While “luminate” is the theme for this year’s Cinequest, a more apt theme for three filmmakers whose documentaries are being screened might be “strive.” The film and creativity festival runs March 11-23 at various downtown San Jose venues.
All three filmmakers have Bay Area ties, whether it be the subject of their documentaries or the location of their production companies. All three films are set to have their world premieres at Cinequest; one is the filmmaker’s first effort.
Two of the documentaries were shot over several years, while the bulk of the third was filmed in five days. All three focus on people trying to better themselves for the sake of their careers and/or their families.
Spirited film
The subjects of “BAR” are all pushing themselves to pass a five-day spirits education program held at the Culinary Institute of America in New York. To pass the BAR, a muddled acronym for Beverage Alcohol Resource, participants must take a series of taste tests and written exams on the history of spirits and show off their mixology skills.
Director/producer Don Hardy decided to shoot a documentary after his friend told him about meeting a Brooklyn bartender who’d been through the BAR program.
“I had no idea something like this existed for spirits,” Hardy says. “I figured the journey would be interesting, and the welcoming attitude of the more senior members of the community—I found that to be hugely compelling.”
To find his five subjects, Hardy invited about 40 of the 70 participants to Zoom chats “to get a feel for them and see who might be interested in the added pressure of a camera crew following them around.”
“Most of them were eager to have their story told,” he says. “They thought it would validate their experience.”
“From there, we were trying to get a cross-section” of participants, Hardy adds.
The five days of the shoot were long ones, with the film crew working 17-hour days to keep up with the BAR candidates.
“It was an interesting challenge to try to shoot 80% of a documentary in five days,” Hardy says. “There were moments when we had to get out of the way. But as bartenders, these people are used to working in cramped spaces.”
There’s one point in the documentary when one candidate asks that her practical exam not be filmed.
“I’ve come to really like that moment because it shows the lengths her mentors will go to to protect her,” Hardy says. “It ends up being an important moment. … The community really is there for each other.”
Hardy co-founded KTF Films in Santa Clara; the production company has since moved to Alameda. He’s had several films screened at Cinequest over the years.
“Cinequest is a meaningful festival to me,” Hardy says. “My first film premiered there 20 years ago. It’s really cool to be back with my 10th film.”
Hardy learned a bit about mixology during the “BAR” shoot.
“I definitely have a few drinks that are my go-tos now,” he says, “and I have a lot of people I can text for good recipes.”
“BAR” has its world premiere March 14 at 7:10 p.m. and a second screening on March 23 at 1:30 p.m., both at the California Theatre.
Dream job
The idea for “The Dreamers and I” was born out of director Kenji Yamamoto’s desire to cut down his commute from Marin to the various high-tech companies in the South Bay where he works as a video editor. In looking for an AirBNB closer to work, he came across the Startup Embassy, a “hacker house” in Palo Alto where people came to develop their startups.
“I discovered an amazing culture in Silicon Valley of entrepreneurs, mostly from other countries,” Yamamoto says.
When he asked them why they’d come here, they told him, “The American Dream is very much alive. There’s so much freedom here.”
Yamamoto, who makes his directorial debut with this film, says there are plenty of parallels between launching a startup and making a film. He uses an avatar in “Dreamers” to chronicle his own struggles to get the documentary made, including running out of money and alienating loved ones.
“They’re so passionate about what they’re creating that they’ll risk everything to make it,” he says of the hacker house residents. “It’s what the heart of an artist is.
“I look to them as a guide to how to be confident and successful in reaching your goal.”
Yamamoto and his wife, writer/producer Nancy Kelly, spent 10 years making the documentary, and Yamamoto stayed at the Startup Embassy on and off for a year and a half. During that time, he met more than 200 entrepreneurs. “Dreamers” follows three of them.
There are moments in “Dreamers” when Yamamoto reflects on the toll filming took on their marriage. Still, he says, he’s ready to direct again. “I caught the bug.”
The couple has made eight films together since 1980, usually with Kelly directing. “Dreamers” marks their third film in Cinequest and their first world premiere. The screening is set for March 15 at 4:40 p.m. at the Hammer Theatre Center.
A different lens
Given that Ondrea Barbe spent her childhood being filmed and photographed by her mother Bobbie Barbe, whose alcoholism led to a years-long estrangement, there’s a certain logic to her decision to make her first film a documentary about trying to reconcile.
“A big part of my life was her connection to the camera,” says Barbe, now a commercial photographer. “I definitely find joy in photography.”
As director/producer of “Constant Fleeting,” Barbe mixes clips from her mom’s home movies—some shot at the Peter Pan Motel in Santa Cruz, where she lived with her parents as a young child—with footage shot during the elder Barbe’s battle with breast cancer, from her diagnosis in 2011 to her death in 2014.
Bobbie Barbe got sober after her grandson Cory was born, and their relationship is central to the film.
“It was intended to try to capture moments with her and Cory,” says the filmmaker. “It turned into my wanting to document our final years together. It came out of a need for conversations about grief and reconciliation.
Cory “grew up during the making of the film,” she adds. “He loves that he has these moments when he was younger (on film). He doesn’t remember the tension between me and my mom.”
Given her volatile relationship with her mom, Barbe’s partner filmed a lot of the interviews for the documentary. Barbe also gave her mom a camera so she could film herself.
When she was behind the camera, Barbe says, it “was used sometimes as a protector or a witness.”
“It was also a way to cope with the enormity of what was happening,” she adds. “In a documentary, you’re there when things unfold, and you put it together later.”
In part because of their strained relationship, Barbe said the documentary came together primarily through the editing process and “definitely not during filming.”
“It took a long time to get it edited down to a story that’s bigger than my own personal story,” she adds. “I’m hoping it inspires viewers to examine their own relationships. … It addresses the complex layers of forgiveness.”
The film’s title, Barbe says, is “shorthand for the tension between permanence and impermanence.”
“’Constant Fleeting’ is a story about finding peace within ourselves,” she adds. “It highlights how our relationships with loved ones evolve even after death.”
The documentary will have its world premiere March 16 at 2 p.m. at 3Below Theaters.
For a complete festival schedule and tickets, visit Cinequest.org.
