election '08: Where I Have Been for the Past 18 Months

OK, so I haven’t blogged in a while. A year and a half, to be exact. I’ve been a little busy with one of the most amazing personal and professional experiences of my life. If there was ever a year to cover politics from a youth perspective…THIS was it, and I got to help run the campaign that invented the very notion of youth-oriented election coverage: MTV’s Choose or Lose.

I watched—and loved—MTV News as a kid, and to run this particular project was literally a dream come true. I was Supervising Producer on a groundbreaking collaboration with the Knight Foundation and the Associated Press, wherein 51 state-based citizen journalists covered the ’08 elections from a youth perspective, across all media platforms - web, mobile, broadcast, and virtual. I managed all details and logistics of the program's development, launch and operations, including hiring, training, supervising and mentoring a diverse and talented group of producers from all over the country.

This project had some major highs and lows for me, and it was REALLY HARD WORK, but in the end, we pulled off an incredible experiment in newsgathering and distribution. We combined new reporting tools—blogging, mobile videos, geotagging, Twittering—with good, old-fashioned reporting. We even did some first-evers, like the first-ever large scale mobile-to-web reporting by a broadcast news entity. We covered the under-reported stories of America’s youth, and the campaign we were part of ultimately won a Public Service Emmy!

We all know how this historic election ended earlier this month. There is SO much I could say about this year when the youth vote really mattered, but I thought the best way to sum things up would be to share the emails I sent to my friends and family, punctuating the year’s highlights. I wanted to at least get something on the ol’ blog before Seth and I set off on our next adventure, as I will definitely want to post blogs from…CHINA!


Mon Jul 10 22:01:09 CDT 2007 Sender: "Liz Nord"
Subject: Great news!

Hi family,

In case you hadn't heard through the grapevine...

Just wanted to share some great news that I got just in time for my 30th birthday (today)!!

I just accepted a position at MTV News. Starting next week, I will be a Supervising Producer on a new initiative for the Choose or Lose campaign, which encourages young people to vote and get involved with politics. MTV is hiring 51 aspiring journalists to cover the '08 presidential campaign in their state for the year leading up to the election, and I will be getting the program off of the ground and managing and mentoring the 50 young producers. I am really excited about it!

In other news, Seth had a really fun birthday yesterday and now is back to the books for the quickly approaching NY and NJ bar exams, which he'll take at the end of the month. We are really enjoying NY and trying to take advantage of all of the fun things that the city summer has to offer.

Hope you're all well!

Much love,
Liz

NOTE: In case you were wondering, Seth passed both the NY and NJ Bar Exams with flying colors!

(Speaking at the Street Team '08 Orientation at the MTV Headquarters in NYC)

Thu Dec 20 23:29:50 CST 2007
Sender: "Liz Nord"
Subject: Street Team coverage - day one round up

Hey y'all,

Some holiday reading material...

A big press release went out today about the MTV project that I am running (Street Team '08), and we got a handful of writeups already! Many of you have been asking for more details about my job, so I thought that some of these articles might be useful. I think the CNET article explains the program pretty well.

It's a lot to read--I suggest a quick skim! Thus far, coverage has been very positive overall --here is my favorite (and pretty humbling) line of the batch:

"MTV, the Associated Press and the Knight Foundation today unveiled "Street Team 08," a stunning collaboration that could help define newsgathering, distribution and news-business models into the future."
(Wow!)

Here are a few other really nice quotes:

• TechPresident: "To be honest, I think this is awesome. This effort, in addition to their running series of candidate dialogues, shows that MTV has been improving their already impressive election-year coverage to include new technologies andvoters. Their focus on mobile is especially smart."
• FutureMajority: "As I've reported before, MTV is really stepping up its game this year. Their candidate forums are clearly one of the best innovations this cycle in using social media to improve upon what is still essentially a broadcast politics event. The launch of Street Team '08 seems like another step in the right direction for them, and it's hard to doubt that at least in the youth political space, MTV is working hard (and perhaps succeeding) at recapturing the political relevance they held after their initial partnership with Rock the Vote in 1992."
• Institute for the Connected Society: "The project serves as a real-time lab that promises to reveal insights into media usage, youth culture, civic engagement, the prospects for pro-am journalism, and opportunities from non-traditional partnerships. We admire the project and look to learn from it."

Enjoy...
-----------
1/ CNET: MTV's 'Choose or Lose' announces citizen journalism
campaign
2/Associated Press: MTV Recruits Youths to Cover Elections
3/ PaidContent.Org: AP And MTV Collaborate With Student Journalists On Local Election Coverage
4/ Broadcasting & Cable: MTV Launching Citizen Journo Initiative
5/ Editor & Publisher: AP Joins MTV For 'Citizen Journalist' Campaign Coverage -- Former 'E&P' Intern Picked
6/ Mashable.com: MTV Latches Onto Citizen Journalism for 2008 Elections
7/ TechPresident.com: Daily Digest
8/ FutureMajority.com: Fear and Vlogging on the Campaign Trail, 2008
9/ Contra Costa Times: Oaklander joins MTV's "Street Team '08"
10/ iFocus.org: Win, win, win
11/ CMSWire: Citizen Journalists and MTV to Cover 2008 Elections
12/ Cable360.net: Briefly Noted

(Me and Seth outside Hillary Clinton's final campaign speech)

Note: Once in a while, MTV News’s “regular” politics producers were scattered about and I got to leave my desk and go out to cover events myself. Hillary Clinton’s final solo speech of her political campaign was one such event. I am a great admirer of Hillary’s and was happy to do it. Seth even came as a Hillary-supporting audience member, and it was fun waving at him from the press pit. Another piece that I was proud to produce off the beaten track of my day job was a video package about a young Muslim-American vet.

6/4/2008 2:04 PM.
From: Nord, Liz
Subject: My MTV blog from the Hillary event...

Here's the blog...

And pics, too!

Enjoy!

Love,
Liz

(N.E.R.D. performing in Denver at the Rock the Vote Ballot Bash)

Tue Aug 26 21:29:54 CDT 2008
Sender: "Liz Nord"
Subject: Live from Denver!

Hi my friends & family,

I know I’ve been tough to reach…so I just wanted to let you know that things are going really well here in Denver at the Democratic National Convention!! It’s been absolutely non-stop from morning ‘til night, mostly dealing with complicated logistics by day and, you know, partying with celebrities at night ☺ I am positively exhausted already.

Check out my Street Teamers’ coverage at chooseorlose.com. I think the live, mobile-to-web videos are the best things they’ve done so far, esp the Colorado guy.

I’ve been posting some photos and will continue to do so here.

I’ve spent most of my time inside at the computer and haven’t even been in the Pepsi Center (where the speeches are) yet, but there is a ton going on everywhere. This city’s definitely been taken over!! Our workspace is right across from the Pepsi Center and next to the CNN building. The space itself is pretty unglam, but it is really exciting in a nerdy way to be sharing the space with the Washington Post and Newsweek, two great publications.

A few highlights (and one lowlite) so far…

• You know that hotel you’ve been hearing about where one of the guys who planned to assassinate Obama jumped out of a 6th floor window? Yeah. That’s my hotel. I’m staying on the 7th floor. Thanks, MTV.
• On Saturday, Kristin and I covered the Rock the Bells concert and talked politics with some of my parents’ favorite artists (haha) like the Wu Tang Clan and the Pharcyde. It was really cool to connect with these guys on a topic other than music. Here’s our (highly edited by MTV News) blog entry.
• Fourth row at Rock the Vote’s Ballot Bash (Jakob Dylan, N.E.R.D., Fallout Boy) last night with our Oregon Street Teamer. We were sitting next to this white haired man who kept standing up and pumping his fists and generally rocking out. We were like,”Who IS this guy?” Turns out it was Patrick from Fallout Boy’s dad!

The best news so far is that, although I am going straight to Minneapolis from here to cover the RNC, Seth is coming out to meet me there this coming Saturday to hang out for just one night, BECAUSE HE’S THE BEST HUSBAND IN THE WHOLE WORLD!!!

Tonight, I’m headed to a myspace/SAG party where Nelly is supposed to perform…
Love from the DNC,
Liz

(Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco Field in Denver.)

Fri Aug 29 23:47:43 CDT 2008
Sender: "Liz Nord"
Subject: Headed to Minneapolis!

Hi friends & fam,

Thanks for all the supportive notes this week...it was amazing but at times challenging and overall EXHAUSTING so it was great to hear from you!!

I have many stories to tell but for now I've posted a bunch more pics.

An easy way to go through these is to choose the little grey "Slideshow" link on the top right of the page, and then when the slideshow window opens, click the "Info On" button on the top center of the page to see the titles.

The first pics are of our dear friends from Denver and their awesome little dude, Logan, but soon you'll get into the pics from amazing last night at Invesco field with me and 74,999 of my closest friends.

As corny as it sounds, I was very moved by a very American experience. I was at the speech with my Korean friend Virgil, my bi-racial AP Kristin, a Latino Street Teamer, and a crew consisting of black, Greek, Indian, and Jewish dudes. And there we all were witnessing and documenting an historic moment of racial harmony. It was really something.

There is SO much more...wow, what a week, but I've got to pack up to head to another week of (a whole different kind of) craziness!

Love
Liz

(Front and center to hear a "pitbull in lipstick" speak at the RNC.)

NOTE: I didn’t send an email after the RNC, but I did blog about it as part of the PBS MediaShift Idealab as we were required to do as part of our grant activites…I’ve excerpted a bit below:

(Street Teamer Anthony of Florida Gets Tear-Gassed, Live from the RNC)

The difference between our coverage and that of the mainstream networks is striking not just because of the technology, but also because of what we captured. While the major news networks of the world were safe in their on-site studios, our team was literally on the streets getting the under-reported stories. This was particularly true at RNC, where the thousands of protesters and, more importantly, heavy-handed police reactions, were not well-documented by other media outlets. In one particularly dramatic live-to-web clip, which you can see above, we witnessed one of our reporters going through the physical reaction to being tear-gassed while covering a protest. The most dramatic example of how our mobile coverage played out was on the final night of the Republican National Convention. While thousands were preparing to cheer McCain's speech inside the convention center, our Wisconsin reporter, Charlie, was hot on the trail of an anti-war protest gearing up outside. His "tweets" began...

• Anti war protest @ capital starts with 2 arrests 02:17 PM September 04, 2008
• **The whole world is watching, protesters chant **@ police 04:52 PM September 04, 2008
• Protest on the move 05:40 PM September 04, 2008
• March goes 2 Marion and University 06:01 PM September 04, 2008

At the same time, we were watching Charlie's Flixwagon reports, wherein protesters, bystanders, and reporters alike, were being rounded up on a bridge. With smoke bombs visible in the background, Charlie told our audience, "We were just told that this is an unlawful assembly, and we must move Southbound or be subject to arrest," and then... Nothing. An hour or so went by with no more Twitter or video reports, and we realized that Charlie had probably been arrested. After many calls to local jails, our suspicion was confirmed around 12 AM. Despite his media credentials, Charlie was carted off to prison and separated from his equipment. If it had not been for the pause in his live, mobile, reporting, we would never have even known to ask. Charlie's arrest, along with hundreds of others, occurred right during McCain's speech, when the rest of the worlds' lenses were focused on the presidential nominee. Charlie was released from jail around 6 AM...but his backpack full of gear was still inside. The police needed to hang on to the video camera, tapes and other equipment, "for security purposes." As I type, his equipment is still being held in St. Paul and our attorneys are working on getting it released. If the police had it their way, his footage from the protest would still have not seen the light, and by the time it came out, it would be "yesterday's news." Fortunately for us and our audience, Charlie was reporting live from his cell phone, and we all witnessed another side of what was happening in St. Paul while John McCain was accepting the presidential nomination.

(My Associate Producer, Kristin, and me in Times Square on Election Night)

Wed Nov 05 20:34:40 CST 2008
Sender: "Liz Nord"
Subject: Election Night

Dearest Friends & Family,

As my 77-year-old dad just said to me on a deliriously happy phone call…OMG.

Yesterday was one of the greatest days of my life and I’m sure many of you share the absolute joy with which I embraced the announcement of our new president. Election Day was one that I had
been thinking about all day, every day for a year and a half, and to have the outcome that we witnessed made it all worthwhile!!!

I’m proud to say that early figures show that more young people voted this year than in any election since 18-year-olds won the right to vote in 1972, and they favored Obama over John McCain by a two-to-one margin. Naysayers, begone! The youth vote mattered.

I thought I’d send out a few links to share my experience of being at MTV News and in Times Square on this historic occasion. I worked from 7 AM-3 AM yesterday and came back in this morning. Long hours, but the work was very exciting. My Street Team reporters got a lot of good exposure and airtime, and Times Square truly did feel like the “Crossroads of the World” last night!

Here are my pics.

Here’s an on-air hit that I produced around 2 AM, compiling some of the first reactions we got from our Street Teamers around the country. We asked them to attend results watching parties so they could get immediate responses from young voters once the president-elect was announced.

Here’s a short blog entry I wrote about the scene in Times Square last night (There’s a great video in here that shows it way better than I could tell it.)

And just for fun…the hilarious “Election 2008 in 60 seconds,” as written and read by my friend Jim Cantiello (with a l’il help from yours truly!)

Some of you have been asking about what’s next for me when this project is over. Well, I have a busy couple weeks wrapping up the project. My last day at MTV is two weeks from Friday and Seth and I leave two days after that for Thanksgiving with the Hymans in Florida. From there, off to China until late December!! And then…?!

Thank you all again for the much-needed support during this intense project and for all of the efforts, donations, phonecalls and volunteer hours that you put in this year to help ensure that
it would be “a new day in America!”

Love,
Liz

Unsettled Premiere

I first connected with Adam Hootnick, director of Unsettled, a few years ago when he was still a producer at MTV News, and I was talking to them about Jericho’s Echo. At the time, I thought, “how many Adam Hootnicks can there be in this world?” and it turned out that yes, he was the same Adam Hootnick who grew up in my hometown and attended my rival high school. It also turned out that we were about to share another rare bond—Adam was getting ready to leave all things sensible in his life and go shoot an independent documentary in Israel. Been there, done that.

Fast forward a few years, and Adam was one of the first people I met with when I moved back out to the east coast. Lucky for me, I arrived just in time for the NYC premiere of his now finished documentary, Unsettled. Even though Adam and I don’t know each other very well, I felt a real rush of emotion at his successful premiere last week. I was so happy for him. I know what it’s like to take such a risk and pour your heart into something, and then finally enter that sold out screening filled with friends, family, and colleagues and to think, “Holy shit. I did it.”

And he really did it. Unsettled is an excellent film and you should go out of your way to see and support it. In fact, he is planning a cross country tour and you can contact his production company about bringing the film to your town. The movie is not only about a timely and important topic—the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza—but it is very well done, with a great sense of pacing and character development that truly (dare I say it?) engages the viewer. Plus, it has an excellent soundtrack…perhaps a skill gleaned from Adam’s MTV days. Documentary filmmakers will be particularly impressed at how Adam and only one other cameraman manage to intimately follow six young characters over the appx. six days of the operation, each of whom is in a different location and on a different side of the issue, without seeming to miss a beat. I really don’t know how they did it, and, for me, that added to the tension and intrigue of the stories themselves.

Adam, congratulations. I can’t wait to see your next films!

Live from NY!

(Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge)

Those of you who have been following my adventures for a while will know that I love New York City. (Thank you, Andrew WK, for putting an excellent tune to that sentiment!) Now, thanks to the aligning of stars and an open-minded husband, I can call this amazing city my home!!!

I am so excited to be here, and to be closer to my old friends and family, and to become part of the world’s most vibrant media community. I am cooking up a new documentary idea, which will be shot here, and I have been having all kinds of meetings with industry folks to figure out where I belong workwise within the local production scene.

Here are the best things so far (in no order):
1. Pizza and Ice Cream!
2. Walking over the Brooklyn Bridge
3. Reuniting with people who have known me for more than 10 years and still like me
4. Taking a tour of Coney Island with an old crazy guy named "Captain Bob"
5. Taking a graffiti tour of our neighborhood on bicycles
6. Having to look up the weather in the morning because it is different every day
7. Possibilities and Opportunities
8. Striking up conversations with strangers
9. Running into three female media personalities on the same day: Paula Zahn, Mary Snow, and Kelly Ripa. (Is it a sign?)
10. Running into new or old friends on the street almost every day, even though it’s the country’s busiest city and I only know a handful of people

SFIFF and an ode to Chris Wiggum

(Ocean Beach on the evening of our going-away bonfire)

After seven rollercoaster years, Seth and I are packing up and leaving the Bay Area. As these entries are mainly film related, I'll spare you my mushy goodbyes and just talk about getting to go out with a bang, as the 50th San Francisco International Film Festival happened to coincide with the weeks of our departure.

For the past 4 years, I have had the excellent task of sitting on the Documentary Selection panel for the festival’s Golden Gate Awards. That means that I get to help sort through and choose the top picks among the piles of excellent docs that get submitted to the festival each year. It’s cool being a part of SF’s biggest and the country’s oldest festival, and also getting a sneak peek at the top docs each year. Admittedly, it can get a little mind-numbing when you are in your eighth-straight hour of movie watching, but then some gem will sparkle you out of your stupor and you’ll be so glad you are there. We had one of those films in our panel group this year, where everyone in the group immediately agreed that it should be passed on to the fest, and it was, and now it looks like it is getting a theatrical release, so you should see it: Ghosts of Cite Soleil. It’s a haunting and colorful film about two brothers involved in dangerous politics, hip hop, and gang warfare in Haiti.

Another perk of doing this duty is that I usually get invites to the fest’s big ol’ parties, and there were some doozies this year. Opening night was in City Hall, and that was pretty amazing, but it was on my last day of work at Film Arts, and we had a little post-work-going-away-thing, and by the time I arrived at the massive dome, I was already a little woo-woo and so I pretty much didn’t have much steam left. Thank goodness for my dear colleague and friend, Simone, who gave me a lift home. The highlight of the festival for me was actually the Centerpiece party, which appropriately happens smack dab in the middle of the festival. This is the second year that Bay Area Women in Film & TV has sponsored the film & party, and as an outgoing board member I got to bask in some of that glory and also get the chance to say goodbye to so many of the AMAZING women that I have met and worked with in that organization over the years (Liza! Erica! Ondine! Simone!).

(SFIFF's Thanks to BAWIFT: Alison Lohman in Delirious)

One petite bone to pick...being that a professional women's media org is giving a whole pile of cash to sponsor this shin-dig, you'd think the festival would take into consideration some of its choices. For instance, in his little thank-you-sponsors speech before the film, the male festival director stated that BAWIFT is "an organization that we are happy to get into bed with." Huh? Somehow seems like an inappropriate choice of words, sort of like the inappropriate choice of film, which was the movie Delirious, starring two men and directed by, guess who? A man! I guess they tried to have estrogen representation by having the female lead come up with the director for the post-film Q & A...too bad she played a half-dressed, ditzy pop star in the movie and could barely form an intelligible sentence on stage!

But back to the party. As mentioned earlier, I loved that I got to use this event as my own little goodbye to the Bay Area film community. I went with my friend Carlton from Disposable Film Fest and The Tribe, and aside from my BAWIFT chicks, got to see a lot of my other favorite faces from the local film world, like Scarlett, the dynamo behind SF Women's Film Festival, and Malcolm from Shooting People. Best of all, though, was my film festival staple, Chris Wiggum. Chris is the right-hand man at Karen Larsen, the Bay Area PR firm that handles everything film-related worth noting.

I met the fabulous Mr. Wiggum when I was working at Mill Valley Film Festival a few years ago, and have seen him at just about every festival I’ve been to since. He even helped Jericho’s Echo get some great press when we were in the SF Jewish Film Fest. Chris embodies what I love about the SF (as opposed to the LA) film scene: he works hard without being a stress case, he always looks great without overdoing or fake-tanning it, and he is sincerely nice without always wanting something from you. Kudos, Chris, and thanks for helping me say goodbye to SF in style.

PS, If you are going to be in SF in June, make sure to check out the youth films at Frameline…There are some real gems that were created by LGBT teens and “elders” while I was running TILT earlier this year!

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!!