Thank You

A love letter to the documentary film community.

The Golden Gate is pretty, sure, but this is what San Francisco looks like if you grew up there.

Hello from San Francisco.

Even though I’ve lived in LA for almost four years, SFFILM is my home festival. My family moved from Connecticut to Marin County when I was six, and then to San Francisco the summer before fourth grade. The day after I graduated from Occidental College I packed up my car, headed home, and lived in The City¹ until moving back to Marin in 2012. With nearly 40 of my 54 years on Planet Earth here, no matter where I live at any given moment, NorCal will always be home.

The SFFILM documentary program serves as a blueprint for the connections I look forward to making every April. As I scan the titles I think immediately about the filmmakers I will see if they can travel, parties to organize to bring people together in celebration of films I EP, and my local “non-film friends” to invite to watch movies they would likely never otherwise see. I buy at least two tickets to every screening so I can bring my 81-year-old mom who lives up here and, thankfully, is game to watch anything.

I feel so much gratitude this week I can barely stand it. I’ve been thinking a lot about the richness of my life today, how it does not at all resemble my life of 15 years ago, and that I have the doc community to thank for that. Maybe I’m feeling especially sentimental because of the films and filmmakers I’m connected with in this year’s program: Sam Green, who I met twenty years ago with deep ties here too, and explores the meaning of it all in The Oldest Person in the World; and Anna Fitch and Banker White, who also lived here once upon a time, and in YO share the beauty of a special friendship.

I wandered into doc film in 2014 in the aftermath of a huge midlife shake-up: the death of my father and the wind-down of a 15-year education career. I found myself at age 42 with enough assets to quit the rat race and (in hindsight) blithely decided to retire. I needed to find meaning, direction, purpose and community and couldn’t believe my luck when I learned about the opportunity to do documentary grantmaking. As a lifelong storyteller, design junkie, and newly-minted philanthropist, I found my new calling.

I put myself on an intense learning journey those first couple years, racking up airline miles attending many firsts: Sundance, Catalyst, True/False, Good Pitch, Getting Real. Everywhere I went I asked, “Where should I go next and who should I meet?” I was propelled by the creativity, passion, kindness and generosity I encountered at each stop. I started making some grants so that I could learn by doing, trying to better understand how philanthropy fits into a complex industry that mixes mission-driven work with marketplace dynamics, and how I could be most responsive to the needs and opportunities therein.

I need to acknowledge that funders enter this space from a position of immense privilege. Every door is open wide in the hopes that resources will soon follow. Your ideas will never be better, jokes funnier, or outfit sharper than when you walk into the room as a Funder. You jump right to the head of a line that so many others work for years to advance in, and oftentimes stay there even if your actions don’t warrant it. You can afford to hit the festival circuit. You don’t have to fundraise so you can make your film. The dark side of this entitlement is the little voice inside your head that says, “You’re in this room because someone is hoping you’ll write a check. They’re just humoring you. Your only value is your bank account.” Spending too much time listening to this devil can really do a number on your self-esteem. But, hey, we all have our stuff and this stuff is light fare by comparison.

Just as I was getting my footing in the film world, my marriage hit the skids. Following a year of tough conversations, my (now ex-) husband announced one morning he wanted a separation, and by that evening he was out. “Earth-shattering” insufficiently describes the profound sense of loss and destabilization of this moment. I’d been a partnered person for the majority of the previous 20 years and somehow I was going to have to make a new life, reshape my identity, and reestablish a new definition of home.

I thank my lucky stars that by the fall of 2016 I’d begun working with Patrick Bresnan and Ivete Lucas, first on a collection of Florida-based short films and then the feature documentary, Pahokee. They could use another pair of hands and the financial backing to pull off what would be an incredible run and I needed a reason to get out of the bed in the morning. I was as green as could be (I called myself the 45-year-old intern), but they put me to work and I became a quick study. The rebuilding of my life happened in nonstop production and on the festival circuit for the next four years. I can think of much harder ways to get over the collapse of a marriage than jetting to the Croisette for your Director’s Fortnight premiere or traveling to Florida to screen the film you’re about to premiere at Sundance with the young adult protagonists and take them shopping for winter clothes.

What sustained me then, and does to this day, are all the relationships forged out there on the road and on Zoom (merci, Covid 19). I have this theory that if you work in a resource-constrained industry, where there isn’t a lot of money to be made and people are motivated by passion and creativity, relationships ARE the currency. I also think laughing and crying — especially crying — in the dark with strangers turns them into friends. Processing an emotional screening afterwards bonds people. Film festivals, labs and retreats pull us out of our everyday lives and into a little bubble, a time capsule, where we can just focus on the art and each other. I mean, c’mon! What a gift.

The line between friend and colleague in this world is blurry as heck, but it seems to work just fine. Maybe more than fine. This weekend my mom remarked that, “everyone is so HAPPY! There’s so much hugging!” If you ever feel cynical about the state of the field, bring your non-film friends and family to a screening; seeing our work and world through fresh eyes is a helpful reminder of how damn lucky we are.

I don’t know if I left my heart in San Francisco, but it certainly feels overflowing this week. The films are so good! My current and future friends, people I care about so much, are making beautiful work and feeling the love and support of a live audience. People are gathering, celebrating and, yes, hugging. Fifteen years ago I didn’t have this. There is so much that is super broken today – in our industry and the world at large. In the context of all this – or maybe because of all this – I am more grateful than ever for this community.

To all you creative, brilliant, funny, generous, kind, passionate, tenacious souls: From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

1. Yeah, we call it that. Get over it.