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A guest post by Tim Hobbs

We always knew we were taking significant risks with Aquí y Allá (Here and There). It’s our view that taking real risks is a requirement of trying to make a really good film. From a business perspective, the idea is to fit that within a realistic framework so it can make sense.

Descriptively speaking, Aquí y Allá is a narrative feature about an immigrant who returns home to a small mountain village in Guerrero, Mexico after years of working in the US, and fights to rebuild his family and follow his dream of starting a band. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year, where it won the Critics Week Grand Prize, and has been fortunate to have screened in nearly 30 countries around the world to date. None of which is to say anything in the entire process has come easy, or that we can yet rest assured.

Aquí y Allá (Here and There)

We took significant risks making a film in a language other than English, casting only non-professional actors, filming in a remote mountain region of Mexico, and in the filmmaking approach in general.

Antonio’s directorial vision for the film was risky, as anything striving for originality must be. Aquí y Allá is peaceful, observational, and very much focused on the casual little details that accumulate into, we believe, rich characterization and a powerful overall narrative. In our approach, we embraced what we saw as the poetry of the film, and tried to create pure moments of the kind that might forever live on in the characters’ memories of home, family, childhood, and fatherhood. To do this, it was essential to allow for enough space for the seemingly insignificant to gather weight, and to allow the audience to bear witness to what is not said as much as what is, to the truth that often lies just below appearances. Similarly, although the film never actually directly shows “Allá” (referring to the US, and meaning: “over there” or “beyond”, and recalling “the other side”), we have tried to express how the presence of “Allá”, along with the absence of family and friends who have emigrated to “Allá”, is so strongly felt at home that it is practically knocking at the door.

Although the film is calm and contemplative, it seems it resonates very emotionally for certain people. To see audiences, especially Mexican audiences, engage with subtleties and layers of the film has been thrilling, as it makes us confident the film has a richness and depth that could give it a long life, if given sufficient opportunity. Antonio believed that conveying the emotional quality of time, the weight of absence, the loss of what is left behind, and the naturally restrained emotions we observed from the local Mexicans who inspired the story, required an indirect and subtle approach to the narrative. A thoroughly risky approach that we wholeheartedly believed in and helped him to realize. We all also believed that some conventional filmmaking methods often used to impress or elicit emotion from the audience would detract from, not service, the vision for the film: e.g. overamplified emotions from the actors, an emotional music score, virtuosic camera movements that would contradict the idea of bearing witness to intimacy, and so forth. The risk of the filmmaking approach, in a real sense, is that it requires the audience to “look”. By that I mean, a seemingly insignificant but pure moment can be read as either pure or insignificant, but not really both. It’s only a question of looking and seeing: looking for the meaningfulness of the everyday, and seeing what for us is the poetry of the film.

I should also address the risk of producing and distributing a Spanish-language film. There are nearly 500 million Spanish-speakers worldwide, and 50 million in the US — more, in fact, than in Spain, and second only to Mexico. The Hispanic demographic in the US is also the strongest filmgoing audience per capita in the US.

All of this notwithstanding, the industry in the US is far behind the curve in creating and distributing quality content that will speak directly to the Hispanic audience. There are lots of reasons why, but they have little to do with supply and demand. For starters, there’s the mainstream approach in filmmaking and the wide-release mentality of distribution. This has been getting worse for some time, and is actually getting even worse now despite the promise of digital cinema, because of some thing called Virtual Print Fee (VPF) programs. Then there’s the star system, the celebrity system, that the industry operates on though various reputable studies have shown there may be no correlation between star participation and profitability. What is obvious is that most celebrities are white and speak English. They were elevated to service a mainstream system.

Cast and Crew of Aquí y Allá. Guest blogger, Producer Tim Hobbs, is third from the right.

A lot of this quite clearly adds up to institutionalized discrimination; de facto discrimination but discrimination nonetheless. The institutionalized discrimination simply crowds most minority films and non-English films out of the marketplace, creating an initial problem of easy access. It can even flow all the way through to distribution output deals or licenses, which sometimes categorize all non-English content together as “foreign” and apply steep discounts to deal prices. It amounts to Spanish-language films all effectively being treated as “foreign” by the US industry, in more or less the same way as films in every other non-English language. This also brings me back to the point. Many of the powerful forces behind the status quo have more to do with the power structure than they do with markets optimizing according to supply and demand. This is one reason we ourselves have been building a business involved in production, sales, and distribution for the past five years, because we see this as an opportunity.

We believed some meaningful theatrical release of Aquí y Allá was necessary to generate press coverage and help build word of mouth, which could drive revenues going forward. Our theatrical release has focused in particular on the largest Mexican-American population centers (i.e. California, Texas, Arizona, Illinois, and Colorado). One could argue that, although it’s becoming harder in the digital age for smaller films to get real access to the theatrical market, they are in greater need of access to it as a primary way of being marketed and elevated from the chaotic manifold of content online. There is demand for good films of diverse stripes. The problem is largely about enabling discovery, and getting audiences to look beyond what is being so heavily marketed to them by the mainstream system. It’s again a question of “looking”, not unlike with our film.

Time will tell how the dust settles for Aquí y Allá. What I can say for sure is that we’re in the middle of it all fighting for the film, fighting for the spirit of risk-taking, creativity, and imagination, and fighting for a better way forward.

Tim Hobbs founded Torch Films along with Ori Dov Gratch in 2008 to produce and distribute independent films. Torch was the only film company selected for New York City’s first entrepreneurship incubator initiative, created in 2009 by Mayor Bloomberg. Prior to Torch, Tim worked as an Associate at The Walt Disney Studios in Los Angeles, and in general management in other industries. He was raised in Pittsburgh, and holds an MBA in Finance and Media from New York University and a BA from Emory University. His additional interests include poetry and philosophy, and he was fortunate enough to study with luminary philosophers Ronald Dworkin and Thomas Nagel.

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Post by Rebecca Richman Cohen

One of my mentors recently offered a chilling metaphor. He compared the process of re-editing a finished film to the act of necrophilia. It may sound comically extreme, but his point was that in the filmmaking world, there may be nothing more taboo than unlocking a ‘finished’ film and disassembling it at its seams. After having survived the ordeal, I am inclined to agree with his insight.

I write this post because I am reeling from the effects of having violated this powerful taboo with my own film. My team and I originally “finished” Code of the West in time for SXSW 2012, not anticipating that there would be any more major developments in the story. A few months after our premiere, two of our main characters were indicted on federal marijuana charges, and prohibited from using the defense that producing medical marijuana was legal in their home state of Montana. One of them faced a minimum mandatory sentence of more than 80 years in prison. We were determined to document the effects of this injustice on our protagonists and their families so we started filming again, launched a Kickstarter campaign, raised enough money to re-edit, and went back in to update the film.

Not only did we add a new ending, we also changed much of the narration, added a new scene in the middle, and generally rendered the film more compelling, more character-driven, and more relevant to national issues. Nonetheless, the process of diving back into the material was painful for many reasons.

First, we were documenting some of the darkest moments in our characters’ lives. It was an emotionally taxing process to contemplate how most effectively to “represent” the suffering of others. This was true when we were editing the original version of the film, which included a dark scene of a DEA raid on our main character’s medical marijuana growhouse (our main characters in handcuffs, federal officials in hazmat suits, and sirens blaring). But there was something even more challenging about filming our subjects again after they had seen the film and become involved in our outreach campaign. During the original edit, we never screened cuts for any of our subjects – but after the premiere, they had the opportunities to screen the film many times over and were now deeply invested in the update.

It also opened a Pandora’s box into the creative process. It made me sensitive to the musings of critics and audience members – and it made me doubt my original instincts. Where before the film was a thing that simply existed in the world, now it was something over which I once again had control. Criticism wasn’t just about something I had done. It was about something I was doing.

And finally, I had enormous anxiety that broadcasters wouldn’t take the second version seriously – that the film’s fate was sealed in our original version and that no one would see the new version.

Luckily, two remarkable editors guided the process. We brought on a new editor, Lindsay Utz, to structure the new version. Lindsay brought fresh eyes and a keen sense of possibility to the process. And Francisco Bello, the film’s original editor, writer, and producer generously offered useful consultation on the edit. In the end, a process that was at times beset with anguish proved to be worthwhile. The Kickstarter campaign helped to build an engaged audience for the film leading up to its official release. And the new version is simply a more powerful story than its predecessor.

But the experience also left me with questions. Did we do enough? Should we have radically reassembled the film instead of simply revising the narration and adding new scenes? Which critics were right? Did we make it more or less marketable? These questions provoke anxiety at any stage in the creative process. It was unfortunate for us that we had to ask ourselves those questions upon not one – but two different releases.

Historically, it was impossible to re-edit a finished film. In order to create the final master print, filmmakers destroyed the original stock in the process – so “tinkering” after a première was not an option. Once a film was done, it was done. That’s clearly no longer the case (as evidenced by the significant numbers of filmmakers who go back to the edit room after festival premieres) – so maybe it’s no longer quite as taboo as it was once considered to be. And I imagine that there are many filmmakers in my place, who are telling stories about current events and who are involved in ongoing campaigns to make change happen around those stories. These filmmakers have even more reason to consider updating their films when there is a turn of events that changes the stakes.

That said, just because it is a technical possibility, and sometimes a narrative necessity, if you’re considering this path yourself, this filmmaker urges you to proceed with caution, and not without first setting some boundaries for how much change is healthy to make.

Rebecca Richman Cohen is an Emmy Award nominated filmmaker and a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School. War Don Don, her first film, won the Special Jury Prize at the SXSW Film Festival and was nominated for two Emmy awards: Outstanding Continuing Coverage Of A News Story (Long Form) and Outstanding Editing. Rebecca has been adjunct faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and American University’s Human Rights Institute. She graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies and with a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, where she now teaches two classes on law and film. In 2010 Rebecca was profiled in Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces in Independent Film as an “up-and-comer poised to shape the next generation of independent film.” She is a 2012-2013 Soros Justice Fellow.

Please check them out if you’re in the neighborhood!

The Cold Lands (Generation) Cinereach production Dir Tom Gilroy After his mother’s sudden death, a young boy disappears into the deep woods of upstate New York and takes up with an unpredictable and mysterious drifter. Screening TimesScreening TimesScreening Times

Concussion (Panorama) Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee Dir Stacie Passon After a blow to the head, Abby decides she can’t do it anymore. Her life just can’t be only about the house, the kids and the wife. She needs more: she needs to be Eleanor. Screening Times

Leviathan (Forum Expanded) Cinereach grantee Dir Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel WThe collaborative clash of man, nature, and machine — a cosmic portrait of one of mankind’s oldest endeavors. Shot on a dozen cameras — tossed and tethered, passed from fisherman to filmmaker. Wisconsin – birthplace of the Republican Party, government unions, “cheeseheads” and Paul Ryan – becomes a test market in the campaign to buy Democracy, and ground zero in the battle for the future of the GOP Screening Times Narco Cultura (Panorama Dokumente) Cinereach grantee Dir Shaul Schwarz An explosive look at drug cartels’ pop culture influence on both sides of the border as experienced by an LA narcocorrido singer dreaming of stardom and a Juarez crime scene investigator on the front line of Mexico’s Drug War. Screening Times

On the Ice (Native – Indigenous Cinema) Cinereach grantee Dir Andrew MacLean On the snow-covered Arctic tundra, at the top of the world in Barrow, Alaska, two Inuit teenagers try to get away with murder. Screening Times

Powerless (Forum) Cinereach grantee Fahad Mustafa & Deepti Kakkar In Kanpur, India, hundreds of people risk their lives to climb up electricity poles to steal electricity. As police vehicles roll in to stop the theft, the lines are drawn for battle over electricity. Screening TimesCinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee:

Citizeh Koch, Cutie and the Boxer, God Loves Uganda, and Narco Cultura are Cinereach grant recipients.

A Teacher, Blue Caprice, Concussion, Fill the Void, Fruitvale, It Felt Like Love, Mother of George, and This is Martin Bonner have received support through the Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute.

Keep an eye out for the following new films, at the festival and beyond!

A Teacher (NEXT) Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee Dir Hannah Fidell A popular young teacher in a wealthy suburban Texas high school has an affair with one of her students. Her life begins to unravel as the relationship comes to an end. Screening TimesScreening TimesScreening Times

Blue Caprice (NEXT) Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee Dir Alexandre Moors An abandoned boy is lured to America and drawn into the shadow of a dangerous father figure in this film inspired by the real life events that led to the 2002 Beltway sniper attacks. Screening Times

Citizen Koch (US Documentary) Cinereach grantee Dir Carl Deal and Tia Lessin Wisconsin — birthplace of the Republican Party, government unions, “cheeseheads” and Paul Ryan — becomes a test market for the campaign to buy Democracy, and ground zero in the battle for the future of the GOP. Wisconsin – birthplace of the Republican Party, government unions, “cheeseheads” and Paul Ryan – becomes a test market in the campaign to buy Democracy, and ground zero in the battle for the future of the GOP Screening Times Concussion (US Dramatic) Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee Dir Stacie Passon After a blow to the head, Abby decides she can’t do it anymore. Her life just can’t be only about the house, the kids and the wife. She needs more: she needs to be Eleanor. Screening Times

Cutie and the Boxer (US Documentary) Cinereach grantee Dir Zachary Heinzerling This candid New York love story explores the chaotic 40-year marriage of famed boxing painter Ushio Shinohara and his wife, Noriko. Anxious to shed her role of assistant to her overbearing husband, Noriko seeks an identity of her own. Screening Times

Fill the Void (Spotlight) Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee Dir Rama Burshtein In the Orthodox Jewish world of secular Tel Aviv, Shira, eighteen, is torn between ‘the right thing to do’ and the one dream she’s had since she was a little girl. Screening TimesCinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee:

Fruitvale (US Narrative) Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee Dir Ryan Coogler The true story of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old Bay Area resident who crosses paths with friends, enemies, family and strangers on the last day of 2008. Screening Times

God Loves Uganda (US Documentary) Cinereach grantee Dir Roger Ross Williams A powerful exploration of the evangelical campaign to infuse African culture with values imported from America’s Christian Right. The film follows American and Ugandan religious leaders fighting “sexual immorality” and missionaries trying to convince Ugandans to follow biblical law. Screening Times It Felt Like Love (NEXT) Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee Dir Eliza Hittman On the outskirts of Brooklyn, a 14-year-old girl’s sexual quest takes a dangerous turn when she pursues an older guy and tests the boundaries between obsession and love.aance Screening Times

Mother of George (US Narrative) Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee Dir Andrew Dosunmu Torn between her African culture and new life in America, a woman struggles to please her husband and give him the son that will carry on his family’s legacy. Screening Times Narco Cultura (US Documentary) Cinereach grantee Dir Shaul Schwarz An explosive look at drug cartels’ pop culture influence on both sides of the border as experienced by an LA narcocorrido singer dreaming of stardom and a Juarez crime scene investigator on the front line of Mexico’s Drug War. Screening Times This is Martin Bonner (NEXT) Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee Dir Chad Hartigan Martin Bonner has just moved to Reno for a new job in prison rehabilitation. Starting over at age 58, he struggles to adapt until an unlikely friendship with an ex-con blossoms, helping him confront the problems he left behind. Screening Times

Some of the below have already come and gone, but some are going on as we speak, or are just on the horizon. The links below will lead you to any available ticketing information.

Informant

November

AFI Fest November 1 – 8, Los Angeles, CA

Cinereach grantees: Here and There, Leviathan and Tchoupitoulas

CPH: Dox November 1 – 11, Copenhagen, Denmark

Cinereach grantees: Tchoupitoulas, Leviathan and Call Me Kuchu

Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee: The Queen of Versailles

Doc NYC November 8 – 15, New York, NY

Cinereach grantees: Code of the West, Informant and The Mosuo Sisters, with God Loves Uganda (featured as a work-in-progress)

Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee: Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry

Rome Film Festival November 9 – 17, Rome, Italy

Cinereach grantee: El Ojo Del Tiburon (The Shark’s Eye) - World Premiere

IDFA November 14 – 25 Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Cinereach grantees: Informant, Leviathan, Reportero and The World Before Her

Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee: The Queen of Versailles

IDFA Forum – Cinereach grantees: Powerless, Strong Island, White Elephants

Here and There (Aqui y Alla)

October

Sao Paulo International Film Festival October 19 – November 1, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Cinereach grantees: Bully, Here and There (Aqui y Alla) and Laura

Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee: Postcards from the Zoo

New Orleans Film Festival October 11 – 18, New Orleans, Louisiana

Cinereach grantees: Call Me Kuchu, Informant and The Patron Saints

Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantees: An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, Compliance and Keep the Lights On

Abu Dhabi Film Festival October 11 – 20, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Cinereach production: Beasts of the Southern Wild

Cinereach grantee: The World Before Her

Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee: Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry

Woodstock Film Festival October 10 – 14 Woodstock, NY

Cinereach grantee: Informant

Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantees: I Am Not a Hipster and Words of Witness

BFI London Film Festival October 10 – 21, London, England

Cinereach production: Beasts of the Southern Wild

Cinereach grantees: Here and There (Aqui y Alla) and Tchoupitoulas

Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee: Compliance, Fill the Void and Keep the Lights On

Busan International Film Festival October 4 – 13, Busan, South Korea

Cinereach production: Beasts of the Southern Wild

Cinereach grantee: Here and There (Aqui y Alla)

Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee: Postcards From the Zoo

Hamptons International Film Festival October 4 – 8, Hamptons, NY

Cinereach grantee: Call Me Kuchu

The Mosuo Sisters

September

New York Film Festival September 28 – October 14, New York, NY

Cinereach grantees: Here and There (Aqui y Alla) and Leviathan

Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantee: Fill the Void

Camden International Film Festival September 27-30, Camden, Maine

Cinereach grantees: Call Me Kuchu and Code of the West

Zurich Film Festival September 20 – 30, Zurich, Switzerland

Cinereach production: Beasts of the Southern Wild

Cinereach grantees: The Mosuo Sisters – World Premiere and The World Before Her

Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grantees: At Any Price and The Queen of Versailles

When Cinereach grantee Girl Model opened Wednesday at New York City’s IFC Center, we asked directors Ashley Sabin and David Redmon to take us through the film’s evolution, from the introduction of subject Ashley Arbaugh and her world, to the early audience reactions and the birth of an unanticipated outreach campaign.

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We began making Girl Model in the summer of 2007 when Ashley Arbaugh (the scout featured in the documentary) approached us with an idea to document the journey of young girls who “become prostitutes and fashion models or the foggy lines that exist between both.” Five years later Girl Model has been released during New York Fashion week (September 5 at the IFC Center).

Ashley Arbaugh brought us into a secretive world of fashion for unknown reasons — any guess on our part would be conjecture. Yet her ambivalence about participating in an industry where she was scouting girls as young as 13 was interesting to us as storytellers. Indeed, the story developed into a narrative about Ashley’s experiences. One of her young discoveries was 13 year-old Nadya Vall from Ob, Siberia, whom Ashley sent to Tokyo, Japan. Nadya became a focus of the story as well.

Spending four years exploring Ashley and Nadya’s world left us with a feeling of forlornness that we wanted to translate into the structure of our verité story. After we finished shooting, we set out to craft scenes that were engaging but at the same time, built toward a looming sense of dread, imitating the situation in which the subjects in Girl Model find themselves. We edited while shooting, and then hired two editors (Alan Canant and Darius Marder) to help shape the story out of 200 hours of footage.

Girl Model (photo courtesy of the filmmakers)

We started and ended Girl Model with the intention of documenting a story, not developing a thesis statement or exposing the practices of specific individuals or companies. To us, above all, our film is a verité narrative. That said, we do recognize that Girl Model stirs up audience emotions and begs questions of conscience, perhaps even more so than it would have if we had tried to argue a point using facts and stats.

Audiences members are often outraged to witness some of the more disturbing aspects of the underbelly of the modeling and fashion industries — the illegal working conditions, the manipulation and exploitation of young, malleable girls. Some want a space to participate in discussions, events or actions around these problems, and to learn how they can hold the responsible parties accountable. This inspired us to create an outlet for these reactions as we strategized the film’s distribution.

We conducted a Kickstarter fundraising campaign to raise an outreach budget, and began fueling conversations about Girl Model’s themes in social media and beyond.  Raising awareness and media literacy among young boys and girls has become a major focus of our efforts. We’re working with Rachel Blais, who is featured in the film, and Outreach Coordinator Nancy Schwartzman to get young people talking, and to help book the film in high schools. Recognizing that youth access their media online, Nancy (@fancynancynyc) and Rachel (@RachelBlais1) have developed a social media campaign to provide a platform to hear from models who have been silenced by the industry, using the Twitter hashtag #askagirlmodel.

We have also built partnerships with The Model Alliance, Equity. Inspired by the activism of Spark Summit and Girls Leadership Institute, we hope to partner with them as well

We didn’t set out to create a tool for advocacy, but it’s been highly rewarding to see Girl Model spark complex and productive dialogues as it enters the media landscape.

Follow Girl Model on Facebook and Twitter to for the latest updates.

photo by Joshua Weinstein

David Redmon (Co-Director/Producer) began his filmmaking career with the documentary Mardi Gras: Made in China.  During production, David and Ashley Sabin (Co-Director/Producer) met and continued collaborating on Kamp Katrina, Intimidad and Invisible Girlfriend.  In addition to Girl Model (which has screened at IDFA, SXSW, the Toronto International Film Festival, and other festivals around the globe), Redmon and Sabin recently completed feature documentary Downeast. In recent years, with greater aspirations for the lives of their films, the team added a distribution branch to their production company, Carnivalesque Films, and now distribute all of their own productions and works by other filmmakers.