Che behind the camera
Johnny St. Ours returns with his guerrilla film crew
Local “guerrilla” filmmaker Johnny St. Ours will soon be hosting the second summer session of his Guerrilla Film Unit Self-Taught Boot Camp. Anyone who is interested can show up at his studio behind Spencer’s 206 on South Street, shoot a movie on a chosen topic and play it to the group two weeks later. St. Ours, who can be reached at ironcaveartisans@yahoo.com, took a moment to field some questions from C-VILLE on the guerrilla aesthetic.
C-VILLE: What’s your idea of a perfect guerrilla film?
St. Ours: I think my favorite “guerrilla” film is a Turkish one by the name of Yol, which I seem to remember translates into “the journey of life.” It was made by an escaped Turkish political prisoner who, after immigrating to France, stole himself back into Turkey to shoot this film where it was meant to take place. If you look while watching you will see that the people in the film are not paid extras, but real live Turkish people. I would assume the same is true of the police and soldiers in some of the scenes. A dangerous film to make, admirable also because of its reality in the heart of the filmmaker.
What’s the biggest challenge posed by working with such constraints?
People. Filmmaking is not something you do by yourself in a darkroom or woodshop, you need a team of competent and energetic folks you can trust and rely on. Not always an easy thing to find. That is a big reason for the Boot Camp’s origin—I hope that through the common experience of trying to get a movie done, some of us Charlottesvillians will start helping each other out in useful ways.
Do you see yourself following in a tradition established by any other filmmaker?
I’m not the most literate filmmaker, so I don’t know specifics, but if this ship went down, I’d jump in the lifeboat with the early pioneers of film, folks like Sergei Eisenstein, who overcame society’s pessimism with a lot of thought and effort, not unearthly budgets and technological gadgetry.
What kind of people show up to a guerrilla film session?
Losers, masochists, bored people, and people stuck in the middle of going somewhere else for the most part. The thing we all got in common: We feel like we got a story to tell, feel it strong enough to hurt ourselves getting it out.
Why make movies?
Back in the “old days,” maybe folks gathered around the campfire at night and exchanged songs, stories. Well, since people started listening to the radio more than their fellow, the folk tale has been on the decline. Now I don’t usually go singing the praises of some new tech or economic scene, but with cameras doing what they’re doing and costing what they’re costing, we have a window here, a time that maybe we can make something that people will listen to again. It ain’t gonna last forever, especially if we drown the art house theaters in crap, so we better get good and quick as we can, and by our own development. There are no teachers at the GFU, no film studies programs, it is self-taught—come there and learn without giving up your folk. But if you start singing Hollywood’s song on my roof, I hope I won’t be the only one to tell you how much the world needs that breed of bullshit.
But really, I’d have an awful good time saying it, so come on down, and tell me what you think of mine. ’Cause if any of these films were really good, you wouldn’t see them here.—Paul Henderson
City goes Prospecting
“Criminal” neighborhood is up for grabs
Clutching a copy of City Council’s May 5 agenda, John Kiess rapped on the door of a duplex on the 700 block of Prospect Avenue on Saturday, May 3. The young, white, Americorps volunteer glanced nervously at Eddie Howard, the lifelong Prospect resident accompanying him through the neighborhood.
“It’s all you,” says Howard. “You got the information.”
“Yeah,” says Kiess, smiling. “But you got the word.”
From inside, a voice hollers for the visitors to come in. Class pictures of children adorn the living room walls, and in the kitchen three men and a woman are sitting around a kitchen table. Above the din of party music, Kiess explains to the residents how City Council wants to buy up the rental properties on that stretch of Prospect Avenue, to fix them and resell for owner-occupants. He reads from City Planner Satyendra Huja’s report to Council, which claims “there have been a lot of public safety problems in the neighborhood. Part of the problem arises from renters who are involved in criminal activity…This is especially a problem in the 700 block….”
“You might be getting a 30-day notice,” Howard further explains to the incredulous renters. “We’re trying to tell you what’s going on. The City is blaming you for the problems, then they’re trying to tell you what to do. We know how that goes,” he says, and his audience nods in agreement.
The news doesn’t play well with the people around the kitchen table, who ask that their names not be used for this article. The woman says she has rented at this address for 11 years. She’s especially incensed by the City’s implication that she and other renters are to blame for Prospect’s bad reputation. She says the young people who hang out and deal drugs in front of her house don’t live on Prospect.
“I see them park their cars, get out and just stand around,” she says. “None of them live here. The police know that. I’m always calling the police telling them to get out here and take care of this, and now the City wants to put it back on me?”
Although the City didn’t inform Prospect residents that Council would be discussing the proposal, housing activists canvassed Prospect residents during the preceding weekend to try to get them to turn out for Council’s May 5 meeting. Much of that evening’s public comment period was eaten up, however, by Mayoral proclamations honoring the Public Works Snow Crew, Water Conservation Month, an RWSA employee, Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Month and Business Appreciation Week.
During the public comment period, Watson Morris, who owns several duplexes on Prospect that have been targeted by the City, said he has good tenants and doesn’t want to sell his property. Later, Huja said no one would be forced to sell.
Prospect resident Yvonne Shackleford was a teenager in the late 1960s, when Council undertook its first “redevelopment” project and bulldozed the black neighborhood known as Vinegar Hill to make room for commercial development.
“Once again, someone in strategic planning has decided that it is O.K. to uproot yet another black community,” she told Council. “If this is so important, why were the residents and owners not notified that this was being discussed?”
Huja says he couldn’t approach residents until Council approved the plan, which it did unanimously on May 5. He says current renters may apply to purchase the homes from the Piedmont Housing Alliance.
The City will invest $100,000 in the nearly $800,000 project, with most of the money to be lent by as-yet-unspecified area banks. In the past, according to PHA director Stu Armstrong, the Alliance has worked with “almost all the banks in town.” Huja says a private donor “with an interest in the project” has contributed $150,000.
Developer Keith Woodard, who denies being the private donor in question, owns about 18 acres between Prospect and Fifth Street, where he plans to build about 300 new housing units mixed with office space and some retail. Before he starts building, however, he’s “waiting for a few things to happen,” he says, like “sidewalks, better lighting and more concern for the neighborhood.”––John Borgmeyer
Power plant to the people
Unions and candidates protest Tenaska
Although it has yet to create one watt of energy, Fluvanna’s Tenaska Power Station continues to generate controversy. After weathering packed-auditorium protests, candlelight vigils and two lawsuits, the natural gas plant, which broke ground last year, has now run afoul of the Richmond Building and Construction Trades Council.
Rallying outside the Pantops Liberty gas station on Tuesday, May 6, union organizers and laborers protested the fact that Tenaska’s construction contractor, Gilbert Southern, is hiring primarily transient, out-of-state workers. Allegedly, only 20 percent of workers on site are Virginians.
“It’s kind of a no-brainer,” said Charlottesville City Councilor Meredith Richards, who is rumored to be considering a second run for Congress and who spoke at the rally. “Tenaska sold this project based on the fact that it’s supposed to be good for the economy… . Well, this is the first chance they’ve had to make good on their promise, and they are blowing it.”
Tenaska literature claims the company “works with its general contractor to assure that as many job hires as possible are qualified local people… . We want to be a part of the community, and there is no better way than to have people with local roots working for us.” Virginia workers are evidently still waiting.
“I’ve been out of work for a year, getting ready to lose my home, unemployment has run out, raising my grandkids,” says a Fluvanna welder. “I need a job bad. They won’t even consider me.” He shakes his head. “I see cars going to the doggone plant every day and no Virginia tags on them. It gets under your skin…I don’t understand it.” Nor do most of those concerned.
Rally organizers insist it’s not about unions. “It’s a Virginia thing,” says Benny Sowers, the IBEW Local No. 666 organizing coordinator. “We went to them when they first came to town…so far we’ve been stonewalled.” No one knows why.
Virginia, now at 4.3 percent unemployment, lost 20,000 jobs in the first months of 2003. The Fluvanna plant’s two-year construction will employ as many as 600 laborers, totaling $70 million in wages. “Times are tight,” says a local pipe fitter. “It’s a damn shame that somebody has to come here from out of state and take our jobs when we’ve got people unemployed here.”
A stagnant economy is not the only dilemma for these idle hands. An electrician from southern Virginia explains: “Right now we’re having a harder time, because they changed the EPA laws, which means we don’t have to clean power plants.… It’s been hard on all the trades from the iron workers to the pipe fitters.”
Senators George Allen and John Warner have written letters to Tenaska, as has Governor Mark Warner, to no avail. “Tenaska is trying to get the next plant built in Buckingham County,” says Richards. “As a result of this effort, Buckingham may be more interested in part of the deal being you hire Virginians.”
—Brian Wimer
Breaking the mold
Supes consider the cookie-cutter development model
Enlarged development plans blanketed the wall behind the Board of County Supervisors during their May 7 meeting. The sketches represented North Pointe, a 269-acre development including 664,000 square feet of commercial space and 893 residential units. But while the plan’s renderings of large blocks of green space, sidewalks and tree-lined parking lots looked great on paper, the theory behind it, according to the County Planning Commission, did not.
That’s because the project “does not reflect the neighborhood model,” Elaine Echols, an Albemarle County planner, told the Board. The model, which has become the cookie-cutter development plan for Albemarle, encourages pedestrian travel, green spaces and interconnecting streets. For some Supervisors, it’s also become an apparent crutch for the planning commission.
“Do we really only have one way of doing development,” Supervisor David Bowerman asked Echols during her report, “the neighborhood model?”
“To a reasonable extent, yes,” was the answer from Supervisor Dennis Rooker. In that case, said Bowerman, in the future developers should be informed of the stringency of the neighborhood model ahead of time.
According to the Planning Commission’s report, North Pointe, set to be located at the corner of Route 29N and Proffit Road, lacks neighborhood-friendly streets, relegated parking and quality open spaces. Furthermore, the commission questions the proposed mix of housing types within the residential portion of North Pointe. But Charles Rotgin, Jr., one of the plan’s developers, along with Violet Hill Associates, Virginia Land Trust and the Estate of Edward R. Jackson, believes the planning commission’s bias has gone too far.
“We’ve come to recognize that the Planning Commission consistently disapproves of certain things important to many developments,” said Rotgin to the Supes, listing large stores, cul-de-sacs and buildings and residences with front parking. This, he explained, was the developers’ deciding factor to leapfrog the Commission, and bring the North Pointe plans straight to the Board.
“What we’re requesting here is some guidance,” said Rotgin. “Are things like cul-de-sacs going to be allowed?” But Rooker, like others on the Board, wasn’t prepared to make any decisions on the North Pointe development.
“We cannot do the work of the Planning Commission here,” he said. “This is problematic.”
The lengthy debate whether to handle the North Pointe issues themselves, or send them back to the Planning Commission for further review, ended in a motion to boomerang the plan back to the Commission. Still, the question of whether North Pointe will join the ranks of the neighborhood model remains outstanding.
“We have to remember that this is the biggest rezoning to come before the Board in 20 years,” said Rooker, “not including Glenmore.”—Kathryn E. Goodson
Strip show
Local cartoonist places among national finalists
The proverb says that slow and steady wins the race. Case in point: Low-key local cartoonist Jen Sorensen, creator of the political strip “Slowpoke” (which runs in this paper), has been named a finalist in the 2003 Association of Alternative Newsweekly Awards’ Cartoon category, for strips syndicated in four papers or fewer nationally.
Sorensen says she was shocked to be named one of the top four choices, along with “La Petite Camera” by Garrett Gaston, “Suspect Device” by Greg Peters and various strips by Chris Ware. As for why she thinks the judges smiled on her work, “Well, I like to think it’s funny,” she says.
“I value humor and I think there’s kind of a need in the market for a new, funny strip,” she adds. “I like the ones out now, but there hasn’t been a new one in a little while that offers social commentary and political humor in a funny sort of ‘Simpsons’-esque way. But that’s my own completely biased personal viewpoint.”
Plus, says Sorensen, “Slowpoke” is “the leading cartoon in PCPP—Pointy-Headed Characters Per Panel.”
This is the first year Sorensen has been eligible for the AAN honor, although she’s previously won accolades, including a 2000 Xeric Grant. Given out by Peter Laird, the creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the grant helps independent cartoonists self-fund their publishing pursuits. Sorensen used the money to collect the first several years’ worth of her strips.
Sorensen started “Slowpoke” at the end of 1998 and it began running in the now-defunct Richmond weekly Punchline before getting picked up in the Funny Times and then C-VILLE Weekly in 2002. Now she runs in a total of six papers.
While Sorensen can’t yet know where she’ll place when the awards are announced June 8, she hopes that whatever her prize is, it will aid her goal of getting the strip in more papers.
“I think any cartoonist’s dream is to be able to make a living off their work,” she said. And while she likes her freelance work, such as drawing covers for this paper and contributing to magazines (Legal Affairs, National Geographic Kids and Nickelodeon Magazine), “The strip is sort of the main thing that is closest to my…oh, I don’t know. Just don’t use the phrase ‘closest to my heart.’”
—Eric Rezsnyak
The mouse that roared
The Paramount’s fundraising confection stands out in a sea of capital campaigns
The market has gone kaput, unemployment is on the rise and the days of fundraising pie-eating contests are behind us. What then is an arts organization to do to round out its capital campaign? Three local cultural groups face that problem in Charlottesville these days, with three different results.
Yes, it’s an untimely hour to be soliciting donations, yet The Paramount Theater, the City Center for Contemporary Arts (C3A) and UVA’s performing and fine arts center are each in the homestretch of massive fundraising campaigns for new buildings. With the goal to blanket major and minor contributors alike, all face a similar task: To distinguish their campaign from the other guys’.
“You always want to send materials that look nice, especially when you’re a non-profit organization,” says Moira Kavanagh Crosby, who directs the C3A $3.8 million campaign. “You never want to send the wrong message, even if you do have the resources.”
Crosby’s marketing efforts—including the blue and orange, cluttered, double-sided sheet mailed to up to 7,000 people involved with the building’s upcoming tenants—speak of “the transforming effect” the three-occupant building will have on Charlottesville’s cultural landscape. The Water Street building will be the new home to Second Street Gallery, Live Arts and Light House.
Similarly, the Paramount, within the pages of its Little Golden Book-style mailing sent to 7,000 affiliates of the theater, also speaks of transformation, but with phrases like “moving us into the realm of imagination.” And the Paramount tries to make good on that promise by writing its appeal literally in storybook style.
UVA, in its simple case statement—a comparatively austere seven page, black-on-white letter aimed almost exclusively at high-rolling donors—also pitches transformation. The added bonus at Mr. Jefferson’s University? Enrichment of the economy. “We intend to create a new environment to enrich the cultural, educational and economic life of the University and the surrounding community,” reads the fundraising missive for the $47 million project. (Earlier this month, Carl and Hunter Smith validated the sober approach with an announced gift of $22 million for the project.)
With nearly identical messages, the campaigns must strive to be memorable. UVA aims to be memorably low key, says UVA Art Museum Director Jill Hartz.
“We do things fairly quietly as far as fundraising goes,” she says.
By contrast, the most recent two-color mailing by C3A stresses the familiar theme “time is running out.” “To complete construction on schedule this fall, we urgently need to reach our next campaign milestone of raising $150,000 by July 1,” it reads. ”To do this we need your help.”
The Paramount’s $14 million campaign, titled “How Charlottesville Got Its Theater Back” aims to be memorably heart-rending—and achieves indelible sappiness on the way.
The dwarfish, four-color booklet depicts the story of Murphy the mouse, a theater resident who has hopelessly waited all these years “for the show to begin.” The community-minded “we can do it” approach is overdone, yet undeniably the small book holds a certain power.
“Everyone remembers the history of the Paramount,” explains Paramount Executive Director Chad Hershner. “That’s why we wanted to tell it through the eyes of a child.”
And according to marketing executive and Murphy creator Jane Goodman, the somewhat silly concept not only evokes strong emotions of the past, but brings in the donation checks, as well.
“All fundraising material you see these days is full of the same dribble drabble, with ‘This is how much money we need,’” says Goodman. “This concept was a novel idea because not only does it evoke childhood memories of the theater, but it’s a keepsake.
“People never throw it away.”
—Kathryn E. Goodson