I have been asked to publicize this, and think that´s a great idea: a 13-year old Peruvian-American kid playing jazz saxophone with Barbara Morrison as vocals. Well, why not? Barbara Morrison, his "adopted grandmother," is African American and it all fits in, in a weird way, with our documentary about Afro-Peruvian music and its connection to Latin jazz.
The jazz session took place in Fullerton, California. Morrison and the kid are backed up by the jazz group The Bu Crew. And who is this 13-year old? Christopher Astoquillca. Olé, tu.
Christopher´s idol is Sonny Rollins, and the video below starts with him meeting that great saxophonist. It then continues on to a fine performance by Christopher. A really fine performance.
So watch, and enjoy.
OUR NEXT POST will be about black Latinos.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Saturday, March 24, 2012
MORE things I´ve learned about making documentaries--ORGANIZATION
Aside from RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH, I've learned that to do right by a documentary, you need...
ORGANIZATION.
Organization has always been one of my weak points. I am very scattered. On the one hand, this has the advantage of allowing me to be more creative. If you're scattered, you see possibilities everywhere. You see connections everywhere. You have ideas all the time.
But on the flip side, this indicates a disorganized mind.
Well, I'm not entirely against a disorganized mind in the sense that I WANT to have those ideas, see those possibilities, see those connections. HOWEVER...
If you want your public to be able to follow you, you must create a path and stick to it. Small asides are ok so long as they connect naturally to the main path, but you need to keep those asides down to a minimum and not stray too far, or for too long.
The HISTORY of Afro-Peruvians and black Latinos COULD have been my path, but in the end, it's not what I chose.
And you need to decide what will be that main path, that narrative thread. With a documentary about, say, Afro-Peruvian music and dance, it could be the technique needed to perform. It could be the training needed to perform well. It could be the situation and community that has created these performance arts (which is more or less the path that I chose).
There are other possibilities, of course, but one way or another, you do need to choose, and you should choose early on so that you don't waste a lot of time pursuing interesting ideas that in the end you won't be able to use.
Just to make life for a person like me even a little more complicated, you not only need to choose your main path, but you have to choose your destination. If you decided to focus on the training and technique, you might conclude that these are something everyone can learn in one week flat, or that you need years and years of practice with excellent teachers, or whatever. But you do need to decide on a conclusion.
Believe it or not, for me the most difficult thing, next to choosing and sticking to one specific path, has been to decide on that conclusion. I am extremely prone to presenting something simply because I like it and I think it's cool, without organizing my thoughts sufficiently to decide WHY it's cool, or WHAT'S cool about it, or why anyone else should be interested. I have trouble deciding on what my point is.
I decided to focus more on the music and dance, but the documentary does more than just present them.
And a documentary without a point can be very boring for your audience.
SO...with A Zest for Life, it took me several YEARS (I kid you not) to figure out what my point was. My point, of course-- that we shouldn't let these performance arts disappear-- has several sub-points, the most important of which are that these performance arts are in danger, and in the long run, to keep them alive, we need to understand the background out of which they came, and the history out of which they arose.
It has been my task in the documentary to select and organize my material to communicate this. I hope that I have done so. I present it to you with my fingers crossed.
OUR NEXT POST will be a slight detour. We'll look at a 13-year old Peruvian-American saxophonist playing with his "adopted grandmother," African-American jazz singer Barbara Morrison.
ORGANIZATION.
Organization has always been one of my weak points. I am very scattered. On the one hand, this has the advantage of allowing me to be more creative. If you're scattered, you see possibilities everywhere. You see connections everywhere. You have ideas all the time.
But on the flip side, this indicates a disorganized mind.
Well, I'm not entirely against a disorganized mind in the sense that I WANT to have those ideas, see those possibilities, see those connections. HOWEVER...
If you want your public to be able to follow you, you must create a path and stick to it. Small asides are ok so long as they connect naturally to the main path, but you need to keep those asides down to a minimum and not stray too far, or for too long.
The HISTORY of Afro-Peruvians and black Latinos COULD have been my path, but in the end, it's not what I chose.
And you need to decide what will be that main path, that narrative thread. With a documentary about, say, Afro-Peruvian music and dance, it could be the technique needed to perform. It could be the training needed to perform well. It could be the situation and community that has created these performance arts (which is more or less the path that I chose).
There are other possibilities, of course, but one way or another, you do need to choose, and you should choose early on so that you don't waste a lot of time pursuing interesting ideas that in the end you won't be able to use.
 |
| photo: Carlos O. Lopez & Cimarrones del Peru |
Believe it or not, for me the most difficult thing, next to choosing and sticking to one specific path, has been to decide on that conclusion. I am extremely prone to presenting something simply because I like it and I think it's cool, without organizing my thoughts sufficiently to decide WHY it's cool, or WHAT'S cool about it, or why anyone else should be interested. I have trouble deciding on what my point is.
I decided to focus more on the music and dance, but the documentary does more than just present them.
And a documentary without a point can be very boring for your audience.
SO...with A Zest for Life, it took me several YEARS (I kid you not) to figure out what my point was. My point, of course-- that we shouldn't let these performance arts disappear-- has several sub-points, the most important of which are that these performance arts are in danger, and in the long run, to keep them alive, we need to understand the background out of which they came, and the history out of which they arose.
It has been my task in the documentary to select and organize my material to communicate this. I hope that I have done so. I present it to you with my fingers crossed.
OUR NEXT POST will be a slight detour. We'll look at a 13-year old Peruvian-American saxophonist playing with his "adopted grandmother," African-American jazz singer Barbara Morrison.
Friday, March 16, 2012
What I've learned about making documentaries--RESEARCH
RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH.
When I started A Zest for Life, I made it like the other documentaries I produced-directed about world music and dance: we set up three cameras and the rest of the equipment in a television studio, invited a performing group to come and give us 45 minutes worth of performance, and filled the rest with interviews. Yes, we had some stage decoration, specifically, some banners made in the youth art program I ran for a non-profit a few years back.
The performers were good, the interviews were interesting, the TV station was happy (it was a cable station and this gave them some programming that was a bit different from what they usually have). I was happy, at least at first. Plenty of cable stations in the San Francisco Bay Area were very pleased to air the documentary. Obviously, our host station (who donated their facilities) got to air it first.
And let me thank that station here, plus the commission which supported us: CCTV (Contra Costa Television) and AC5 (Arts and Culture Commission of Contra Costa County).
But then I started learning Spanish, and realized in listening to the songs that there was a lot going on that I had earlier missed. My next step, then, was to do in-depth interviews of four people, three of whom were in the documentary: Lalo Izquierdo (the doc´s star), Javier Nuntón (one of the musicians), Gabriela Shiroma (lead female dancer) and Marina laValle (up from Peru).
I added portions of the interviews of Lalo and Javier to the show, especially Lalo. He, after all, is the lead dancer, lead percussionist, the folklorist, and is Afro-Peruvian.
I did NOT use either Gabriela Shiroma´s or Marina laValle´s interviews, for reasons of length, but I DID use the information they provided in their interviews.
I now had a better documentary. But as I learned more about Afro-Peruvian music and dance, and the history and culture of the Afro-Peruvian community, I became more and more interested. I began doing some serious research, primarily on the internet. That also allowed me to discover the connection with Latin jazz.
An aside: Emmy-award winning documentarian David L. Brown, from whom I took a class and who since then has given me advice and encouragement, was instrumental in consistently encouraging me to do more research, more research, more research. And I thank him for that, as well as other, advice.
The results of my research allowed me to add some really good footage of Afro-Peruvian celebrations as well as some very fine photos. I also completely re-wrote and re-shot my narration, incorporating the new things I´d learned.
(NOTE: we just added the above trailer to the web site. It gives an example of what I learned by researching.)
SO--what have I learned about making documentaries? Well, first and foremost, you really should research your topic. You will find out fascinating things which will allow you to present something much more interesting to your audience. Of course, normally the research should come first, and I´m planning to make use of this lesson. But even if it comes last, it does need to be done, and it is well worth the effort.
OUR NEXT POST will be about some OTHER things I´ve learned about making documentaries.
When I started A Zest for Life, I made it like the other documentaries I produced-directed about world music and dance: we set up three cameras and the rest of the equipment in a television studio, invited a performing group to come and give us 45 minutes worth of performance, and filled the rest with interviews. Yes, we had some stage decoration, specifically, some banners made in the youth art program I ran for a non-profit a few years back.
The performers were good, the interviews were interesting, the TV station was happy (it was a cable station and this gave them some programming that was a bit different from what they usually have). I was happy, at least at first. Plenty of cable stations in the San Francisco Bay Area were very pleased to air the documentary. Obviously, our host station (who donated their facilities) got to air it first.
 |
| Lalo Izquierdo with some Afro-Peruvian percussion instruments. |
And let me thank that station here, plus the commission which supported us: CCTV (Contra Costa Television) and AC5 (Arts and Culture Commission of Contra Costa County).
But then I started learning Spanish, and realized in listening to the songs that there was a lot going on that I had earlier missed. My next step, then, was to do in-depth interviews of four people, three of whom were in the documentary: Lalo Izquierdo (the doc´s star), Javier Nuntón (one of the musicians), Gabriela Shiroma (lead female dancer) and Marina laValle (up from Peru).
 |
| Javier Nuntón |
I did NOT use either Gabriela Shiroma´s or Marina laValle´s interviews, for reasons of length, but I DID use the information they provided in their interviews.
I now had a better documentary. But as I learned more about Afro-Peruvian music and dance, and the history and culture of the Afro-Peruvian community, I became more and more interested. I began doing some serious research, primarily on the internet. That also allowed me to discover the connection with Latin jazz.
 |
| Rosa los Santos (here) and Jorge Luis Jasso are our two main singers. |
The results of my research allowed me to add some really good footage of Afro-Peruvian celebrations as well as some very fine photos. I also completely re-wrote and re-shot my narration, incorporating the new things I´d learned.
(NOTE: we just added the above trailer to the web site. It gives an example of what I learned by researching.)
SO--what have I learned about making documentaries? Well, first and foremost, you really should research your topic. You will find out fascinating things which will allow you to present something much more interesting to your audience. Of course, normally the research should come first, and I´m planning to make use of this lesson. But even if it comes last, it does need to be done, and it is well worth the effort.
OUR NEXT POST will be about some OTHER things I´ve learned about making documentaries.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
HOORAY! Accepted into a festival in Berlin, Germany.
Ah, fame! Ah, a little recognition for all the work I've been doing.
It feels nice.
The Black International Cinema festival of Berlin (Germany) has accepted A Zest for Life as part of its upcoming festival (May 2-6). Do I plan to attend? You bet I do. After all, I'm in Spain and Germany is not all THAT far away.
That's not the only good news I have for A Zest for Life. The material I've been waiting for all these months finally arrived. I only needed about 30 seconds of it for the documentary, but these are important 30 seconds. They give the documentary a balance I wanted, plus more of the Peruvian coastal countryside (where most Afro-Peruvians live).
And even more importantly, one section of the video clip I used shows fine, and well-known, Afro-Peruvian percussionists playing the checo, an Afro-Peruvian percussion instrument made out of a gourd.
Now, you probably don't know all that much about the checo, but that's part of the point. After watching A Zest for Life, you WILL know what the checo is and how to use it.
SO--thanks to the Museo Afroperuano de Zaña (and Sonia Arteaga), thanks to 1 Frame Producciones (and Gisella Burgo Polo plus Javier Exposito Martin), and thanks to the Black International Cinema festival in Berlin.
OUR NEXT POST will be about...things I've learned about documentaries.
It feels nice.
The Black International Cinema festival of Berlin (Germany) has accepted A Zest for Life as part of its upcoming festival (May 2-6). Do I plan to attend? You bet I do. After all, I'm in Spain and Germany is not all THAT far away.
That's not the only good news I have for A Zest for Life. The material I've been waiting for all these months finally arrived. I only needed about 30 seconds of it for the documentary, but these are important 30 seconds. They give the documentary a balance I wanted, plus more of the Peruvian coastal countryside (where most Afro-Peruvians live).
 |
| A checo on the vine. |
And even more importantly, one section of the video clip I used shows fine, and well-known, Afro-Peruvian percussionists playing the checo, an Afro-Peruvian percussion instrument made out of a gourd.
Now, you probably don't know all that much about the checo, but that's part of the point. After watching A Zest for Life, you WILL know what the checo is and how to use it.
SO--thanks to the Museo Afroperuano de Zaña (and Sonia Arteaga), thanks to 1 Frame Producciones (and Gisella Burgo Polo plus Javier Exposito Martin), and thanks to the Black International Cinema festival in Berlin.
OUR NEXT POST will be about...things I've learned about documentaries.
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