Movies under the stars, Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema, Sept. 2010

Had a very fun and relaxed screening last night that was virtually in my backyard, at the Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema festival. This is actually the second time The Oak Park Story has screened at BHOC. Last year we were part of a works-in-progress screening in Four-Star Video’s back space. That screening was most memorable for one of our two audio tracks dropping out. At several points in the show I had to narrate the dialogue, benshi-style, when the soundtrack went mysteriously silent. That’ll teach me for not checking my show dub before trying to screen it.

Anyways, last night’s event went much more smoothly, and it was nice to see the movie again on the big screen after several much more intimate shows. BHOC set up a giant outdoor screen on the leeward side of Bernal Hill, just around the corner from the blackberry patch, and folks brought chairs, blankets, and cushions to sit in the cool night air watching movies by local filmmakers.

I’ve always loved outdoor screenings–they take me back to my childhood watching Old Yeller in my pajamas with my family at the local drive-in (or later, in my wasted youth, sneaking my posse into the Coliseum Drive-in in the trunk of a friend’s car to see Car Wash).

We showed The Oak Park Story a few months ago at the East Bay Bike Coalition’s Bike-In Film Festival in Oakland and that was also quite fun, with the hipster Oaktown audience cruising up after nightfall on their fixies. Last night’s show on Bernal Hill was equally enjoyable. It was great to see our movie as well as several other short docs (including Theo Rigby ‘s excellent Sin Pais) with the stars sparkling above and the San Francisco skyline glittering in the distance. A bunch of my friends showed up to watch as well and we brought a big bag of home-popped popcorn to share. Thanks to BHOC for giving us the chance to sit outside with our homies and watch the movie al fresco in the moonlight.

The Oak Park Story raffle swag, Cal State Long Beach, April 2010

I’m here at the San Francisco airport for the sixth time in about six weeks for the last leg of our first mini-tour of The Oak Park Story. Since our premiere on Mar. 14 I’ve been to Los Angeles four times as well as Chicago and Austin (although the film didn’t screen there), traveling pretty much every weekend. So I’ve become very familiar with SFO and the Southwest Airlines terminal. I think I’ve been here at Gate 25 at least three times. Russell also made a driving trip to Santa Barbara last weekend after flying in from Chicago—he’s also going to Seattle on May 12 and I’m going to UC Santa Cruz May 10.

So it’s been a whirlwind tour, especially since both Russell and I are sandwiching it in between teaching full time at San Francisco State.  When I get back from LA early Tuesday morning I’m going straight to school to teach until 7p that night. Since we’ve been visiting a lot of colleges we can only travel during the school year, hence our maniacal schedule.

Tasty vittles, McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, April 2010

Aside from having to navigate the Los Angeles freeway system with only an iPhone GPS to guide us, it’s been a pretty fun time. We’ve been to schools ranging from cute little Occidental College, population 1,800 (and President Obama’s alma mater), to huge schools like Northwestern and USC, where all the students ride beautiful vintage-style bikes around the massive campus.  At Cal State Long Beach the Chi Delta Theta sorority featured The Oak Park Story as the headliner of their film festival and raffled off Oak Park posters autographed by us, which was our first and possibly last, modest taste of celebrity. At the McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago we had the best Indian soul food I’ve ever tasted, with saag paneer, chicken masala, cornbread, fried chicken and collard greens.

So I’m headed down to LA one more time, to talk at Fullerton College (thanks, Larry!) and then to show the movie at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. I’ve got my mealtimes booked with visits with old friends and I’m seeing a few other shows at the festival so it should be fun. It’s awesome to have the chance to screen the film after working on it for so long and the response has been positive and enthusiastic. But I’ll be glad to hang up my spurs and to stay put for a while this summer. Unless, of course, one of the festivals in New York or Denver or Hawaii decides to give us a show, in which case I’ll be visiting Gate 25 again.

Mon. March 29, 7p: Occidental College, Fowler 302, Los Angeles

Thur. Ap. 15, 7p: Cal State Long Beach, Beach Auditorium, University Student Union. Sponsored by Chi Delta Theta sorority

Fri. Ap. 16, 5.30p: San Francisco State University, Fine Arts 101 (Coppola Theater). Sponsored by Asian American Studies Department, SFSU.

Thur. Ap. 22, 7.30p: McCormick Theological Seminary, Common Room, 5460 S. University Ave, Chicago, IL

Mon. May 3, 9.15p: Los Angeles Asian Pacific American Film Festival, Aratani Japan American Theater, 244 South San Pedro Street,
Los Angeles

Mon. May 10, 1p: University of California, Santa Cruz, Communications Bldg. 150. Sponsored by Film & Digital Media Department and Porter College

Wed., May 12, 8:15p: Seattle Chinese Alliance Church, 2803 South Orcas Street, Seattle, WA 98108

Th, May 13, 1pm at Seattle Pacific University, Demaray 150, Seattle, WA

Thur. May 20, 9.3op: Bike-In Movie Festival, Swan’s Market, 538 Ninth Street,Oakland CA

Sat. May 22, 8.30p: Other Cinema, 992 Valencia Street, San Francisco

Will work for tickets, Pahole & Rj, SFIAAFF

Hey! We just had our world premiere of The Oak Park Story last Sunday & it was awesome. Due to my co-director Russell Jeung diligent efforts as well as his huge network of friends, the house was full last Sunday for our first show and nearly full the next night for our second one. Since I hadn’t seen the movie on a screen bigger than my desktop and I hadn’t yet watched it in all of its color-corrected and sound-mixed glory I was a little bit nervous and excited when the lights went down on Sunday. But as soon as the movie started & the title sequence started to roll I relaxed and enjoyed the experience of seeing our movie on the big screen for the first time.
After the show ended we were able to thank our many supporters who were attendance, including Frances Phillips from the Creative Work Fund, who gave us our seed grant back in 2005, several of the people who appeared in the movie, our composer and music supervisor Camilo Landau, and Lorraine Dong, chair of our department, Asian American Studies, at San Francisco State.

Good times, The Oak Park Story premiere reception, Mar. 14, 2010. photo: Kathy Ma

We then repaired to the reception, catered by some of the Oak Park ladies, with indescribably delicious treats including tamales with green sauce, potato and cheese flautas, spring rolls, and beef skewers. Since I had been a tad too keyed up to eat properly before the show I scarfed down quite a few of these goodies, although there was plenty for everyone with some to take home for later (which I did).

We also debuted our brand new Oak Park tshirts and hoodies, designed by the intrepid Nina Chan. These were hot sellers and we’ve already sold more than half of our stock, especially the excellent hoodies, which are the bee’s knees, imho.

We’re on a whirlwind tour with the movie for the next few weeks, so keep an eye out here and on our website for updated details on the dates and locations of our next screenings. We’ll be at several colleges in Southern California as well as at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific American Film Festival on May 3, and we’ll have hoodies and tshirts for sale, as well as DVDs of the movie. We’d be happy to visit your campus or film festival as well so if you want us to stop by, just ask.

After more than four years of work on this flick it’s great to finally finish up and start showing it around—hope to be coming to your local film festival, college or community group soon!

Ravi Chandra writes on the AAIFF blog: “Short documentaries that are in themselves worth the price of admission– Valerie Soe’s OAK PARK STORY tells us of the struggle of Cambodian and Latino tenants against their difficult landlord. It harks back to Curtis Choy’s FALL OF THE I-HOTEL but with a more positive outcome. I was absolutely charmed by this short film; taken with their respective main features, they will leave you with a treasure of sweet memories yourself.”

Valerie Soe with one of many rough cut versions of The Oak Park Story

Here’s a little article from the March/April issue of CineSource Magazine written by Soumyaa Kapil Behrens, documentary filmmaker and all-around cool person, about work-in-progress screenings and how they benefit the filmmaking process. Soumyaa interviewed me for the article and shot some fun pictures, including the one in the article.

As stated in the article, the work-in-progress screenings we had for The Oak Park Story were invaluable to our creative process. Making a movie as complicated as this one is a daunting task and it’s easy to lose sight of good and bad and what works and what doesn’t when you’re head-down in 80 hours of interview footage in three languages.

Anyways, have a look–it’s a quick five minutes. The other content on CAAM’s channel is fun, too, and I’m sure they’ll have more groovy stuff as the festival draws near.

Bowling, Oak Park courtyard, The Oak Park Story, 2010

Here’s a nice little blurb about The Oak Park Story from Hypen magazine’s online publication. The world premiere will be on Sunday, Mar. 14 at 2p at the Sundance Kabuki Cinema in San Francisco, as part of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Tickets are now available so get ‘em while they’re hot. The Oak Park Story precedes Curtis Choy’s new documentary about Pinoy poet Al Robles, Manilatown Is In The Heart. See you there!

Camilo Landau, composer and music supervisor, The Oak Park Story

One thing that I’ve always enjoyed about moviemaking is incorporating pictures with music and this was especially true for The Oak Park Story. Because of its story about Latino and Cambodian tenants banding together, I was able to include tunes by both Asian American and Latino artists, including some homegrown Oakland musicians.

I was ably aided by the film’s music supervisor and composer Camilo Landau, who was a student of mine when I taught a high school film class at the School of the Arts (SOTA) in San Francisco back in the nineties. I’d asked for music recs from my friend and fellow filmmaker Gustavo Vasquez and he mentioned Camilo, who’d scored Gustavo’s most recent movie, Que Viva La Lucha (Wrestling in Tijuana). Of course I remembered Camilo from SOTA and was happy to find that he’d grown up to become a successful musician and composer, with his combo Carne Cruda as well as as a session player for many local recordings. Camilo gave me a big stack of CDs and steered me toward appropriate tunes for the film. An added bonus was that Camilo now lives in Oakland and was able to suggest several other Oakland-based musicians to consider. Of the multitude of tracks he suggested I picked songs from Carne Cruda (Anarcho-Syndicalism) and Fuga (Boulevard Internacional), as well as some of Camilo’s own original compositions, all of which appear on The Oak Park Story’s soundtrack.

King of Khmer rap Prach

Through other acquaintances I was able to get in touch with Long Beach-based Cambodian American rapper Prach, who sent me some tracks to preview from his latest CD release. Prach’s an excellent composer and producer as well as an outstanding rapper and I was able to include two of his songs in the Oak Park soundtrack. I also downloaded Ulysses, the latest release from San Francisco folk-rocker Goh Nakamura, and from that I picked Telemachus, an instrumental track that ended up on the soundtrack.

I had a great time choosing the songs for the movie and I think they really enhance the film and make it pop. Because the subject matter was so intercultural it gave me a huge range of music to select from–it was also fun trying to find tunes that were Oakland-centric, too, and that reflected community activism and the film’s theme of empowerment and self-determination. Most of all I just liked working on the interplay between sound and image, which to me is one of the most subtle and pleasurable aspects of the filmmaking process.