This video (shot by Miranda Rhyne and edited by Stephan Greil; additional editing by Nicole Woo) is the second of three with Tze, and includes advice about directing child actors on set.

Key Points from “Working with Child Actors on Set”

When working with child actors, it’s important that they trust you and feel encouraged when they do something right. At the same time, you and your crew must maintain a professional relationship to them, rather than going overboard with affection or being overly indulgent.

Keeping the relationship within these boundaries creates an environment where your child actors can feel comfortable speaking up when they aren’t happy about something, but will do so in a professional manner.

If a kid freezes up on set, there is usually a direct cause that you can attribute the behavior to, and there is often a simple solution. Giving them a choice between two options can help if they are tired or cranky, for example, offering the option of working for another hour and being done for the day, or taking a short break before continuing for a longer period of time.

Kids might assume they’ve done something wrong when the director calls cut, or calls for another take. It is important to take a moment to explain to them the reason you are cutting (microphone noise, blocking, lighting, whatever it might be).

Just like with adult actors, child actors can have trouble delivering lines when they don’t have enough context for them. It can be helpful to ask the children questions about what is happening in the scene so you can deepen their interpretation of the actions and emotions.

Dialogue written by adults can seem unnatural when coming out of a child actor’s mouth. Tze suggests including the child in the process of making subtle changes to the lines so that they are more natural.

Being open to surprises or additional layers a kids might bring to a moment can be beneficial and create a more natural experience. It also lets child actors feel like they are an integral part of the process.

Be sure that kids are comfortable enough with the story that they understand the “big picture” of the film and can deliver their lines accordingly.

When directing child actors, don’t put too much emphasis on one action. They may become overly anxious about it, or focus too much, and create an unnatural performance. Instead, give them a sequence of a few different actions so the important ones don’t get unnatural emphasis.

Always have a backup plan for how to cover an important scene or action when shooting with kids. If something is not working after multiple takes, instead of continuing to repeat it, try another tactic.

Watch more videos from inside RFF:

A Conversation with Tze Chun Part I: Casting Child Actors
A Conversation with Mike Simmonds: Working with a DP

This video (shot by Miranda Rhyne and edited by Stephan Greil, additional editing by Nicole Woo) includes some excerpts of the session during which Tze touched on the casting process.

Below we’ve also listed some key points from the video.

Key Points from “Casting Child Actors”

For a film that is highly improvisational and naturalistic, and in which a large emotional range is not required, prioritize looking for children who are outspoken and natural in front of the camera. Try asking children to play games with each other or adult actors during auditions, rather than reading from a script.

For a more tightly scripted film, and/or one that calls for a large emotional range, actors who are old enough to read from the script should do so. Look for actors who are comfortable in front of the camera and can also emote and understand the character, rather than just being good at naturalistic reactions to real situations.

Actors should audition with the most emotional scenes, to make sure the right notes can be hit. One of the largest challenges of working with children is helping them portray dramatic emotions like crying or a tantrum believably.

Make sure actors who will appear on screen together can give performances that match in style and tone, and can be cut together, so they seem to inhabit the same world. Actors should be similarly naturalistic or ‘big’ depending on the director’s needs.

In addition to auditioning acting ability, you are also looking for a child’s stamina and concentration. If they get frustrated quickly, or can’t put up with having to repeat something multiple times, they aren’t cut out for your set.

When you’re casting a kid, you’re also casting the parents. Look for parents who are going to be understanding about the process, willing to commit all the time and energy that is required, and who are on board with the project in general.

It is also advisable to be very clear and direct with parents regarding expectations and what will happen, otherwise you may lose their cooperation.

Watch more videos from inside RFF:

A Conversation with Tze Chun Part II: Working with Child Actors on Set
A Conversation with Mike Simmonds: Working with a DP

Current Cinereach interns, Laura Elliott, Kristin Esposito and I joined an audience that included the fellows, their families, friends, crews, and casts, along with Cinereach grantees, fellowship alumni, and representatives from all areas of the New York independent film community.

Philipp Engelhorn, Margaret Shafer, Courtney Hope, Gabriel Long, Reva Goldberg, Anthony Morrison, Michael Raisler, Adella Ladjevardi (Photo by Nicole Cordier)

In a packed theater at Sunshine Cinemas in the East Village, Cinereach’s Reva Goldberg and Philipp Engelhorn introduced the program, which commenced with a behind-the-scenes video. The video provided glimpses at the experience the fellows had working with their mentors, and tracked their progress through the intensive seven-month Reach Film Fellowship program. It gave the evening a warm, personal prelude (try to imagine it on the big screen):

All four short films were screened: Wild Birds by Courtney Hope, Bye by Anthony Morrison, The Drawing by Gabriel Long and Love Lockdown, by Nadia Hallgren. The films explored a diverse range of topics, from autism to incarceration, and each film was, in it’s own unique way, insightful and engaging. Following the final film, Anthony Morrison was presented with the Reach Out 2010 Award.

Anthony Morrison, Reach Award recipient, and his RFF mentor, Marilyn Agrelo (Photo by Nicole Cordier)

Audience reaction was extremely positive, and the films sparked a lively discussion among guests as they headed to Rayeula, a nearby restaurant, to toast the four fellows over tapas and sangria. For more photos from the evening, visit the Cinereach facebook page, and stay tuned for updates on where the four fellows go from here!

A still from Dena Greenbaum's '09 RFF film "Blues"

RFF ‘09 alum Dena Greenbaum’s film Blues is on the U.S. festival circuit! Here are some details on the festivals where you can catch a screening:

The film will begin its tour in Los Angeles at the 15th Annual International Family Film Festival, which takes place March 10th-14th. Blues screens on March 13th at 10am.

Following this will be the Los Angeles Women’s International Film Festival taking place March 26th – April 1st where Blues will screen Monday, March 29th at 1:30.

Then it’s on to the 11th Annual Memphis International Film and Music Festival, April 22nd – 25th.

And lastly, Blues will screen at the National Film Festival for Talented Youth in Seattle, WA  which takes place between April 29th – May 2nd. Catch the Blues screening Sunday, May 2nd at 2:30 pm.

Congrats Dena!

]]> http://www.cinereach.org/rff-alum-dena-greenbaums-blues-on-the-festival-circuit/feed 0 http://www.cinereach.org/the-story-of-a-film-title-how-gabriel-long%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9cbrothers%e2%80%9d-became-%e2%80%9cthe-drawing%e2%80%9d http://www.cinereach.org/the-story-of-a-film-title-how-gabriel-long%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9cbrothers%e2%80%9d-became-%e2%80%9cthe-drawing%e2%80%9d#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:07:42 +0000 Gabriel Long http://www.cinereach.org/?p=5853

Choosing a title for my Reach Film Fellowship short was a struggle.

The story follows two brothers as they navigate a newly complex relationship over the course of one afternoon, so naturally my first working title was Brothers. It worked fine and stated something simple and factual about the story, so it stuck. I had purchased a URL, set up a website, and begun initial promotion for the project – increasing my commitment to Brothers.

As I got into production and post and my film materialized, however, I realized I needed a new title. Brothers doesn’t evoke enough visually or emotionally in a potential viewer’s mind. Furthermore, anyone who searched for “Brothers the film” online would have to dig through dozens of results related to the recently released Jake Gyllenhaal/Toby McGuire movie of the same title to find anything about my project. A quick IMDb search immediately revealed that my film would be one of many, many films called Brothers.

So I set out to find a more evocative and unique title. My first strategy was just to think about it and wait for inspiration to strike. A week later I didn’t have any good ideas, so I decided to take a more structured approach. I made lists of possible titles, asked my cast and crew for ideas, and I re-read the script looking for moments or lines of dialogue that could yield a new name. This gave me many options, but nothing that really fit.

Finally, I sat down to discuss title options with Reva Goldberg and Margaret Shafer, who run the Reach Film Fellowship at Cinereach. As we debated various ideas, for the first time I was forced to articulate what I wanted from the title. It had to be unique, evocative, and it was also important to me that it reflect the essence of my film in a meaningful way. A baseball bat is an important object in the film, but The Bat was too literal and too plain. There’s an important scene that takes place in the dining room, but My Chair at the Table felt too forced. The Hideaway appealed to me as an option that eluded to both the boys’ emerging identity and to childhood games, but Reva pointed out that it has connotations that don’t fit the film, (“It makes me think of pirates,” is how she put it).

Ultimately, Reva suggested The Drawing and when she said it, I knew that was the title. A young boy’s drawing figures very significantly into my coming-of-age story. It felt simple and solid. It evoked a key scene and symbol without giving anything away, but also hinted at the process of self-creation, of growing up.

A scene from Gabriel Long's "The Drawing" (formerly "Brothers")

You might conclude that the lesson here is to get other people to title your film, but that’s not quite it. In order to recognize The Drawing as the right choice, I had to develop a clear idea of what I wanted it to do. Without that knowledge, I was stabbing in the dark to come up with ideas and judge suggestions from others. Only when I knew how I wanted the title to look, sound, and feel could I select it.

RFF 2010 Fellow Gabriel Long (mentored by Laurie Collyer) has done extensive work in both narrative and documentary film. Two of his documentary projects were nationally broadcast by Current TV. Swimming New York City documents a swimming race around Governor’s Island, and The Art of Sticks offers a portrait of outdoor sculptor Patrick Doherty. He has also completed seven narrative short films, most recently Adán, which follows a schoolteacher as he travels from his home in Ecuador to New York City, trying to find a friend in the wake of a school shooting. Long recently moved to New York City where he works as an assistant director, editor, and writer. Check out The Drawing blog and Facebook page to stay updated on Gabriel’s latest news.

As we enter the later stages of the Reach Film Fellowship program, I’ve been in post on my short film, Brothers, for about two months. I’ve had several people look at successive versions – including RFF mentors, advisors and Cinereach staff – and made revisions based on their input.

I had been editing the film (which I also wrote and directed) on my own and it had come a long way as I’d explored more and more options. About three weeks ago, however, I realized that I needed to partner with an editor.

I finally made the decision to work with an outside editor – not because I think I’m overly attached to specific material, but because I’m so intimately familiar with each shot and scene, and with the overall story. I’m so close to the project it’s hard for me to anticipate how an audience member watching it for the first time might perceive it and to decide what information they need to have, and when. This realization came primarily out of feedback sessions, where I began to become aware of the disconnect between what I thought certain scenes or shots conveyed and what viewers perceived.

For example, in the opening scene, Nathan, the older of the two brothers featured in my film, comes into the room and tries to get a book away from his younger brother, Joe. The film revolves around the relationship of these two boys as they come into their own under the shadow of a hot-tempered father. Joe has hidden something inside the book that may alienate his brother – his only ally in the family – and Joe needs to appear very scared of being found out in that scene in order to lay the groundwork for the remainder of the story.

A friend watched an early cut and responded to the first scene by saying, “One brother wants to get a book away from the other one and then they talk about football, so what?” To me there was a strong sense of foreboding in the scene but my friend’s reaction helped me realize that it was only because I knew what was going to happen later. I needed to do more to ensure the audience sensed what I wanted them too, without the benefit of the additional context I had.

I went back and re-edited the scene to better highlight the moments where the younger actor looked frightened, and I was also more forceful with the editing of the scene in general. At the moment when Joe hears Nathan coming into the room, for example, I cut from a medium shot of Joe to a close up of his face. With these techniques I was able to create the tense tone I wanted.

There were many similar examples where I found my knowledge of the film interfering with my ability to see it as an audience member would. While I could have continued the editing process by going through the cycle of getting feedback and re-editing as many times as needed, now that I’m working with Editor Cedar Daniels (The Third Wave), I can shortcut the cycle. In effect, he is a filmmaking-savvy audience member capable of correcting the problems I can’t see, in addition to his technical skill as an editor. Not only will editing move faster, but I’ll end up with a better, more polished film.

RFF 2010 Fellow Gabriel Long (mentored by Laurie Collyer) has done extensive work in both narrative and documentary film. Two of his documentary projects were nationally broadcast by Current TV. Swimming New York City documents a swimming race around Governor’s Island, and The Art of Sticks offers a portrait of outdoor sculptor Patrick Doherty. He has also completed seven narrative short films, most recently Adán, which follows a schoolteacher as he travels from his home in Ecuador to New York City, trying to find a friend in the wake of a school shooting. Long recently moved to New York City where he works as an assistant director, editor, and writer. Check out the Brothers blog, and stay current via Facebook and Twitter.

A post by Gabriel Long

A few weekends ago I filmed my Reach Film Fellowship film, Brothers, over two days at my family’s summer cabin in Eastern Pennsylvania. Before getting into the details of how it went and what lessons I learned, I have to acknowledge the amazing patience and dedication of my cast and crew. Every person on set was very professional and focused on the goal of making the best movie possible. I can take a little bit of credit for assembling a team of people who I thought would work well together, but in reality, I also got lucky. Without further ado, a few lessons from the field:

Location Selection

Visually, my family’s cabin was the perfect setting for my film. I needed a rural setting to fit the story, and it had to be a place where I could construct a sense of claustrophobia indoors balanced with a sense of freedom outdoors.

There were clear disadvantages to using this location. We were shooting in November and the cabin has no insulation or running water in the winter.  Furthermore, shooting so far from the city meant that we needed to organize transportation, lodging, and plenty of food for everyone, and there woulnd’t be a chance to get pickups if anything went wrong.

The wooded setting of Gabriel Long's "Brothers" at dusk

Ultimately, though, the positives outweighed the negatives and we were very happy with the choice we made. Because the place belongs to my family, the price was right (free!), and I was able to give my production designer Yvette Granata and art director Brittin Richter a great deal of freedom. When we needed to cover up the outside of the screened-in porch with plastic to keep the set pieces from getting rained on, for example, I knew it was fine to use tacks to hold up the plastic and didn’t have to worry that we were making little holes in the outside of someone else’s house.

Storyboarding Helps (for me, anyway).

I’ve heard a lot of advice on both sides about storyboarding. Some people seem to think it’s the only way to plan a film and other people think it’s a total waste of time. I’m not sure why it’s a contentious topic, but I can say that storyboarding was tremendously helpful to me. The little pictures I draw would probably horrify a real storyboard artist, but I drew out every shot in the movie, and it helped me communicate exactly what I was imagining for the framing of each shot.

Every time we were switching setups, the easiest way for me to communicate with my cinematographer, Ben Conley, was with my storyboards. Rather than going through a long descriptive list, (“Well the frame’s around here, maybe use a 50mm lens, get a piece of that actor’s shoulder, probably eye level…” etc.), I could just show him the image and immediately he’d know what I wanted. From that initial frame we’d shift the camera to create the best shot we could, but it gave us a great starting point. Similarly, when I was scheduling before-hand with my AD and we were deciding which shots were must-haves, it was a lot easier to look at my little pictures than to explain the function of each shot.

Organization and Scheduling

Our schedule was admittedly a little nuts. We were shooting a 9-page script in two days with no extra days for pickups. Everything was shot in one location with only three actors, which kept the scope relatively manageable, but 4.5 pages per day is an ambitious goal regardless.

In advance of the shoot, I worked with Ben and my AD Nicole Karczewski to map out our shooting schedule as carefully as possible. Guiding all our decisions was the fact that I wanted to shoot in sequence. I felt it would help my two main actors, both of whom were young boys, understand the overall arc of the film as we progressed. We were able to schedule our shoot in order with the exception of one scene that comes towards the end of the film but had to be captured during our first and only night shoot on day 1.

A page of the "Brothers" shot list

For a script breakdown, I shot-listed and storyboarded (as mentioned above) the film with Ben, and noted on the script how I would cover each scene. It was a very low-budget system of organization, but it was simple, straightforward, and free. On a larger-scale movie it wouldn’t have been sufficient, but it worked well for the needs of this project. We also had the luxury of knowing that unlike on a large-scale shoot, communicating critical schedule information to cast and crew and coralling everyone was going to be simple. We were all staying together (in two nearby cabins that are winterized), eating meals together, and traveling to and from set together.

As we finalized our schedule, we kept in mind that we’d have to make changes to it on-the-fly when challenges arose. We identified which scenes would be the most challenging to capture well – especially those containing shots of complex actions and scenes that were dialogue-heavy. We built in extra time for those and also decided on streamlined approaches for achieving them.

This planning proved infinitely useful on set. For example, in one shot, one of the characters is swinging a baseball bat and accidentally breaks a painting. This was complicated from both a staging and prop perspective and I wanted to make sure that the effect of the moment was sufficiently dramatic. I had anticipated that getting the glass on the painting to shatter properly might be challenging, and it was. My actor is only 10 and the bat was a bit big for him, so he had trouble hitting the painting hard enough to really shatter the glass. Fortunately I had a backup plan. I covered the scene in a medium shot to capture the actor’s action up until the moment the bat hits the painting, but to capture the impact, I had the AD swing the bat and covered it with a close-up of the painting. This produced the dramatic effect I was looking for and we didn’t lose time having our actor keep repeating the action to get it just right.

There was no comparable back-up plan for the dialogue-heavy scenes. I simply had to get the right performances out of the actors. However, because Nicole and I were clear about where we needed to be in our schedule at any given point during the day, and Ben and I had discussed how we were covering each scene and why, if we started to run late I would know it right away and could start figuring out which shots to cut or combine. On the afternoon of the last day we were running behind, and I had planned to cover the aftermath of the painting breaking with three shots: a wide two-shot and close-ups of each actor. I discussed the remainging shots with Ben and Nicole, and we decided we could afford to cut one of the close-ups and get what we needed from the wide and the second close-up. I got what I needed from those two shots, and we were able to save 15 minutes by eliminating the third set-up.

Feeding People Well

Because of how much we were shooting and the small size of the crew, I was asking a lot of everyone in terms of endurance. The shoot was especially difficult because we were staying at the location, so no one got to go home at the end of day. I got a local chef to cater our meals and provide snacks and he did a really terrific job. The food was excellent and it made an enormous difference in terms of keeping people upbeat and energized.

Including Others in Decision-Making

As a director, it’s easy to make all the decisions yourself. It’s important to have a firm hand, and if you’re telling people exactly what you want, chances are they will give it to you. The risk is that if you give off the impression that you’re not interested in considering other viewpoints, then no one will offer any, and you will miss out on potentially great advice.

Gabriel Long and Gaffer Jesse Skough tweak their lighting setup

On the first day of shooting I was having trouble getting the performance I wanted from one of the actors. I really wanted him to portray a strong sense of fear throughout a particular interaction with the actor playing his brother. While we were changing setups from a wide shot to a close-up, my cinematographer quietly suggested that maybe I should try taking the place of the brother, off camera, and reading the brother’s lines. It was a great piece of advice. Reading with the actor gave me a much more direct connection with him and allowed the two of us to work together toward the performance I was looking for.

The Director Pitches In

On a low-budget project, the director is really the sole leader on set. He or she is often the writer, almost always a producer, and has the most to gain from the success of the project. A good producer or AD can help keep things moving, but in my experience the efficiency of a crew is directly related to how hard the director is working. Chances are that most people on set are getting paid little or nothing and many are probably helping out as a favor to the director, so it’s critical that he or she maintain a high level of energy and be willing to help out with whatever needs to be done. This may very well include PA-type work such as carrying set pieces or setting out food. If the director demonstrates a willingness to do whatever it takes to keep the production on schedule, the rest of the crew will generally follow that lead regardless of their experience level or how much they are getting paid. Conversely, a director who thinks it’s below him or her to act like a PA when that’s what’s needed on set is unlikely to have a dedicated and hard-working crew.

RFF 2010 Fellow Gabriel Long (mentored by Laurie Collyer) has done extensive work in both narrative and documentary film. Two of his documentary projects were nationally broadcast by Current TV. Swimming New York City documents a swimming race around Governor’s Island, and The Art of Sticks offers a portrait of outdoor sculptor Patrick Doherty. He has also completed seven narrative short films, most recently Adán, which follows a schoolteacher as he travels from his home in Ecuador to New York City, trying to find a friend in the wake of a school shooting. Long recently moved to New York City where he works as an assistant director, editor, and writer. Check out the film’s blog, and stay updated on the film on Facebook, and Twitter!

A post by Anthony Morrison

Three feet tall and rising; a classroom of two and three year olds is buzzing. The New York Child Resource Centers in the south Bronx and Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn offer early intervention services for children diagnosed on the autism spectrum. I visited the school once in March, then again in May, meeting with the owners and principals, couple Michelle and Dr. Fred Weinberg. Together we brainstormed potential stories for Bye, the documentary that would eventually become my entry into Cinereach’s Reach Film Fellowship. Michelle joked there were a million stories within the classroom.

In those two short months separating our visits, there was visible development and learning; kids now saying their first words, some transitioning out of special education into traditional kindergarten classrooms. In October, as I returned to the school, I struggled to choose one perspective as my focus for the film: whose angle on this story provides the best frame? There are Principals Michelle and Fred, there are the therapists who guide the students, there are the kids themselves (some of whom are recently diagnosed and are new to the classroom). How do I decide which will work best within the time constraints of a 5-10 minute piece? I know I can’t follow them all.

In my last short doc, specificity of perspective was a problem. I was lucky enough to travel to South Africa and co-direct a documentary about the role of protest music in the current struggle against HIV. We shot for forty-one days, collecting over one-hundred and fifty hours of footage. While in production, these numbers were confidence boosters. We followed fifteen different characters but only for three days each. A part of me felt that there must be something buried within that large amount of footage that would give us a compelling narrative – each of the MiniDV tapes like little bricks in a foundation. I found out in the editing room, however, that too much footage, covering too much ground, can sink a project. The overwhelming weight of hundreds of tapes made a final cut seem impossible. Our content was extensive, but didn’t go quite deep enough into any one storyline or character to build the kind of story I had hoped for.

Through the Reach Fellowship I was lucky enough to be matched with Mad Hot Ballroom Director Marilyn Agrelo (my mentor) and Yoni Brook (consulting producer of RFF and a Cinereach grantee for his films Bronx Princess and A Son’s Sacrifice). These two have helped me narrow my focus by challenging me to write a defining statement for the film; part artist statement, part hypothesis. This statement should guide my focus as I pick and pursue an angle into the world I have chosen to tell a story about. I made more visits to both centers and spent time observing therapy in action – wrestling all along to find a simple phrase or question that could guide my efforts to capture the action. My first attempts were oversimplifications: Was this a drama about the intersection of poverty and autism? Was this a political story about families fighting for educational rights for kids on the spectrum? Although valid questions, they are very broad, too much for a ten minute cut. I could already see the stacks of MiniDV tapes piling up.

Part of the Reach Fellowship includes meetings with advisors from different facets of the film business and getting their perspectives. One evening, after I had spent a day at the school, still unsure of who my main characters were, all of the fellows met with Cinematographer Michael Simmonds at the Cinereach offices. One of his main points of advice was to emphasize the importance of specificity, being economical with our choice of shots when covering a scene. He explained how simple, specific shots expressing simple ideas are the best building blocks for communicating larger, very complex ideas. (I’m butchering this, but he used the example of communicating a story about a baker’s wife cheating on her husband. To convey it, all you need is 1) shot of bed rocking 2) shot of waiting butcher 3) shot of wife, meeting husband, disheveled clothes.)

Michael Simmonds advises the RFF Fellows on Cinematography

During our conversation with Mike, I began thinking about what types of situations would allow me to collect the simple building blocks of my story. What was the most basic and most interesting thing I could capture that would communicate a compelling, larger idea – one that reflected why I was drawn to this subject to begin with. It then struck me that the purest and most essential moments I could capture would be those of daily learning and social interaction between the kids during their first introduction to the school environment.

For the autism populations in Brooklyn and the Bronx who are so scattered and sometimes isolated by stigma or because they are undiagnosed, this classroom serves as a rare chance to interact with peers. This is one of the most essential things they gain from being at the schools, and is also a human and relatable need audiences will immediately identify with.

This guided me towards my first formal attempt at a defining statement: These kids deserve the same chance at being in a classroom as everyone else. Scenes that show that can be the building blocks of my film. The majority of my footage for the doc should come from material captured within the classroom and show how the rare, early intervention services Michelle and Fred’s unique schools provide are life changing for these students.

Now days away from starting principal photography, I feel armed with my defining statement. The process of struggling to define it is extremely helpful in establishing a structure and distinguishing the excellent scenes from the great. The statement reminds me what is at the core of this story, keeping me specific about what scenes we shoot, but at the same time open to surprises. Coming up soon, our first test shoot. My DP, Ivaylo Getov, and my sound mixer, Shawn Axman, will do a two-day trial shoot in the classroom to test our setups, then my editor Andrew Siwoff begins cutting. In our first sequence, we will document the arrival of a new student and the class’ reaction.

2010 RFF Fellow Anthony Morrison (mentored by Marilyn Agrelo) studied film at NYU. In 2006 he co-directed Body Soldiers, a documentary about the role of protest music in fighting HIV in South Africa, winner of a production grant from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Recently, he worked as a researcher for This Is Not A Robbery, by Andrea Lauren Productions, which premiered at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. In his RFF Film, Bye, a class of two-year-olds  faces opportunities and challenges at a school for previously undocumented autistic kids.

Tuesday, Oct. 6th: Center for American Progress, Washington, DC

Followed by a discussion with filmmakers Nicholas Bruckman and Jesse Thomas with Angela Kelley, Vice President for Immigration Policy and Advocacy at CAP . Click here to RSVP

Friday, Oct. 9th: NYU Vanderbilt Hall, New York, NY

Followed by a discussion with filmmaker Nicholas Bruckman and Muzzafar Christi, Director of the Migration Policy Institute at NYU School of Law. Click here to RSVP

For more information on LA AMERICANA’s public screenings this month, click here.