Kamsameda

Five international filmmakers at ICPFF 2010:(from left to right) Yeong-I PARK (Japan), Daishi Matsunaga (Japan), FM, Fereshteh PARNIAN (Iran), Pablo MENDOZA (Mexico)

“Kamsameda” is how you say “thank you” in Korean. I learned this last week in Chuncheon when I was there as a judge at a film festival. Since people there are quite accommodating and helpful knowing this comes in handy. As chair of our jury I began my speech at the closing ceremonies by saying this: “I can’t help noticing that today is my 55th birthday. I want to thank you all for showing up for the party.” It was a comic gambit. I wanted to be funny. But I also wanted people to know it was my birthday. I’ve long gotten over the male stoicism bit: “Oh, if only they’d known!” I ask for what I want. I wanted a party; I got a party.  About 40 of us took over a nearby bar – “Joker, Joker.” We drank soju and beer and ate Kentucky Fried Chicken. Two delicious cakes were presented, complete with candles. I said I was glad they didn’t test my wind with all 55 candles. They sang “Happy Birthday” to me in English and sang the Korean version – far more upbeat and memorable than the American song.

Only one of my birthday cakes!

One of my pet projects is to get people to stop singing “Happy Birthday.” The damn song is copyrighted. Look it up. Patty and Mildred something. Two sisters from Kentucky. When they died they left all resulting royalties to a publishing company that was supposed to pay out to a boys orphanage. A worthy cause, no doubt. But the devil’s megacorp Warner Chappell bought the rights in 1990 and has milked them ever since. You will have to pay to use the song in a film through the year 2030, even documentaries. I recollect I paid $5k to license under 15 seconds of it for HOOP DREAMS in 1994. 8 years later when they wanted more than that for 8 seconds of it in my film BOYS TO MEN I said “screw you” and cut the scene out.  

So STOP SINGING IT! Try the Korean version. The French. Anything else.

Kamsameda.

Memories of Film-making and the Guild Theater

Guild Theater Exterior

“This is the best film I’ve ever seen” a woman said after a screening of JOURNEY FROM ZANSKAR at the Guild in Albuquerque Sunday night. That’s the 4th time that a person has made the same comment to me. (Yes, I’m counting. But it’s not hard; it’s a pretty memorable comment.) The Guild is my kind of theater – independently owned and operated, surviving on a shoestring, showing great movies from 115 years of cinema. You have to climb a ladder to get to the projection booth – a bird’s nest over the front lobby. The “office” is behind the candy counter – fax machine, phone, and files squeezed between a coffee machine, candy boxes, and a stool to sit on while selling tickets through the outside ticket window. When the show starts Keith has to lock the front door since there’s no one left to man the counter and stop potential theft. This is what the death of theatrical exhibition looks like. You may mistakenly think the death of theatrical exhibition is not yet upon us when visiting your local multiplex. Not true. That is the upscale morgue. They exclusively present the most recently embalmed. That is where you go after you’ve taken the Matrix’s blue pill.  Actually, going there is taking the blue pill.

If it weren’t for cinemas like the Guild, and devoted owner/operators like Keith, I never would have ended up a filmmaker. My mentor Ron Epple used to show movies in his attic. We’d sit on busted old movie seats screening 16mm prints. On big nights maybe 12 of us would jam in a space barely bigger than Keith’s booth.

When the Bell & Howell projector would tear the print we’d pop the reels off, throw them on the rewinds, splice them together, and be running again in under five minutes, allowing just enough time for a bathroom break, fetching more beer, or ordering pizza. There was never a single moment I can recall thinking “wow, I’m learning all about cinema here,” and yet nothing less occurred.  I’m not nostalgic for uncomfortable seats, too much smoke, rickety old projectors. But where can I find the same fevered passion today debating the merits of obscure experimental shorts from Bulgaria sitting in front of 70 inch wall-mounted HD screens with DVDs from Netflix? I hope that passion is alive and well on college campuses. But is it elsewhere? In museums maybe? Does it exist in the lobbies of the last few remaining theaters like the Guild? I hope so.

What follows is not false modesty - I think JFZ is a very good film. But is it possible that those young people who find it the best film they’ve ever seen do so because they’ve seen so few films? Seen so few good films projected on a large screen in a darkened hall, sitting breathlessly beside numbers of strangers having a suddenly intimate communal experience?