Filmmaker Spotlight: Catching up with SFF Alum Bari Pearlman

Bari Pearlman's film DAUGHTERS OF WISDOM was shown at SFF 2009, a year later she returned as a producer with SMILE 'TIL IT HURTS at SFF 2010, and then at SFF 2012 she shared her NANGCHEN SHORTS.   This year, Pearlman served as a producer on THE LEPRECHAUN'S WIFE, a documentary short that will be part of SHORTS BLOCK 2, which screens at 12:15pm on Sunday, March 5 at The National Park Service Visitor Center.  SFF program director Jeff Schmidt caught up with the NYC based filmmaker to talk about her work as a documentary filmmaker.

JS: How did you first get into filmmaking?Besides "directing" my little sister to do silly things on our family's Super 8 camera?  A college friend and I were both dissatisfied with our post-graduate jobs and decided to make a film. We brainstormed some ideas and landed on Mah-Jongg, which she knew as a Chinese game growing up in Queens, and I knew as a Jewish game from my grandmother who was an avid player.  We thoughtthere was something about that cross-cultural, cross-generational story that was worth exploring.  So we spent the next few years following our instincts and honing our skills, and ended up making the award winning short film MAH-JONGG: THE TILES THAT BIND. It was really our "little engine that could" because even after almost 20 years, it's still a cult favorite.

JS: We first met you at SFF 2009, when we screened DAUGHTERS OF WISDOM and then again at SFF 2010 with SMILE 'TIL IT HURTS, and one more time at SFF 2012 when we screened your NANGCHEN SHORTS. Can you talk about filming those documentaries and give us any updates on what has happened to your film subjects or since we screened those films?

I'm happy to say that the Buddhist nuns of Kala Rongo monastery and their rural neighbors, who were the subjects of both DAUGHTERS OF WISDOM and NANGCHEN SHORTS, are thriving.  The zip line across the Mekong is now a bridge, cellphones abound, and the mud and straw temple has been rebuilt with cinderblock and rebar, so modernity encroaches as life continues apace. As for SMILE TIL IT HURTS, Up With People is still touring the world, and our society is still exhibiting pockets of tunnel-vision ideology, so I guess we're status quo!

JS: This year, we'll be showing your most recent film, a short called THE LEPRECHAUN'S WIFE .  I understand that you and director Alexandra Shiva didn't have to look far from your last film HOW TO DANCE IN OHIO to find your film subject?

Sondra Williams is an extraordinary woman living on the autism spectrum, who Alexandra first met at a conference in New Jersey. Sondra invited her to visit her therapeutic community in Columbus, where the idea for HOW TO DANCE IN OHIO evolved as a coming-of-age story of teens and young adults living on the autism spectrum. As a middle-aged wife and mother of four, Sondra didn't end up being featured in that film.  But she was such an inspiration to us, and her story so exceptional, we decided to honor her life and work with her own short documentary.

JS: As a documentary filmmaker, what motivates and inspires you?Our complex and convoluted choices that makes us human.

JS: As we celebrate 10 years of Salem Film Fest, what do you think is the importance of documentary film in our daily lives and society?

Documentaries function simultaneously as mirrors and magnifying glasses of human experience. They have the potential to elevate us as individuals and communities by giving us cause to reflect, reassess and realign our priorities and promises to ourselves and to each other.

THE LEPRECHAUN'S WIFE screens as part of SHORTS BLOCK 2

Salem Film Fest’s 10th Anniversary Gala with honoree David Fanning!

On Thursday, March 2, 2017 the Tenth Annual Salem Film Fest kicks off its 10th Anniversary with a fabulous Gala at the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem. The Gala opens with a reception and then fires up with live music and a dance party.  All attendees will receive a complimentary copy of the Salem Film Fest Tribute Magazine and Program, with photos, memories and highlights from the festival throughout the years.

David Fanning, the Founder and Executive Producer at Large from FRONTLINE, a long time partner of the festival, will receive the Salem Film Fest Storyteller Award. Mayor Driscoll, Senator Lovely and Representative Tucker are scheduled to appear, as are our primary sponsors Peabody Essex Museum, CinemaSalem, and WBUR, this year’s official media sponsor.

Live Music by Nephrok! Allstars. This premier Boston-based band consists of some of the most talented musicians around. Their music spans several decades and many genres including Soul, R&B, Rock, and undoubtedly The Funk.

Salem Film Fest is one of New England’s largest documentary film festivals and presents a rich and diverse collection of the year’s best work from all over the world. This year’s festival takes place March 2 – 9, with screenings conveniently located at CinemaSalem, the Peabody Essex Museum and the National Park Service.

Tickets for the event are $75 ($55 in advance) and include heavy hors d’oeuvres with a cash bar. Dress code is “Creative Black – From Tees to Tux”.

Please support the festival and help Salem Film Fest launch its next successful decade of bringing the best independent documentary films to Salem.

Salem Film Fest Turns 10!

By Shelley A. Sackett

When local filmmaker Joe Cultrera, businessman Paul Van Ness and Salem Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Rinus Oosthoek gathered at the fledgling CinemaSalem café in 2007, they all shared a common goal: to create an event that would be fair to documentary filmmakers and attractive to audiences. They presented a week of special film programming and live events in the middle of that same winter. “That’s about as fast as a festival can be put together once you have a venue,” said Van Ness who owns CinemaSalem. “I suppose you could call it a spring training for the big league festival that would inaugurate the next year.”

The 2008 Salem Film Fest drew 1,743 filmgoers; in 2016, more than 6,000 attended what has grown to be both one New England's largest and among the nation’s most respected all-documentary film festivals. Each March, the festival presents a rich and diverse collection of the year's best work from all over the world that helps sustain cinephiles through the long, bleak slog of New England winter.

This year the festival runs from March 2-9 and will kick off its tenth anniversary with a Gala on Thursday, March 2 at the Hawthorne Hotel that will combine presentation of the inaugural SFF Storyteller Award to FRONTLINE founder David Fanning with a live music dance party. (Visit salemfilmfest.com/2017/gala-tickets for more information).

“Come to Salem, see the world” has been the Salem Film Fest catch phrase since its inception, both as an homage to old Salem merchant ships that established trade with the rest of the world and in tribute to the dozens of countries represented by the films the festival has screened over the past decade.

With a line-up of 35 feature and more than 20 short documentaries from more than 25 countries, SFF 2017 covers a lot of the globe: from the largest Syrian refugee camp in Jordan (“After Spring”) to Finland’s worst cheerleading team (“Cheer Up”); from the Mississippi Delta blues (“I Am the Blues”) to Mexico’s most famous tabloid photographer (“The Man Who Saw Too Much”); from Jalalabad’s child street gangs (“Snow Monkey”) to a New York City’s West Village artist community (“Winter at Westbeth”). And everyplace in between.

Besides CinemaSalem, SFF partners with the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) and the National Park Service Visitor Center (NPS) as additional venues. With simultaneous screenings at all three sites, the streets of Salem feel like a mini Sundance as filmgoers greet each other on the street, making their way from one film to the next.

As in past years, SFF 2017 focuses on filmmakers as much as their films, and more than 20 filmmakers and/or their subjects will attend this year’s post-screening Q&A sessions, which promise to be as exciting and informative as festivalgoers have come to expect. “It’s great to see the growth of the festival while we also stay true to our roots. More and more filmmakers have found the festival to be a haven of sorts for their films, and they enjoy spending time in Salem,” said Jeff Schmidt, who has been SFF program director for the past four festivals.

Cultrera, who handed the programming to Schmidt in 2013, agrees. “The thing I look forward to every year is getting a new crew of filmmakers to the festival: spending time interacting with them; introducing them to Salem; watching friendships build between them and some of our audience, and talking shop at after-hours gatherings,” he said.

Among this year’s line-up are four U.S. premieres: “The Day the Sun Fell” (surviving Red Cross doctors and nurses remember the day Hiroshima was bombed as nuclear disaster strikes Japan again); “Mattress Man” (an Irish 60-something-year-old creates a tacky YouTube persona to boost his failing business) and “Zimbelism” (one of the last working street photographers shares stories from his dark room). Both filmmaker Matt Zimbel and his subject and father, George S. Zimbel, will be present at the “Zimbelism” screening at PEM on Sunday, March 5 at 10:50 a.m.

“The Other Half of the Sky” (four powerhouse Chinese businesswomen create empires that break every Chinese glass ceiling) is a North American premiere. It screens at PEM on Saturday, March 4 at 6:10 p.m. and filmmaker Patrik Soergel be at the Q&A.

Schmidt began actively searching for films for this year’s festival last June, and the richly varied menu of documentaries has something to please every palette. To make planning easier, SFF offers a helpful guide that organizes the films into a number of “curated itineraries” (http://salemfilmfest.com/2018/itineraries/) to allow the audience to review films through specific lenses.

Three films that address complex socio-political issues through one person’s story are “Almost Sunrise”, Tickling Giants” and “Death by a Thousand Cuts”.

SFF alum (SFF’s 2012’s “Give up Tomorrow” director) Michael Collins’ is back with the Massachusetts premiere of “Almost Sunrise” which addresses “moral injury” by following two Iraq War veterans suffering from PTSD as they trek 2,700 miles in a last ditch effort to find the healing they both seek. Collins will attend the Q&A after the screening at PEM on Saturday, March 4 at 8:35 p.m.

In the New England premiere of “Tickling Giants” examines the aftermath of the Egyptian Arab Spring by showcasing Bassem Youssef, the “Egyptian Jon Stewart” who endangers his life and livelihood when the Morsi regime doesn’t appreciate his jokes. Filmmaker Moaz Elfarouk will be available for a post-screening Q&A. The film is at PEM on Friday, March 3 at 8:10 p.m.

In the New England premiere of “Death by a Thousand Cuts”, a brutal murder on the Haiti-Dominican border exposes the complex consequences of killing the Dominican forests, one cut at a time. Filmmaker Juan Mejia will attend the Q&A after the screening at CinemaSalem on Sunday, March 5 at 5:10 p.m.

On the more whimsical side, The East Coast premiere of “The League of Exotique Dancers” introduces eight unforgettable Burlesque Hall of Fame inductees who share the good, the bad and the ugly about the golden age of stripping with bawdy good humor and moving insight in a film that is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. It screens at CinemaSalem on Saturday, March 4 at 9:40 p.m.

Those most interested in the arts have plenty to choose from this year. “The Ballad of Fred Hersch” traces the foremost jazz pianist and composer’s journey from AIDS coma survivor to musical triumph (Friday, March 3 at CinemaSalem at 5:10 p.m.). “Yarn” introduces edgy, contemporary women who are revolutionizing the art of knitting and crocheting. (Saturday, March 4 at PEM at 11:50 a.m.). “I Am the Blues” gives an up-close-and-personal tour of the original southern juke joints with the aging blues musicians who still play its “Chitlin’ Circuit”. (Closing night feature on Thursday, March 9 at CinemaSalem at 7:00 p.m.).

Every year, regular attendees look forward to the premiere of “Salem Sketches”, a series of two-minute documentaries based in Salem and created exclusively for SFF by local filmmakers and SFF Planning Committee members Cultrera and Perry Hallinan. “We’re one of the few festivals that can claim to have our own original programing,” Cultrera said with pride.

SFF 2017 is also jam-packed with events, parties and the live music performances before many of the screenings at CinemaSalem by local musicians whose contributions add to the festival’s literal good vibrations.

While the community-driven, all-volunteer festival steadfastly remains true to its ideals of high-level programming and treating filmmakers like the stars they are, the “little festival that could” seems poised for even wider appeal and reach in its second decade. All agree that fundraising and broadening the volunteer base are two critical ingredients for generating this growth.

“The festival is special, but it could be on another level entirely if we had the resources and if there was a mechanism in place in Salem that better synchronized public, private and non-profit energies,” said Cultrera.

Nonetheless, the wildly popular and highly anticipated festival draws sell-out crowds to one of the liveliest and friendliest of Salem’s many festivities. Patrons return year after year and hugging reunions in the CinemaSalem lobby are commonplace. Clearly, Salem Film Fest is about more than films. It’s also about community.

“Come to Salem, see the world. Come to Salem, meet the world,” Oosthoek said with a smile.

Salem Film Fest runs March 2-9 with screenings at CinemaSalem, the Peabody Essex Museum and National Park Service Visitors Center. For more information or to purchase tickets or passes, go to the CinemaSalem box office or visit salemfilmfest.com.

90.9 WBUR JOINS SALEM FILM FEST AS OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR

Great news! 90.9 WBUR, Boston’s NPR news station, will be the official media sponsor for the 10th annual Salem Film Fest. The new partnership brings together one of New England’s leading all-documentary film festivals and WBUR, known for its coverage of local, national and international news and a number of nationally syndicated radio programs. “We’re thrilled about the new partnership”, says Paul Van Ness, co-founder of SFF. “WBUR reaches listeners throughout the region, and as we target very similar audiences, we look forward to the possibilities for cross promotion and outreach. Salem Film Fest is excited to collaborate with WBUR to expand our reach beyond our dedicated audience in Salem and on the North Shore.”

Since the summer of 2006, SFF has grown from a mere idea among a small group of volunteers into a world-class showcase for hundreds of films and filmmakers, all while influencing the concept of what a successful festival can accomplish for both audiences and filmmakers. In addition to providing a screening platform for filmmakers from all around the world, SFF has been a trailblazer in engaging grassroots community support.  Through innovative local programming including the production of original short form documentary festival content, shorts programs featuring films by Massachusetts high school and college students, and a pitch forum highlighting works-in-progress by professional filmmakers from the region - SFF is dedicated to supporting the craft of documentary filmmaking in Massachusetts.

WBUR will be involved in a multitude of ways, not only in its direct communication to listeners via on air promos and interviews with visiting filmmakers prior to the festival, but also at SFF as WBUR on-air personalities will participate at some of the post-screening Q&A discussions at the Peabody Essex Museum. WBUR has also agreed to have a presence at the 10th Anniversary Gala and the opening and closing night festivities.

It's been 10 years, and the best is yet to come

The 2017 Salem Film Fest is a big one for us. It all started rather quietly, as a question among a handful of people. Could we have a film festival in Salem? 10 years and nine successful festivals later, we are just a few months away from our 10th Salem Film Fest. Watch this space as we take a look back over the last decade, revisiting the challenges and successes of this all-volunteer, community- supported film festival. Anyone who has been a part of organizing this festival will tell you that it is a lot of work, requires a high level of dedication, and can frequently be somewhat harrowing. But is also intensely gratifying. As a member of the selection committee since the festival's inception, I can tell you I've seen hundreds of documentaries over the past 10 years--not all of them easy to watch for various reasons. I've had many a coffee-fueled viewing session that ended in bloodshot eyes, a bit of heartburn, a sore tush, but also, a broader view of the world. And when people watch the films we choose and also emerge with new perspectives and new ways of thinking, it's all worth it.

In the coming months, we'll be posting a series of entries looking back. As part of this retrospective, you can expect to meet some of the organizers, filmmakers, and volunteers through their stories. They'll tell us how they came to be a part of the festival and share some of their most memorable moments. But I don't want to stop there. I would like to hear from you, our loyal patrons. How did you first hear about the Salem Film Fest? What attracted you to an all-documentary festival? What are your most memorable moments? What films will you never forget? If you have a story you'd like to share, email it to me at kereth@salemfilmfest.com.

The organizers and selection committee are already hard at work planning for the 2017 Salem Film Fest. Personally, I look forward to this time of year more than any other. I hope you are also looking forward with excitement to this year's festival, running from March 2-9. Hope to see all of you there!