video i Season 12
#1213 – Original Airdate: Mon, May 14 at 10pm
IT'S ALL ABOUT FAMILY
Featuring short films and documentaries highlighting non-traditional family experiences
FAMILIES THAT SKATE TOGETHER STAY TOGETHER (Dir. Ben Lazarus)
The true story of a broken family reunited by skateboarding. When Dave and Tina separated, their son Danny lived with his mom and missed the frequent skate sessions he had enjoyed with his dad. To cheer him up, Tina took Danny to his favorite skate parks and began skateboarding herself. The Kojima family is now under one roof again and has become a fixture in the close-knit community of Bay Area skaters. For more about this film and the filmmaker, go to: benlazarus.com.
Filmmaker Bio
Originally from Sunnyvale, California, Ben Lazarus now lives in Los Angeles and works as a sound designer on independent films. His animated short Love and Limbs was recently licensed to Spike and Mike's Festival of Sick and Twisted Animation. Lazarus enjoys skateboarding, playing guitar and thrift shopping in his free time.
KLAIRA'S STORY (Dirs. Klaira Markenzon & Sam Ball)
Features an interview with the filmmakers
17-year-old Klaira Markenzon lives with her grandparents in a foggy passageway between the Old World and the New. She emigrated from Ukraine to San Francisco with her extended family when she was 11-years-old. On the brink of adulthood, she interviews her grandparents and asks herself what will happen if she makes it to the other side. Klaira's Story was produced by Citizen Film for the New Jewish Filmmaking Project, a program of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. For more information about this film, please go to: citizenfilm.org.
Filmmaker Bio
Klaira Markenzon was born in Kiev. She attends the University of California, Santa Cruz where she is a double major in Jewish Studies and Mass Media.
Filmmaker Bio
Sam Ball's work has screened on public television in the US and abroad and has been showcased at prestigious independent film venues around the world including the Pompidou Center in Paris, NY MoMA and other major museums, cinematheques and film festivals. Two of his films screened at the Sundance Film Festival and two received Golden Gate Awards at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Projects under his direction have received grants from more than a dozen foundations and he has produced more than a dozen marketing and advocacy films for non-profit organizations. Sam received his MA in documentary filmmaking from Stanford University in 1995 and his BA from McGill University in Montreal, where he earned the Jewish Studies Department's Yaffee Award in 1991.
Brooklyn's Bridge to Jordan (Dir. Tina Mabry)
After losing her life partner in a car accident, a woman with a buried secret must not only fight to keep the couples' estranged teenage son from her partner's intolerant brother, but also rebuild her and the son's troubled relationship. For more information about the film, go to the filmmaker's website at: tinamabry.com.
Filmmaker Bio
Tina Mabry has always maintained a strong sense of self and an immovable determination. One month after moving to Los Angeles, Tina received her acceptance letter to the School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California. During her three years at USC, Tina developed into an innovative director and an even more skilled writer. She completed her thesis film, Brooklyn's Bridge to Jordan, which received the Jeffrey Jones Writing Award at USC in the Fall of 2004. In addition to this and to receiving the Edward Small Directing Award, a thesis film she co-produced at USC, The Slowdown, aired on Showtime's Black Filmmaker Showcase in February 2004. Brooklyn's Bridge to Jordan also aired on Showtime as part of their Black Filmmaker Showcase and was voted number one on the season finale on LOGO's The Click List 2: Best in Short Film. Recently a feature screenplay she co-wrote for But I'm a Cheerleader's director, Jamie Babbit, made it's world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival and it's US Premiere at South By Southwest Film & Music Festival in 2007 where it won the Best Feature Narrative Award.
