PLASTIC MAN

Janis Plotkin found her way into the independent film world through community organizing, where she saw how powerful stories on screen could be in shaping culture and preserving history. Everything changed when she attended a press screening for a feisty new idea: the first Jewish Film Festival. The experience was electric. Soon she joined founding director Deborah Kaufman to help build what became the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, a pioneering cultural event that had world-wide impact.

For more than two decades, she brought bold, high-quality international cinema to Bay Area audiences, curated lively and sometimes daring panel conversations, and helped expand the festival’s reach to 34,000 attendees. She also introduced thousands more viewers to independent Jewish cinema through programming for KQED public television.

 When she stepped away after 21 years, she carried her passion for film into new creative arenas. At the Mill Valley Film Festival, she launched Vive el Cine!, an award-winning platform for Spanish-language directors and stories. She also shared her expertise in classrooms at Stanford, UC Davis, and San Francisco State.

Plotkin later collaborated with director William Farley producing Plastic Man: The Artful Life of Jerry Ross Barrish, a documentary exploring the life and work of the sculptor and filmmaker. The film traveled to festivals and art centers across the U.S. and Germany, earning an Audience Award before airing on KQED and Israeli television.

William Farley’s features, documentaries and short films have won countless awards and have been broadcast and screened in hundreds of film festivals around the world, including Sundance, New York, Mannheim, Chicago, and Sydney Film Festivals. Farley’s two dramatic feature films: Of Men and Angels and Citizen, opened at the Sundance Film Festival. Included among Farley’s 20 films are the artist biographies:  Shadow & Light: The Life and Art of Elaine Badgley Arnoux, 2007, Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, 2007 and Darryl Henriques Is In Show Business 2006.  Other notable productions include Broke (1994 & 2004) and The Old Spaghetti Factory (2000).

FarleyFilm.com

Richard Levien co-edited the feature documentary D Tour, which won the Golden Gate award for Best Bay Area documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and appeared on the PBS series Independent Lens. Richard edited and crafted motion graphics for the short film On the Assassination of the President, which premiered at Sundance. He also edited the cult Internet hit, Store Wars, seen by 5.5 million people in its first 6 weeks of release.

As a director, Richard Levien’s Immersion, 2009, debuted at Slamdance Film Festival and also played Seattle, Sarasota, Palm Springs Shortfest, Mill Valley, Chicago International Children's and Media that Matters Film Festivals. Immersion won the "No Violence" Award at Ann Arbor film festival, and the San Francisco International Film Festival’s Golden Gate Award for Best Bay Area Short film. Richard was also awarded the prestigious Rainin Foundation screenwriting grant for his upcoming feature film.

Beth Custer is a San Francisco based composer, performer, bandleader, and the proprietor of BC Records. She composes for theatre, film, dance, television, installations and the concert stage. Beth has created scores for the contemporary chamber ensembles Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Zeitgeist, Earplay, City Winds, and Turtle Island and Kronos String Quartets; for the theatre productions of Campo Santo Theatre, Berkeley and San Diego Repertory Theatres, Magic Theatre, California Shakespeare, Overtone Industries, and Cornerstone Theatre; for the dance troupes Joe Goode Goode Performance Group, Roco Dance, Flyaway Productions, Ledoh, Harupin Ha, and Osseus Labyrinth; for the films of Cathy Lee Crane, Melinda Stone, Betsy Bayha, KQED, CBS/Film Roman, and Koohan Paik (aka Camera Obscura). Beth has created four musicals with award winning writer Octavio Solis. Her collaborative scores with inventor and MacArthur Fellow Trimpin lead her to compose Vinculum Symphony, a site-specific, large-scale work that unites chamber musicians with experimental instrument builders. She has over twenty-five recordings out with her ensembles Eighty Mile Beach, Clarinet Thing, Trance Mission, The Beth Custer Ensemble and Club Foot Orchestra. Her numerous awards include a six week artist residency in an Italian castle at Civitella Ranieri.

BethCuster.com