The Story Behind "Under Jakob's Ladder" -- Part 1

Our feature film Under Jakob's Ladder is inspired by the life of a man named Jakob Seel.

Who was this man? He was born and raised in Ukraine. He witnessed the upheaval of the advent of communism, and watched as--one by one--each of his freedoms were taken away from him and his people.

Jakob's life story is representative of so many others who lived during Stalinist great purges.

This movie, in part, means to take a look at how the Soviet system impacted ordinary people, like Jakob, in the era of the 1930s and up to World War II.

Jakob's German-speaking ancestors had been among those invited to settle in the Russian territories between the mid-1700s to the early 1800s. The initial invitation came from Catherine the Great, with subsequent invitations coming from her son and grandson who ruled after her. Today, Jakob's people are known as the Germans from Russia.

One of the initial attractions for settling these lands was exemption from military service offered by Catherine the Great. However, by the time of World War I, this pledge was revoked. While certain Germans from Russia emigrated at that time out of the Russian/Ukrainian territories, Jakob's family were among those who remained. Subsequently, Jakob fought in the Russian army against the Kaiser during the first World War.

But then came the upheavals of the Russian Revolution.

Communist rule was established, and by the time Stalin came to power, life in Ukraine was drastically altered.

Jakob, a teacher/preacher in his village, was removed from his positions. All churches were shut down (many were turned into granaries). Little by little, their freedoms began to disappear...

Know Your Digital Rights

I was on another fun panel yesterday at the Woodstock Film Festival.  All of these discussions are part of the ongoing conversation on the future prospects for both Indie and Truly Free film.  There's a lot more that I can write about that panel, but one thing I felt was the filmmakers' position getting stronger.

John Sloss, the man and the legend, and Ryan Werner of IFC Films were among the panel's participants.  IFC Films is certainly the leader in terms of number of films that they are putting up on VOD, and John, among many other things,  probably sells more films to them than anyone else.  Sloss's Cinetic Digital Rights Management initiative is also probably the leading aggregator of digital rights for feature films.

This whole arena is new for everyone and it all can easily be looked at as one big experiment for the time being.  The market is being created as I type and as you read.  The model is not yet set by any means.  Yet Cinetic and IFC are arguably the market leaders of the moment.  That's why I was so heartened by what I heard them claim they were open to -- something that could truly be a great step towards creator empowerment and ultimately also towards audience access.

Neither company, to my knowledge and according to what was said on the panel, currently does anything to provide the content generator/creator/filmmaker with access to any of the data that their work generates.  I hope that's now going to change, and what was said on that panel makes me believe it could.

Matt Dentler, Cinetic's Digi-maven, has expressed that Cinetic's DRM initiative is all about transparency for the filmmaker.  John Sloss backed that on the panel by saying that he thought it made sense that future contracts include a provision mandating that buyers provide the digital data to the filmmakers.  Not that Cinetic does that yet for its clients, but it can, and as John said, it will.  Ryan Werner also replied to an earlier question that he felt that such information could be provided to the filmmakers if they asked for it (even if they did not contract for it).

Now its up to the filmmakers to demand that their lawyers craft such language.  What will that be?  What is the information we need?  And how can we make sure that we are able to share it with each other?  It would be great if an industry leader on the legal side really stepped up and showed their commitment to filmmakers' rights and drafted something that could become industry standard.  It would be great if we could link to it now!  Who's going to help?

If you are licensing your film for next to nothing, if you have decided to split your revenue with your sales agent, shouldn't you at the very least get the information on who your audience is, where they are located, when they are watching or purchasing, whatever.  If you, the filmmaker, feel forced to make this kind of deal, shouldn't you at the very least be getting the data your work generates?  As filmmakers, not only should you be asking for language from your lawyer, but demanding that your licensor, your distributor provide this.  Do it and according to the leaders on the panel yesterday, they will listen and provide.  I hope it is so.

Joan Micklin Silver on "Hester Street"

How did you find Abraham Cahan’s novella (which was the basis for the screenplay) and what attracted you to it?



JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: One of the films that I made for the educational film company was on immigration. I read just about everything I could find on immigration and one of the things that I read was the novella by Abraham Cahan called Yekl.



I was really floundering around and wanting very much to make my own films. My husband, Ray, who was a real estate developer, told me that if I could do a film that would not cost very much, that he would try to raise money from some of the investors that he'd been going to for real estate deals. And that was how we did it.



Frankly I didn't think I'd ever get to make another film. I was pretty discouraged about it all. My family were immigrants and I wanted to make a movie that would count for them.



Was the story in the public domain at that point?



JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: Yes. And that was one of its attractions.



What challenges did you face in the adaptation?



JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: Well, the story itself is more the husband's story. I think what grabbed me about it was what happened to the wife. So it was really just telling the story from the point of view that interested me. The challenge of it, of course, was to try to make it authentic.



I felt that because my father had told me so many stories about his life as an immigrant boy from Russia, I knew that language was a huge factor in getting along or not getting along. He told me stories of not quite knowing English and once leaving some money on a bus; he was a paperboy and he had made some collections and left the money by accident on the bus. He thinks people were trying to tell him and he didn't understand what they were saying. He got off the bus and then realized it -- things like that. Knowing the English language was extremely difficult.



And also both my parents were Yiddish speaking and I can remember dinners at our house with all sorts of relatives and wonderful stories being told and then punch lines coming out in Yiddish and my mother turning to us and saying, "You know, it doesn't quite translate." She would try to translate it, but never could quite do it. And I associated that language with something very rich and interesting and enjoyable.



Were you worried about breaking some of the cardinal rules of low-budget filmmaking: You don't do period pieces, you don't do something that's half in English and half in Yiddish?



JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: I didn't know enough to know that I was breaking cardinal rules and that's the truth. I had to tell this story and I had to do what I could to tell it.



Did the fact that you knew you wouldn't have much money to shoot this movie have any impact on you while you were writing the script?



JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: Constantly. I was constantly thinking, for example, about how I could do Ellis Island, things like that. It was one thing after another, just constantly trying to figure out how I could tell the story without having a budget that would have allowed me to tell the full story, where you could recreate the Lower East Side, like they did in Godfather II.



We used one street, Morton Street, and we could only shoot in one direction, because that direction faced Bleecker, where the streets formed a "T," so that you only had to create the look on Morton up toward Bleecker.



If we faced the other way, it was Seventh Avenue and obviously we couldn't close Seventh Avenue, we didn't have that ability. In Godfather II, they had street after street, traveling shots that were gorgeous. So we just did what we could and everything was written and organized with that in mind.



My own experience in writing low-budget films is that you often have to do a part of something; a part has to stand for something larger.

The Effect Of The Vanishing Film Critics

This is an earlier post from Let's Make Better Films.  I started that blog to discuss the films and filmmaking process.  Sometimes we all just feel like we want to bury our head and avoid the biz altogether.  I started TFF to help build and rebuild the infrastructure to support those better films.

We started Hammer To Nail because we found it hard to get go analysis of what Truly Free films that were out there were truly worth watching. The mainstream critics had stopped covering the smaller films.

Ad Age is now running an article on the effect of all the firings of the established critics on the specialized film business. The loss of established voices has brought a serious drop at the box office.

"It's the consistent relationship [with a critic] that gets people to go to these movies," said Mr. Bernard. "[Editors] felt they should get critics that connect to that younger audience that's getting its news online, but they're not looking at how the box office is affected when the critic changes."

Of course, the loss of these critics had no effect on the revenues of all the interesting and great films that weren't getting the theaters or coverage in the first place. For those films, just go to Hammer To Nail.

For a discussion on the state of film criticism, check out Greencine's podcast here. 

And to keep a vast and diversified culture alive, vote with your dollars, and go out to see a movie today. Seriously. We will lose it otherwise.

There's a great new program in NYC that bumps the film experience up a notch with direct contact with the filmmakers and a post screening celebration. It also confronts head-on the over emphasis the exhibition biz puts on the first weekend revenues.

Credit the IFP and Michelle Byrd with putting their money where their mouth is an truly supporting both Independent and Truly Free films with their new First Weekend series (all done without corporate backing -- c'mon you sponsors, follow suit!). Read about it here.

And guess what their inaugural film is? BALLAST! Did I tell you how much I admire this film? How great it is? How much I like it? I think I have. Go see it.

Back on the Radar

Sorry we've been off the radar for--what is it now?--something like a week and a half. So, what have we been doing?

Well, we'll let you guess. (Don't worry, it's multiple choice.) We've either been:

a) setting up and scheduling auditions
b) reading the Karl Igelsia book
c) hanging a garage door
d) recruiting people to join us on our next work day
e) writing grants
f) working on our film budget
g) being sick in bed, sapped of all energy
h) All of the above

If you picked "All of the Above", you're right and you deserve some sort of prize!

Soooo... What kind of prize are you talking about, Moon Brothers?

Well, before you get too excited about prizes, we hate to break it to you; but we're using it as a manner of speech here. In reality, we're too busy to think about prizes!

Come To Woodstock!

I am on the jury and will be be doing another panel up at the Woodstock Film Festival this weekend. I am completely impressed with the films in competition. They've done a great job curating. And they've done a great job programming too.

I am on a panel on the current state of what is still mistakingly referred to as the "Indie" film world. Woodstock's assembled a stellar and diverse group for it: John Sloss, Mark Duplass, & Ryan Werner -- all of us moderated by Variety's Dade Hayes. It is on at 2P Saturday. Here's the description:

IS IT SAFE? With the closure of many of the studio specialty divisions and the reported financial troubles of many of the independents, has “indie film distribution” come to an end, or is this just the end of the world, as we know it? What does the “falling sky” really signify for the independent film sector? Were these companies right to turn their backs or were they just spending too much? Should you make films these days without some form of distribution? And most importantly, who, what or where is the great future hope for indies (and is it all online?)?
Join this esteemed panel of experts straight from the front lines of indie distribution and learn where the light is at the end of the tunnel.

I wonder what I am going to say? Hmmmm.... We need to move the dialogue beyond my "1000 Phoenix Rising" and certainly beyond "The Sky Is Falling".

Building A Truly Free Film Culture

Thanks to all the great response I got from my Keynote Speech at Film Independent last weekend, I've started this blog to try to lay out some of the work that can be done to build the Truly Free Film Culture that I ranted about.

I will also try to cover some of the issues that are effecting the emerging new paradigm.  Let me know if you want to help out.  You know where to find me.  You can certainly start by commenting to the upcoming posts and subscribing to this blog's feed.  Stay tuned...