Frame to Fame
The journey from “inkling of an idea” to “indie film” is no easy path to tread. In this second edition of our “Frame to Fame” series, Art New England has selected four New England-based filmmakers who are launching films onto the festival circuit in 2016. Over the coming months, we’ll be documenting their experiences. You can read more about these filmmakers in this ANE article.
Film still from Michal Goldman’s Nasser’s Republic, The Making of Modern Egypt, 82 min. Pictured: A young girl cheers with Nasser’s poster behind her during a demonstration, February 8, 2011. Source: Reuters.
Michal Goldman: Nasser’s Republic, The Making of Modern Egypt
“What drew me to this story is my love of Egypt, which I can’t explain. I’m an American Jew, after all,” says Michal Goldman, a longtime Boston area resident who produced and directed Nasser’s Republic, The Making of Modern Egypt. This feature-length documentary profiles iconic Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Goldman filmed it during and after the Arab Spring, in an Egypt that was “always some version of a police state.” She completed post-production in Boston.
Nasser’s Republic blends archival footage, interviews and voiceover. “This film could not be more traditional,” says Goldman, 72. Because of this, she predicts getting it into festivals will be tough. Thus far, Goldman has entered about eight fests and has been “rejected by most.” Since Nasser’s Republic was funded partly by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Goldman is “mandated” to seek a TV audience. Goldman will also tap colleges and universities. “I don’t care about the prestige of festivals. I care about showing it in cites where there is a significant Arab population,” she says. “Nassar is a huge figure for them.”
That said, Filmfest DC invited Goldman to premiere Nasser’s Republic in April. Its New England debut followed at the Independent Film Festival Boston, where 400-plus people attended the screening, followed by a Q&A with Goldman. “It’s very exciting to see your film, and hear it, and feel people all around you completely absorbed.”
Alexander Janko: Year by the Sea
“Indie filmmaking is not for the faint of heart,” says writer, director and composer Alexander Janko. Best known for his score for My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Janko makes his directorial debut with Year by the Sea, a “little” big name indie narrative featuring name-brand actors Karen Allen (Raiders of the Lost Ark), who lives in the Berkshires: Celia Imrie (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel); and Tony and Pulitzer winner Michael Cristofer. Allen plays a woman who spends a year solo on Cape Cod to find herself again. While filming on the Cape, Janko says his team made an effort to hire local extras and crew.
Based in Great Barrington, MA, Janko, 46, sees his path to an audience the way many filmmakers do: spend a year on the festival loop, and then land a distribution deal. But submitting to fests, “We’re getting turned down,” he says, more than he’d like. Janko has entered more than 55 festivals, resulting in Year by the Sea premiering at the Vail Film Festival in April, and then playing the Newport Beach Film Festival and the Berkshire International Film Festival in June. Next stop: taking the film to Florida and Arizona, “the two hotspots for our demographic,” before hoping for a theatrical release in 2017.
His main hurdle? “Our demographic, our story, it’s just not sexy.” So Janko has been studying how to market to his core audience: baby boomer women.. “No one makes content for them. I feel like we have the potential for a wildfire,” Janko says. “We just have to figure out how to get it in front of them.”
Film still from Jeff Griecci’s Year-round Metal Enjoyment, 95 min.
Jeff Griecci: Year-round Metal Enjoyment
When Jeff Griecci first moved to Portland, ME, about a decade ago, he noticed graffiti on buildings and on freight trains. “I learned more about the scene. It hadn’t been documented anywhere.” After filming for two years in Maine and Massachusetts, and editing for three, the result of his immersion in the freight train graffiti subculture is Year-round Metal Enjoyment, a feature-length documentary that follows two legendary local graffiti “crews.”
“I know what [my film] is capable of achieving,” says Griecci, 30, the director, writer and co-producer who works as a freelance camera assistant and operator (most notably, on Reese Witherspoon’s Wild). He has a “fear” of throwing his film online for streaming, so he’s trying “to get it seen by people in theaters.” His strategy is to target festivals, local then national and international. To date, Maine’s Emerge Film Festival has screened Year-round Metal Enjoyment, nominating it for Best Maine Film.
After its festival run, he will find an independent distribution deal to reach a potentially “massive underground following” of graffiti fans. For that audience to see it “would be a huge achievement,” he says. As for the general public, he’s unsure how his film will be received. “A lot of this is first time experience to me. I’m open to seeing what happens,” says Griecci.
Raeshelle Cooke: Sometime Around January
As defined by filmmaker Raeshelle Cooke, success is about now. It isn’t necessarily winning awards at festivals, snagging thousands of views on Vimeo or making a ton of money. She just wants to share her film, and “have conversations with people after.”
Her latest short, Sometime Around January, tells the brief story of a woman whose memories and fantasies of revenge are triggered after spotting an old flame in a bar. Cooke filmed it over two days in the winter, both in an outdoor location and inside a hotel lounge in East Greenwich, RI.
“I had this story in my head,” says Cooke, 26, a Taunton, MA, resident and 2015 graduate of Bridgewater State University. “The success is shooting it, and then editing it, and actually having this film in my hands to say that this was my vision and I completed it.”
For a young filmmaker, Cooke is already prolific. She’s got seven short films and two music videos under her belt and has already enjoyed some success. Her previous short, Monae’s Room, won Best Newcomer for at the 2014 Shawna Shea Film Festival and another award at the Stories by the River Film Festival. Cooke has submitted Sometime Around January to some 40 festivals, and it has been accepted by a handful of few smaller ones, but with entry fees as high as $40 a pop, it’s an expensive process. While Raeshelle Cooke sees her shorts as “self-expression” for now, she says she’s serious about her filmmaking career. “I think I can turn this passion and this hobby into money,” she says. “I want to be self-made.”
Ethan Gilsdorf is a frequent contributor to Art New England, an author and a writer for the New York Times, Boston Globe, Boston Globe Magazine, Boston Magazine, Salon, and Wired.