Special Events and Panels 2015
The Kissinger Twins, Cinematic Labyrinths, Special Guest Filmmakers, funded in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod and the Woods Hole Foundation.
The Kissinger Twins, from London, England, are film and interactive directors Kasia Kifert and Dawid Marcinkowski. The Twins are at the forefront of creating an exciting new highly interactive web based cinematic storytelling.
During their 90 minute presentations, Dawid and Kasia explain their idea of Cinematic Labyrinths and take the audience on a journey through their multiple award winning projects ranging from 2002 until future present including Forget Me Not, The Trip, Sufferrosa, the biggest independent interactive film ever made, and the latest The Network is Watching.
Film and photographic duo The Kissinger Twins are not, contrary to the moniker, genetically related. Kasia Kifert (X-X chromosomes) and Dawid Marcinkowski (X-Y) first collaborated as friends and now function as a creative and personal coupling. Heralded as two of the most original young voices in contemporary interactive storytelling, Dawid & Kasia mix classic film and photography with the latest in digital technologies.
Dawid and Kasia are huge fans of cinema and admire directors, such as Louis Bunuel, Jean-Luc Godard, Brian De Palma and Alan Pakula, but also passionate about old forgotten sci-fi and horror films, camp and silent cinema. In the digital era everything around us is changing rapidly. Cinema and storytelling are no exception. Kissinger Twins took the risk of making interactive films rather than traditional linear ones. Their award winning interactive works use modern technology to discover new ways of immersing, surprising and touching emotions of the audience. They created ‘The Trip’, the Webby Award 2013 winning interactive film, the SXSW finalist ‘Forget Me Not’ and ‘Sufferrosa’ the biggest independent interactive feature film ever made. TICKET INFORMATION.
Richard Ray Perez, Cesar’s Last Fast, 2015 Filmmaker in Residence
CESAR’S LAST FAST is a multi-platform feature documentary film about the private sacrifice and spiritual conviction behind Cesar Chavez’s struggle for the humane treatment of America’s farm workers, and the impact Chavez’s legacy has on today’s generation of organizers fighting for farm worker rights. The film is built around powerful, never-before-seen footage of Chavez’s 1988 “Fast for Life,” a 36-day act of penance for not having done enough to stop growers from spraying pesticides on farm workers. The story of this water-only fast is the film’s dramatic arc into which the filmmakers interweave the historic events that defined the life mission of America’s most inspiring Latino leader and the struggles confronting today’s farm workers.
Richard Ray Perez has a close personal connection to the issues presented in Cesar’s Last Fast. For 22 years, Mr. Perez’s father was a farm worker who lived in and worked under the conditions Cesar Chavez fought to end. At five years old Richard joined the historic grape boycott organized by the United Farm Workers.
Prior to directing and executive producing Cesar’s Last Fast, Richard Ray Perez directed and/or executive produced 4 documentary film series for Brave New films: Sierra Club Chronicles (Director, 2006); Freedom Files, Season II (co-executive producer, 2007); In Their Boots (Executive Producer, 2008 – 2009); and Operation In Their Boots (Executive Producer, 2010). In Their Boots was nominated for a 2009 IDA award for best single-subject series. Mr. Perez also produced and directed the political documentary Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election which The Los Angeles Times called “a riveting story about the undermining of democracy in America.” Unprecedented was an official selection at over 50 international film festivals, winner of nine festival awards and premiered on the Sundance Channel in 2004. Mr. Perez was also the director of photography for the Robert Greenwald documentaries, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism and Uncovered: The War in Iraq.
Currently, Mr. Perez the Producer of Creative Partnership in the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program where oversees a portfolio of Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program partnerships and collaborations including Stories of Change, a Sundance Institute partnership with Skoll foundation that works to harness the power of storytelling to advance the work of leading social entrepreneurs who are solving major global problems, and The Sundance Institute TED Prize Filmmaker Award, an annual prize that fully funds the production of a short film about the annual TED Prize Winner. Mr. Perez also participates in all DFP programmatic activity including reviewing submission to the Sundance Documentary Film Fund and representing the DFP at domestic and global documentary film festivals, markets and forums. TICKET INFORMATION
Maya Forbes, Infinitely Polar Bear, 2015 Filmmaker in Residence
Maya Forbes was born and raised in Cambridge, MA. She attended Harvard University where she spent four years writing for The Harvard Lampoon. During her freshman year of college, her play The Nestling was performed in New York as part of The Young Playwright’s Festival. After graduation, she moved to Los Angeles to write for film and television. She began her career on the HBO comedy, The Larry Sanders Show, and spent four years as a writer/producer on that groundbreaking show. She has since written numerous television episodes and feature films, including the animated Monsters vs. Aliens, the live-action family comedy Diary of a Wimpy Kid 3: Dog Days, and the independent Seeing Other People, all of which she co-wrote with her husband, Wally Wolodarsky. Maya also writes songs with her sister, China Forbes, who is the lead singer of the band Pink Martini. ‘Infinitely Polar Bear’ starring Mark Ruffalo is Maya’s first film as writer and director. Maya was selected as one of Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch in 2013. TICKET INFORMATION
Sally Taylor, Consenses, documentary Special Event Screening and Conversation
Is there such a thing as Muse and does it use the medium of human creativity to realize itself? Or, as humans, are we so compelled to feel secure in an insecure reality that we seek to find meaning in everything that surrounds us? These were the questions Sally Taylor, daughter of James Taylor and Carly Simon, set out to find clues to with her global arts initiative “Consenses.”
From 2012-2014 Sally asked 150 artists from around the world, of every medium and genera, to interpret one another’s work and express their reactions to it in the vein of a game of “Telephone.” For example: A musician interprets a photo and creates a song in response, a dancer interprets their song, a perfumer interprets the dance, a painter interprets the perfume, a poet interprets the painting, and so on until all the senses have been represented. None of the artists were privy to the identities of the other participants (some of them quite well known) and none of them got to see further back into the interpretive chain beyond the one piece of art they were provided. What resulted was a multidisciplinary conversation about the human experience the nature of Truth. The initial questions about the nature of Muse and the human reaction to the unknown are highlighted in this short documentary where the participating artists weigh in on the project, their understandings and the greater mystery. TICKET INFORMATION.
From Page to Screen with Casey Sherman, author of The Finest Hours
Grand Manan, Canada (province of New Brunswick) August 6-7th of 2014 the NEREID research vessel from the New England Aquarium. For a story on marine biologist Dr. Michael Moore and his quest of saving Right whales. Images were shot in the Bay of Fundy in Canadian waters on August 6th and August 7th, 2014. (Essdras M Suarez/ Globe Staff)/ Special Project
What happens to a man when he devotes his life to a cause? At what price success—or failure? “Chasing Bayla” is the story of one man’s quest. As an uncertain 23-year-old, biologist Michael Moore discovered a deep connection with whales. He vowed to end what he considered their torture: entangling fishing rope that cut through blubber, down to bone, and often killed. The whales most prone to the prolonged and terrible deaths were North Atlantic Right Whales, among the rarest of animals. For decades, Moore watched as science created stronger and stronger rope with greater capacity to kill the whales. For decades, he toiled in his lab trying to find a way to save these whales. Finally, Moore struck upon a technique. On a January day, Moore and a team set out from the coast of Florida to rescue one young right whale named Bayla. The results of that day pushed the bounds of science, only to reveal its heartbreaking limits—putting Moore and his life’s work to the test.
The story of Michael Moore’s work and his efforts to save one particular whale from entanglement in fishing line is the subject of “Chasing Bayla,” an immersive, multi-media story published by the Boston Globe in October 2014. Using the written word with a parallel visual story, Chasing Bayla integrates different ways of telling a story into one form, offering the reader the opportunity to have an in depth experience with the subject. The story features over 6000 words juxtaposed with multiple photographs, videos, audio recordings and animated illustration. This panel, featuring WHOI Biologist Michael Moore, Boston Globe writer Sarah Schweitzer and Boston Globe editor Steven Wilmsen will discuss the award winning story as an example of the juxtaposition between journalism and filmmaking. TICKET INFORMATION
