By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

True/False And Catapult Set 2017 “Rough Cut Retreat”

Posted Friday, May 26th, 2017 - Comments Off on True/False And Catapult Set 2017 “Rough Cut Retreat”
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[PR]  (Columbia, Missouri/San Francisco) – Catapult Film Fund and the True/False Film Fest are presenting the second year of the Rough Cut Retreat, a four-day workshop that unites filmmakers and mentors in a creative and engaged atmosphere.

Rough Cut Retreat was borne out of Catapult’s and T/F’s shared mission of supporting work whose content and aesthetics push boundaries and that provoke dynamic discussion. Rough Cut Retreat provides filmmakers with dedicated time to focus on post-production and receive invaluable feedback from other filmmakers.

“It was hugely gratifying to see the projects from last year’s retreat turn out so beautifully and  make their way into festivals,” said Lisa Chanoff, co-founder of the Catapult Film Fund. “At Catapult we love helping projects get off the ground. We are thrilled to partner again with True/False to help take films across the finish line.”

Each year, five filmmakers with in-progress projects are paired up with invited mentors to take their rough cut to a fine cut with an eye toward fall festival deadlines. Mentors are hand-picked for their editorial strength and generosity of spirit.

Selected projects include:

Amal (dir. Mohamed Siam) follows an Egyptian teenager, from the age of 14 till the age of 20 while she’s searching for her identity within a constantly changing country.

America (dir. Chase Whiteside & Erick Stoll) is about a dreamer who reunites with his brothers to take care of their 93-year old grandmother, América in southwest Mexico.

Pigeon Kings (dir. Milena Pastreich) tracks a peculiar subculture of pigeon competitions in So. Central LA presided over by the godfather Keith London.

The Punch (dir. Andre Hörmann) looks at the dangerous, volatile world of Chicago’s South Side from the point of view of two promising young boxers and their fathers who train them.

Voices of the Sea: A Cuban Odyssey (dir. Kim Hopkins) takes us into the heart of a high- stakes family drama playing out in a remote Cuban fishing village.

This year’s Rough Cut Retreat will take place July 23-27 at Gedney Farm in New Marlborough, MA deep in the Berkshire mountains.

The mentors joining the 2017 retreat are:

  • Director/producer Mark Becker, (Art & Craft, Pressure Cooker) has  co-edited Lost Boys of Sudan and Circo, about a hardscrabble traveling Mexican circus troupe.

  • Producer Amanda Branson-Gill, most recently produced Errol Morris’ The Unknown Known. She also produced Morris’ 2008 film Standard Operating Procedure.

  • Director Chris Hegedus (The War Room, Startup.com), has been making films as a director, cinematographer, and editor for four decades with her partner D.A. Pennebaker.

  • Director Pete Nicks (The Force, The Waiting Room), is a director/shooter known for his courageous cinema vérité style.

  • Editor/producer David Teague (Life Animated, Cutie and the Boxer, Freeheld) is a noted documentary film editor.

 Last year’s cohort included five projects that launched at spring festivals:  Ask the Sexpert, dir. Vaishali Sinha (Hot Docs); For Ahkeem, dir. Jeremy Levine & Landon Van Soest (Berlin, Tribeca); Distant Constellation, dir. Shevaun Mizrahi (True/False). Quest, dir. Jonathan Olshefski (Sundance); When God Sleeps, dir. Till Schauder (Tribeca).

For more information about the retreat, please visit roughcutretreat.org

True/False Film Fest will take place March 1-4, 2018 in downtown Columbia, Missouri. For more information, please visit truefalse.org.

Catapult Film Fund provides early funding and mentorship to documentary filmmakers telling powerful, artful stories. For more information, please visit catapultfilmfind.org

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

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~ David Simon