FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT: Amy Goldstein, Director of KATE NASH: UNDERESTIMATE THE GIRL

New England Premiere
CinemaSalem
Saturday, March 30 at 7:10 p.m.

At age 18, Kate Nash reached the stratosphere of pop music, vaulting from a working class family in North London into worldwide tours, a platinum record and a season dominating the music charts. A few years later, she is broken down and nearly homeless.

KATE NASH: UNDERESTIMATE THE GIRL is two films in one: a concert documentary, capturing Kate’s energetic performances from multiple angles and points of views, as well as a cinema verite that follows Nash’s journey from pop wonder to riot grrll to women’s rights avatar. As she regains control of her career, UNDERESTIMATE THE GIRL captures a creative force who redefines success and shows other young women that they can live—and create—on their own terms.

SFF Organizer Brian Lepire spoke with Director Amy Goldstein ahead of the film’s New England Premiere at CinemaSalem on Saturday, March 30 at 7:10 p.m.

Brian Lepire: Where did the idea for this documentary come from?

Amy Goldstein: Music is super important in my work as a filmmaker. It creates so much emotion. I really wanted to make a film in the music world, and I was introduced to Kate at an interesting point in her career. She had been a platinum popstar and the music industry had really beat her up and she really hated it. She had been dropped by her label because she created a punk album and felt unappreciated since she made them so much money. So she was finding her way back, playing at Coachella and creating these large, inflatable vaginas that matched her hair color, and it was a really awesome time in this artist’s life. After so many stories of iconic women who die in documentary movies—Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin, Nina Simone—I thought we could have a conversation that young women could work in music and survive. And Kate felt the same way. She felt it was very important that she could be someone that young women in music could look up to.

BL: As an artist who spent so much time observing Kate during this evolutionary time in her career, what did it take for her to make it through this period and achieve a new level of success

AG: Kate was determined after this tumultuous moment in her career to...do it her way and to not be dependent on other people. She wanted to make use of new ways like crowdfunding and social media to have a direct relationship with her audience. And Kate also has this quality where you can’t keep her down. She’ll just get back up again, and that’s an unbelievable thing to watch.

Kate’s also an amazingly talented songwriter and an incredible performer who engages her audience. She has girls stage dive who’ve never stage dove before. At the end of the show, she has everyone come up on stage and be part of the show. She also created the Rock ‘n’ Roll for Girls After School Music Club to give young women more opportunities.

She’s really an amazing songwriter who brings life and energy to the music she creates. She’s actually working with the team from HAMILTON on a musical right now.

BL: That’s great to hear that her career is doing so well!

AG: And there’s the success of GLOW [Netflix’s hit show about professional female wrestlers in the 1980s.] She is creating this great show with strong female collaborators and it’s made her stronger. She’s physically strong and powerful—throwing people to the ground—and that helped her stand up for herself. Everything came together for her in a really magical way.

BL: There’s so much going on in this film – her struggles in the music career, what happens with her manager, her new acting career with GLOW - it makes me wonder, at the very beginning, what were your hopes for the film? Did you have themes you wanted to touch on or did you go in with a blank slate?

AG: Kate is very funny and non-self important and relatable and vulnerable, so right away she makes for a compelling person to watch.

I always do this thing in my films where I lend someone a camera and they video-diary. You get a very personal, intimate sense of them. And also you get in rooms where a crew can’t get in, but Kate can film. She took to that, and I knew I could make this movie, because she was going to help me make this movie.

There’s another part of it where you just have to trust. She’s giving you the privilege of her writing these songs, but I didn’t know what was going to happen happened...We had now idea. It gave us something for her to address and overcome...it made her face off on some of the darker sides of life. She really stood up for herself.

BL: You shot with her for four years, correct?

AG: Yes. There were periods of time where I was working on other projects or she was filming or working with a producer. There were also times where she was going through some painful stuff so she took a break. We were very fortunate though. Somebody else had followed her around during her earlier career, which allowed us to use that archival footage. He was very generous and ended up filming with us at concerts with Kate. It made it unbelievably possible to cover a decade of this person’s life.

BL: As an artist, what role do you feel crowdfunding plays in creating art such as music or film these days?

AG: It’s huge. It’s both a marketing tool to announce and promote a project at the same time raising money to fund this project. It’s a huge commitment. If you don’t do it right, it doesn’t look good. But if you’re able to build a team and come up with things people want and give them early access, it’s a really exciting opportunity that makes us less dependent on traditional funders.

BL: Does it change the art?

AG: It makes people less concern about financial success and more focused on artistic output. It takes some of the cooks out of the kitchen. So yeah.

KATE NASH: UNDERESTIMATE THE GIRL screened as part of SFF 2019.

Director Amy Goldstein will be present for a Q&A after the film screening.

American Cinematographer Award Winner Announced

This year’s finalists for the American Cinematographer Award at Salem Film Fest take viewers to a war-torn border in the Ukraine; on wild, kinetic kayak rides through the rapids of the Grand Canyon; deep into the Himalayan mountain villages of Nepal; through lyrical Irish landscapes; and into the artisanal workshops of master pipe-makers.

THE WEIGHT OF WATER, helmed by Michael Brown with cinematography by Brown and director of photography Andy Maser, follows the journey of blind kayaker Erik Weihenmayer as he navigates the churning rapids along the entire length of the Grand Canyon. Filled with scenic landscape photography and dynamic perspectives on the action, this doc presents a compelling portrait of an enthusiast determined to push personal boundaries and test his comfort zone — despite the risk to life and limb.

THE DISTANT BARKING OF DOGS, directed and shot by Simon Lereng Wilmont, brings the anxieties and horrors of war home with a visit to the Ukrainian town of Hnotove, located just one mile from the battlefront between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists. The documentary follows a 10-year-old boy, Oleg, who lives in the half-abandoned town with his elderly grandmother, Alexandra, under the constant stress of the nearby conflict. Impactful and harrowing, DOGS places us squarely in the war zone, where family ties provide the only comfort in a place that’s routinely shaken by artillery barrages. It’s a tragic look at a sad situation that grinds away at Oleg’s youthful spirit.

CHILDREN OF THE SNOW LAND, directed by Zara Balfour and Marcus Stephenson, introduces us to children who were sent to a school in Kathmandu by Himalayan families struggling through hardscrabble, impoverished circumstances. In addition to the footage captured by Balfour and Stephenson, additional camerawork was contributed by Mark Hakansson and some of the students, who were equipped with small cameras to record the long, arduous journeys they made to reunited with their parents and families for the first time in years. This personal touch lends an immediacy to the voyages that results in emotional payoffs for each child’s narrative.

FATHER THE FLAME, earns a special honorable mention for creating a truly engaging and absorbing look at a craft most will know little about: artisanal pipe-making. This doc is superbly attentive to the small, intricate details of the trade it’s spotlighting as it focuses primarily on Lee Erck, an American tobacco-pipe craftsman whose intricately hand-made pipes have become highly sought-after (and pricy) collector’s items. I don’t think I’d be out of line calling this entry the 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY of pipe-making documentaries; it’s clearly about more than just craftsmanship, extolling the values of artisanal knowledge and how it’s passed from generation to generation, and the story builds to a triumphantly celestial climax. The makers of FATHER THE FLAME understand that a pipe is sometimes more than just a pipe, and this doc’s fascinating dissection of the process handsomely illustrates a key aspect of documentary work by delving deep into a somewhat arcane subject and making it a fully compelling learning experience for the viewer.

However, since we’re bestowing the American Cinematographer Award, I feel obliged to give the top prize to the documentary that has, in my studied view, the most lustrous and accomplished imagery: THE SILVER BRANCH. In telling the story of the Burren, an idyllic rural part of Western Ireland that’s threatened by developers, this documentary’s love of the land is conveyed through exquisite imagery captured by Katrina Costello, who also helmed the doc alongside her collaborating director, John Brown. The Irish are renowned as an especially poetic people, and Costello’s unerring eye for painterly compositions, exquisite rendering of natural light and tremendously artful approach to the subject matter transform THE SILVER BRANCH into a meditative, deeply contemplative tone poem that extols not only the beauty of natural landscapes, but their life- and soul-enhancing nourishments. It’s a wistful and deeply felt documentary, and richly deserving of the top honor.

Stephen Pizzello
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher
American Cinematographer magazine

FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT: Helge Prinsen, Co-Director of LOSS WON’T PAY THE BILLS

LOSS WON’T PAY THE BILLS
International Premiere
CinemaSalemSaturday, March 30 at 2:20pm

For 65 years, Adrie and Francien Trimpe have put their hearts into their greengrocer’s shop in a rural Dutch seaside town. Despite old age and infirmities, they still work 14 to 16 hours a day and won’t consider quitting.

This moving and gently humorous portrait of a fading way of life was directed by Helge Prinsen and John Albert Jansen, and was edited by Daan Veldhuizen, director of STORIES FROM LAKKA BEACH (which won the American Cinematographer Award at SFF 2012) and of CHILDREN OF THE BANANA PANCAKES at SFF 2016.

Salem Film Fest writer Sarah Wolfe caught up with Helge ahead of the film’s International Premiere at CinemaSalem on Saturday, March 30 at 2:20pm.

Sarah Wolfe: You have decades of experience as a reporter and newsreader in the Netherlands. What inspired you to make a documentary about this couple and their shop?

Helge Prinsen: Adrie Trimpe was my greengrocer. I’d known him and Francien my whole life. Every time I went into their shop I thought, ‘this has to be filmed.’ It’s a kind of life you don’t see anymore. Working for 65 years in this shop. No vacations. Their story was unique in this day and age, yet I could see there were universal themes people could relate to. So I asked a cameraman if he wanted to film it for me. We started visiting the shop every week for one or two hours. I didn’t have the funding yet for the film, but we had to start before the years passed and it was too late.

SW: At what point did co-director John Albert Jansen become involved?

HP: After two months of filming, I ran into him at the IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam). I didn’t know him, but within five minutes he said he wanted to produce the film. And from that point forward everything fell into place and we obtained the funds. Everyone was very enthusiastic about the idea, including Dutch television.

SW: This film is beautifully shot. The way the light illuminates the fresh vegetables, Adrie standing quietly in his shop waiting for customers. Though you’ve known him for some time, was Adrie hesitant about being filmed? He seems like a private person.

HP: There was no hesitation at all. He loved to talk about his greengrocer shop, about all the different kinds of vegetables and fruit. And he was always sharing stories about what life was like in the past.

SW: It’s incredible that the Trimpes haven’t taken a vacation since before they were married in the 1950s. And that even when the store’s closed on Sundays, Adrie is going over the finances.

HP: This way of life is definitely not how people live in the Netherlands these days. You just don’t see this work ethos anymore.There’s something surprising about Adrie, though, that we didn’t share in the film. Despite how determined he is to keep working in his small greengrocer shop, he’s actually a millionaire. He’s bought and sold houses throughout his life with great success. We decided not to include this information since the money clearly has no effect on Adrie’s work ethic or sense of thrift.

SW: Definitely not. We see Adrie wearing glasses with a broken frame and Francien and her sister-in-law, Ada, cooking vegetables for what she calls ‘peasant meals’ in the shop’s rundown kitchen.

HP: I know, it’s so interesting.

SW: How long did you and John film? Your finished piece is only one hour, but it captures so much of the Trimpe’s life.

HP: We started filming in November of 2016 and ended nearly a year later. Editing took 25 days or so. We had 50 hours of material to go through and choose from. As they say, “Kill your darlings.” But we managed to gather humorous as well as moving moments from our footage that went well together. I really loved working on this film.

SW: What do the Trimpes think of the final piece?HP: They love the film — they’ve watched it several times. It’s also received lots of attention from all over the Netherlands. We just found out it’s won an NL Award for Best Documentary. And we’re thrilled that it’s making its International Premiere at Salem Film Fest. This whole experience has been a bit of a miracle. I’m so truly thankful.

LOSS WON'T PAY THE BILLS screened as part of SFF 2019.

Director Helge Prinsen will be present for a Q&A after the film screening. 

FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT: Zara Balfour, Co-Director of CHILDREN OF THE SNOW LAND

CHILDREN OF THE SNOW LAND
Massachusetts Premiere
CinemaSalem
Saturday, March 30, 2019 at 11:45a.m.

Imagine being separated from your parents at age 4 and not seeing them for 12 years. This is the reality for some children born in the remote High Himalayas of Nepal, where families living an ancient way of life send their kids to school in Kathmandu — the only hope for providing them with better opportunities. CHILDREN OF THE SNOW LAND follows a group of teenagers as they make the arduous trek home, after 12 years in a modern world, to the highest inhabited villages on the planet to reconnect with their traditional parents.

Zara Balfour, who directed the film with Marcus Stephenson, spoke with Salem Film Fest writer Sarah Wolfe ahead of the Massachusetts Premiere at CinemaSalem on Saturday, March 30 at 11:45a.m.

Sarah Wolfe:Your film just screened in London. Did the film’s teens, Nima, Tsering, and Jeewan, attend the premiere with you and Marcus?

Zara Balfour: They were there with us! They left Nepal for the first time to come to the London premiere. It was their next big journey after the one they took in the film. They just flew back home today and I miss them already.

SW: What do they think of CHILDREN OF THE SNOW LAND?

ZB: They love that their stories are being told. It’s not just their own, but the story of the Himalayan people. They really appreciate that the world is listening.

SW:All the stories in this film are simply amazing.What led you and Marcus to document them? You each have such extensive backgrounds in film, television, and digital media, and this is the first feature-length documentary for you both as directors/producers.

ZB: Marcus and I met a few years ago when a production company hired and sent us to Nepal to film charities. It was the first time either of us had been there. We both immediately fell in love with this amazing country and its people. I stayed in touch with a charity I’d been filming, Future Village Foundation, and a few years later they started funding the Snow Land School. That’s when Marcus and I heard they were also supporting trips for the Snow Land students to visit their families at age 16 before graduating. We were surprised and asked why the children needed help going home. We then learned that students from the High Himalayan villages would otherwise not see their families for 12 years, or possibly longer, because the parents didn’t have enough money to send for them. Some children could never see their families again. We were shocked. It was such an extraordinary story and it made me and Marcus want to fly out and meet the children of the Snow Land School. We wanted to see if we could bring their story to the world and raise awareness.

SW:What was it that drew you to Nima, Tsering, and Jeewan to help tell this story?

ZB: When we first flew out to the school, we basically did a casting process across the top two class years. It was to find students who would be able, and willing, to express themselves; who would trust us enough to let us into their lives to tell their personal stories. Nima, Tsering, and Jeewan were just amazing. They each had very distinct personalities and stood out as being charismatic and so open to the film. They really wanted to help Himalayan kids like themselves.

SW: How far ahead were the families in the remote, Himalayan villages contacted about their children visiting home? And with a documentary film crew?

ZB: Because there’s no communication in the villages, the families actually weren’t notified at all. But there had been children in the previous year that had gone home to reconnect with their parents. So the families knew there was a charity that was now funding students to visit the villages. And they knew roughly the time of year the children arrived. They were hoping to see them, but nothing was confirmed. And they definitely didn’t know the children would show up with a film crew.

SW:Wow, so everyone basically crossed their fingers and hoped it would all work out.

ZB: Exactly!

SW: How did you film each student’s individual journey? How big was your crew?

ZB: Fellow cameraman Mark Hackansson and I trekked up to the villages with the students in a staggered fashion, following one and then another, and then went between the villages. Marcus covered the filming back in Kathmandu. The kids did their own filming, too, of personal journals — especially while with their families.

SW: Was giving the students cameras something you’d planned from the beginning?

ZB: It was. We didn’t want to overshadow their journey, especially the moments of reunion. Part of the reason we taught them filmmaking was so they could be with their families without too much intrusion from us. It’s also a part of the world that hasn’t really seen foreigners. We wanted to get a bit under the skin of the culture and its people, and the children were better placed to film that than we were.

SW:There’s an incredible amount of physical risk as we follow the students through the High Himalayas. Have you ever filmed in such dangerous conditions before? How did you plan and adapt?

ZB: I’ve filmed in a lot of countries, but nothing like this. Not this physically challenging or in these conditions. It was especially difficult because there was no electricity, so we had to rethink our equipment. We had to bring solar chargers with us and devices that were compatible with them. We didn’t carry laptops or hard drives for backing up material because we just didn’t have the capacity to charge them. We opted for lots and lots of memory cards and simply hoped for the best. We also didn’t have any satellite phones or ways to summon help for accidents. The students and crew basically travelled like the locals do. There were moments when we realized, with all these factors, just how difficult the journey was going to be.

SW: Once the students do make it home in the film, they touch upon questions about participating in the modern world versus preserving ancient traditions and culture. Can you talk a little more about this?

ZB: Western countries don’t have all the answers. So I was concerned when I started this film about supporting something that takes people away from a certain way of life. But having been to Nepal and met the villagers, I saw that all of them without exception wanted to leave, to have a different way of life. They are literally working from morning to evening – farming, harvesting, and cooking – just to survive. That’s their whole life. And there’s no communication, no sanitation, and many health problems with no doctors to treat them.

SW: That’s incredible.

ZB: It is. These villagers are making a tremendous sacrifice in sending their children away to school, but it’s one that will slowly develop these areas. The children already care about their villages and by reconnecting them with their families they are able to see and understand that lifestyle and are invested in it. At the same time, they’re educated, they understand city life, and they have tremendous potential for future careers. There’s a huge divide between those two worlds in Nepal. Having educated children from remote mountain villages, however, creates the ability to make a difference back home.

SW: Do you see a future where schools might exist across these mountain villages?

ZB: It would be ideal so children could stay with their parents. But right now the barriers are too great. Only by improving communication, sanitation, and transportation will educated teachers want to live in these remote villages. If that happens, then maybe children wouldn’t have to be separated from their families. Or perhaps they’d return home as adults to stay. But for now, the best hope for developing that society unfortunately involves the families sending their children away for an education.

SW: I understand that the film is helping to fund the children’s trips home?

ZB: We’ve set up a ‘Going Home Campaign’ to support the Future Village Foundation through our film website. We’re hoping CHILDREN OF THE SNOW LAND raises awareness and helps students reunite with their families. The Future Village Foundation didn’t have enough this year to cover the whole graduating class, so they had to choose which students saw their parents. We ideally hope the film can additionally help to support the Snow Land School’s operations as well as its students once they graduate – to find sponsorship for their continued studies and accommodation in the city. More immediately, though, it would be great if we could help get satellites and Skype up into some of those villages so all the parents and children could at least video chat with each other to stay connected.

SW: That would be amazing. In addition to raising awareness to support the ‘Going Home Campaign,’ what do you ultimately hope people carry away from watching this film?

ZB: It’s unimaginable that these children are being separated for 12 years from their families, but seeing the way that Nima, Tsering, and Jeewan deal with that is incredibly uplifting. They teach us we have a lot to be thankful for in our own lives in such an honest and inspiring way. These children are incredibly wise and stoic as they go through a very difficult situation in the best possible way. They show us that we can face our hardships with grace and acceptance and that we can truly feel grateful for what we have.

Tickets for CHILDREN OF THE SNOW LAND and can be purchased online.

Zara Balfour will be present for a Q&A after the film screening.

FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT: Peter Gerdehag and Tell Aulin, Directors of THE COWS IN THE SUNSHINE VALLEY

In THE COWS IN THE SUNSHINE VALLEY, Two elderly siblings struggling with the care of their livestock face a decision about the future of their family farm.  Directors Tell Aulin and Peter Gerdehag directed WOMEN WITH COWS, which won the Special Jury and American Cinematographer Award for Cinematography at SFF 2013.  SFF program director Jeff Schmidt caught up with Aulin prior to the film's US Premiere as part of SHORTS BLOCK A at The National Park Service Salem Visitor Center on Friday, March 29 at 3:30pm.

Jeff Schmidt: SFF audiences were first introduced to you when we screened WOMEN WITH COWS at SFF 2013.  Can you tell us a little bit about your background and your approach to filmmaking?

Tell Aulin:  Peter and I have had a very special  relationship ever since we started to work together on our first film LIFE AND DEATH OF A FARMER in 2003. It was Peter's first attempt to film his own mentor Styrbjörn Ejneby, that taught him the importance of biodiversity, saving precious nature and various landscapes. This was my first chance to make a film on my own from his collected 80 hours of raw material. Peter was already an acclaimed still photographer, awarded by the Swedish King for his commitment to the subject and making several books. Myself, I was the young talent from a small film school dreaming of making my first documentary film, that Peter chose to believe in. Luckily enough the film was an instant success on Swedish Television and we continued with making documentaries like THE HORSEMAN and later WOMEN WITH COWS.

The approach we have developed is for Peter to create trust and have a very close relationship to the main characters that he's filming for several years. And for me to keep more of a distance, to be able to make the hard choices and to ask for more scenes or background stories that will show the most compelling narrative without compromising on either the truth or giving the characters ways of influence the story, due to his or her relation to the one filming them. It’s a method based on total confidence in each other’s profession and that have kept us both from ever going into conflict over a story. Basically, Peter is the director on scene and I’m the director in the edit room.

JS: How did you first become acquainted with Sonja and Gösta and when did you decide to make a film about them and their farm?

TA: Peter started to film Sonja and Gösta in 2007 when he was told that they had a very special old breed of red and white cows. By then we had no interest from any investors in the project at all. But this is also something that we have learned that has to come second, since we often document people and places that probably won't be around for too much longer. The decision of finally making a short film was taken when SVT (Swedish Television) decided to support the project in 2017.

JS: This film has some similarities to WOMEN WITH COWS, can you talk about your interest in the area of agriculture and aging?

TA: We were both born in small villages in the Swedish countryside. I was raised on a small cow farm as a child and Peter has also lived close to nature since childhood. Peter is really true to his own life history, and has always sought his motifs in nature and later also in the rural landscape. Myself, I have found it very satisfying to reconnect to my roots telling these stories since basically my whole family background comes from a history of farmers since hundred of years ago. For Peter it is important to not shy away from using his art to tackle the most fundamental questions in life. One of those themes is of course aging and the great value of life experience that comes with it. This is also something we both share deeply in our passion for storytelling. The respect for things to develop naturally and try to learn as much as we can from it, to be able to leave this earth a little bit better than we inherited it ourselves.

JS: What motivates you as filmmakers?

TA: Peter’s personal motto has always been: A good photo isn’t a goal in itself, the real goal is the effect that the photo generates. I totally buy into this motto and try my best to use his fantastic footage so that the audience will have different ways of "reading the story". To tell the films with what I find to be symbolic pictures and with a narrative that also demand something from the audience. That they must invest their own experiences from life to be able to read the full context. It's our main goal that these film portraits make the audience think about their own life ambitions and the very meaning of life.

JS: What do you hope people will take away from your film?

TA: Life is worth living no matter how it plays out and the sooner we accept this, the more happier and fulfilling life we'll have.

THE COWS IN THE SUNSHINE VALLEY screens as part of Shorts Block A at the National Park Service’s Salem Visitor Center on Friday, March 29 at 3:30pm – FREE ADMISSION.