Seminars, Workshops & Events

When it comes to taking filmmaking classes abroad, the question is not so much “Why?” as it is, “Why not?” As anyone with a passion knows, procrastination and perfectionism are barriers to creativity, and they can become all the more pernicious when you're stuck in an unchanging daily routine.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in January, director David Butler and his motley film crew set up shop in a cavernous yellow brick building on Eastern Avenue in Baltimore’s Little Italy. The team, known collectively as Bargain Basement Films, started straggling in at about 7 a.m.

I first became aware of AIVF when Martha Gever was editor of The Independent. I marveled at this national organization that put out each month a magazine chock full of weighty, intellectual and critical articles on film and video.

What happened at AIVF over the last 30 years?

In the heart of San Francisco’s Japantown at the Radisson Miyako Hotel, a roomful of filmmakers and community activists celebrated the 25th anniversary of a not-for-profit organization that funds, exhibits, and distributes Asian Pacific American film.

It’s Sunday night in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—the reigning annex of lower east side hipsterdom. Live jazz floats from the open windows of a Tiki bar, sidewalk cafes overflow with 20-somethings, and scads of the tragically hip mill around street corners as the summer sun retires. All the while, a dedicated audience heavy with filmmakers sits in a dark room watching short films with hopes of honing its craft.

The concept was to bring five human rights activists from around the world to New York City for an intensive video workshop—each activist would receive their own camera. We would all brainstorm on what stories they wanted to tell about their communities and how to tell them. My task was to train the activists and later interweave their visual stories into a coherent feature-length documentary. It sounded simple enough. I had done video training workshops with grassroots activists in the past and had conducted them in different parts of the world.

Scenarios USA, a nonprofit organization devoted to helping kids make smarter decisions about sex, announced the two winners for their “What’s The Real Deal” contests on February 6, 2004. The contests, which took place in south Texas and in Miami, encouraged kids ages twelve to twenty-two to submit stories or scripts about the problems they face at school and at home.

At 7:00 p.m. on a Friday night, more than twenty teams of filmmakers gather at a local film center or bar. In a random drawing one member of each team picks a film genre out of a hat. Every team is then given the same character, prop, and line of dialogue they’re required to include in a film—a film they will write, shoot, and edit in less than 48 hours.

A painter who hijacks billboards for subversive messages against corporate advertising; a man trying to convert his car to run on French fry oil; a boxing cutman who loses his touch; a homeless African American man struggling to find an apartment and reclaim his dignity; a dying Hollywood producer who bribes his son into filming his death; a woman uniting with her estranged family to reveal a tragic secret.