Author: Fara

  • 39 1/2

    39 1/2

    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.

    Bio
    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.
  • periwinkle Cinema: The Ed Varga Experience A cel ED bration of everything Ed

    In Homocore Minneapolis a documentary about the musical scene in Minneapolis, focusing on the queer punk groups, whose style is also called Homocore. Ganser interviews members of groups such as Tribe 8, The Misfires, The Butchies, representatives of the style.Follow the Homobiles as they tour and discuss the issues of being a queer rock and roll band in the present political climate in a new look at queer musicians on the road.

    **World Premiere of the Homobiles new music video HOMOSAFE****World Premiere of new music video for Eddie and the Heartbeats Give this City the Middle Finger!**Plus a few choice selections from Homo A GoGo’s past film selections, Eddie and The Heartbeats album listening party.

  • ART Heart: Children of Riot Grrrl and Queercore

    Celeste Chan and Elliat Graney-Saucke

    Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/art-heart-children-of-riot-grrrl-and-queercore-ata-5pm-8pm-tickets-45850273402

    ART Heart is: a collage, a mixtape, a DIY documentary and tribute to riot grrrl & queercore’s influence on next generations. This is a love letter to queer and trans teens of tomorrow. 1990’s punk feminism tackled rape/abuse, suicide, mental illness, homophobia, body image, disability and more. Riot grrrl’s art, culture, music, and activism made it a vital political movement. ART Heart interviews queer artists to find out how riot grrrl lead to their creative paths. What was it like to come of age in riot grrrl? ART Heart sifts through herstory, and refocuses on the frame on race/class/disability/and resistance within riot grrrl/queercore lineages.

    Featuring interviews with: Irina Contreras, Rhiannon Flowers, Nomy Lamm, Darius Morrison, Curran Nault, Clyde Petersen, Gretchen Phillips, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Brontez Purnell, Adee Roberson, Rachel Shannon, Eleanor Whitney, along with Jerry Lee Abram, Celeste Chan, and Elliat Graney-Saucke.

    Photo: Yuska Tuanakotta

    Celeste Chan writes, makes films, performs, teaches, facilitates, and organizes cultural events. The child of a Chinese immigrant father and a Bronx Jewish mother, she came out queer as a teenager living in Seattle during the 1990’s. Inspired by riot grrrl, Celeste started making films at The Evergreen State College and earned her BA in International Feminism. Since that time, she’s joined film collectives (Shifting Narratives, Folsom St. Film Collective) and won several awards and fellowships (Hedgebrook, Lambda Literary, VONA, Soaring Gardens, and SF Arts Commission). Her recent films, Queer Historical Mixtape (with Irina Contreras), and ABSENCE: No Fats, No Femmes, No Asians have screened at screened at colleges & national/international festivals. Her writing can be found in Ada, AWAY, Citron Review, cream city review, Feminist Wire, Hyphen, The Rumpus, and more. From 2008-2018, she co-directed Queer Rebels, a queer and trans people of color arts project. A lifelong student of alternative education, Celeste coordinates Writing Rainbow: QTPOC FREE School series and serves as Teaching Artist at the Queer Ancestors Project, where she facilitates free writing workshops for LGBTQ youth 18-24 years old. She’s a contributing editor for Foglifte.  www.celestechan.com

    Elliat Graney-Saucke is a documentary filmmaker, cultural researcher, networker, curator and innovative organizer. Her interests are focused on: cultural equity and intergenerational knowledge exchange; looking at inspiring values and assets of organizations and groups through storytelling; and utilizing creativity, organization and vision to realize great ideas. Since 2000, Elliat has been directing and producing films in the US and Europe through Contrast Vision Productions. Beginning media production education at the Evergreen State College at age 14, she has produced a body of over twenty short films and one completed feature documentary. Currently in production is her first web series Boys on the Inside and her second feature documentary ART Heart: Children of Riot Grrrl. She has produced work in the US, Germany, Denmark, England, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Italy and Canada, with forty film screenings in over thirteen countries. Elliat currently teaches film with Northwest Film Forum and Coyote Central as well as being President of the Seattle Documentary Association. www.elliat-creative.com

    Jerry Lee Abram and Alexa Fraser-Herron by Shot in The City Photography

    Jerry Lee Abram has spent the last 18 years doing just about anything for queer artists.  He has Tech Directed an extensive amount of projects including The Sex Workers Art Show, Homo A Gogo, Fabulous Artistic Guys Get Overtly Traumatized Sometimes: The Musical, Sister Spit, and Queer Rebels. Additionally, his lighting in film can be seen in music videos by Hunx and His Punx, The Younger Lovers, Harlem and Brontez Purnell Dance Company’s film FREE JAZZ.

    Brontez Purnell is a prolific artist: zinester, author, musician, dancer, choreographer, actor, filmmaker, and more! Brontez has been publishing, performing, and curating in the Bay Area for over ten years. He is author of The Crusing Diaries, Johnny Would You Love Me if My Dick Was Bigger?, and the cult zine Fag School, frontman for his band The Younger Lovers, and founder and choreographer of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company. Formerly a dancer with Gravy Train!!!, a queer electro indie band that gained national prominence in the mid-2000s, Purnell’s other prominent artistic collaborations include his supporting role in the queer independent feature film, “I Want Your Love” (dir. Travis Mathews, 2012). He was a guest curator for the Berkeley Art Museum’s L@TE program, honored by Out Magazine’s Hot 100 List and Most Eligible Bachelors List, and won the SF Bay Guardian‘s Goldie for Performance/Music.

    Nomy Lamm is a multi-media artist whose offerings have included lullabies, zines and comics, a rock opera, an experimental novel, a children’s book, many bands and solo albums, live performances, animated videos, illustrations and poems. She’s worked with Sins Invalid, a disability justice performance project, since 2009 as a performer and program team member. Nomy has been teaching people to sing for almost two decades, helping students move through fear and self-judgement to take up space and find equilibrium in radical authenticity. She has a BA in Multimedia Art and Political Economy from The Evergreen State College, and an MFA in Fiction from San Francisco State University. In her work as a Kohenet (Hebrew Priestess), Nomy offers space for creative exploration and engagement with our wounded places as a source of transformation. She lives on occupied Squaxin/Nisqually/Chehalis land in Olympia, WA with her partner Lisa and their dogs Dandelion and Momma. www.nomyteaches.com.

    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/artheartmovie/

    Website: https://artheartmovie.com/