Artists' Television Access

Can a single woman at the precarious age of 39 1/2 find a way to have a baby with no Mr. Right in sight? Currently in post-production, Kara Herold’s 39 1/2, a hybrid comic feature combining narrative and animated elements, takes up where her autobiographical documentary, Bachelorette, 34, leaves off. Kara is still single in the last years of her 30s. She has always imagined having kids, but her dedication to the life of an independent filmmaker has siphoned away the time and opportunity. Her new age glamorous Zen monk boyfriend seems like a bright possibility, until he dumps her at her first suggestion that they get serious. She comes up for air at 39 ½, filled with a certain desperation and energized by a newfound determination to have a baby by any means necessary.

MOM: Why don’t you put an ad in the paper? Svelte single seeks smart scholar in San Francisco. The alliteration might attract a smart English professor.

KARA: Okay. But it has to be on my terms. How about iconoclastic, inspired, independent filmmaker

MOM: Too un-INVITING! Dad and I will write it for you.

Kara Herold has written, directed, and produced a broad variety of films, from short animations to award-winning documentaries—all of them set in San Francisco. She has won many awards and grants, including support from the San Francisco Arts Commission, Pacific Pioneer Fund, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Film Arts Foundation, Djerassi Resident Artists Program and the New York State Council for the Arts.  Her films have screened at film festivals world-wide such as Sundance, MoMA, NYC, the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam. Kara Herold received an MFA in Cinema from San Francisco State University. She worked at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for twenty years and was a stagehand for the The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Transmedia at Syracuse University, but spends all of her summers in the Bay Area.