living room documentary tour: Berkeley, CA

On Sunday March 5, we screened our documentary at the Long Haul Infoshop in Berkeley, as a part of café night. Every Sunday night they have an open café and movie or some other event/entertainment. We got to the infoshop at around 5 and used some leftover food from Food Not Bombs to make dinner. Kait, the woman who we stayed with, did a great job with publicity and about 20 people came to watch.

While the movie played, we went across the street to the Starry Plough, an Irish Pub, and drank a pint while we watched an impromptu Irish pub ensemble play.

After the documentary played, we met some of the interesting people who came. There was a man and a woman who had just gotten back from living in Belgium to get their graduate degrees in anthropology, and they both focused on the importance of place to a certain extent. The guy did a project where he photographed “non-places” like airports and train stations. He looked at the way that interactions are affected by taking place in non-places.

The woman focused on the process of making sustainable agriculture viable and accessible in third world nations and the notion of "development." Here is a pdf link to her thesis: Who is Really Developed:Rethinking Development in a Time of "Ecological Deficit."

We also got to see and talk to Sabin, who works with the activist media project. He told me about a collaborative film project about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that he is trying to get funded. He said that there isn’t much documentation going on, even though you’d think otherwise. He knows a woman who was a middle school teacher in New Orleans. She has managed to keep track of where all of her students were dispersed to. The idea for the documentary would be to use this middle school class as a microcosm, finding where they are, and going to talk to them. I think it seems like a great idea.

We also ran into Hannah who used to live in Denver. We went over to the place where she is living and hung out for a bit and that was nice. She has been working on a documentary about squatting for about a year and a half. It will be great to see what it turns out like.

The place where we stayed with kait is this community house that hippies bought in the 70s. 8 people live there and it's a huge mansion and awesome. Here is a picture of only a small part of their cool garden:

We even got to stay in our own "guest room." Here is a picture of that:

One of the best things about going on this trip is that people we meet everywhere tell us about the amazing projects that they are working on. People are usually more reserved about the projects that they are doing and ideas they’ve been thinking about. I guess that when people see you out there talking about and sharing your own project, they are more inclined to talk about theirs.

Here is a cool sign that i took a picture of outside of the rocks, paper, scissors art collective space that we tried to go to in order to sell shirts. Unfortunately they were closed, but it seemed like an amazing space.

I'm trying to take pictures of old artistic looking signs when i have the chance.

After going to Berkeley, we headed to Arcata for the night. We didn't get to spend much time there, but had a good time having breakfast on the beach this morning: