Filmmakers to Be Honored at UNAFF Event

What does it take to be a documentary filmmaker? Find out Monday when the filmmakers responsible for two documentaries attend a reception at the AOL building in Palo Alto. You’ll also have the opportunity to see their documentaries and participate in a panel discussion.

The filmmakers are Nancy Kelly, Kenji Yamamoto, Gwenaelle Gobé and Marc Gobé.  Their full biographies are below. Kelly and Yamamoto are responsible for the documentary Rebels With a Cause, which recounts the effort of volunteers to create Point Reyes National Seashore and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The Gobés are responsible for This Space Available, an examination of billboards and other commercial images prevalent in our outdoor spaces.

The panel discussion is titled Visual Pollution, as the two films highlight the differences between open spaces and commercialization.

The evening promises opportunities for intellectual stimulation and socializing. Sponsored by AOL and Patch, it’s part of the UNAFF 2012 International Documentary Film Festival. The AOL  Building is located at 395 Page Mill Rd.

5:45  Reception
6:45  Rebels With a Cause
8:15  Panel discussion
9:15  This Space Available

Rebels With a Cause
(75 min) USA

Description:

The daring, rebellious, young crusaders in the 1950s through the 1980s who figured out new ways to save their communities are the heart of Rebels With a Cause. Their determination and frontier spirit saved many thousands of acres of parkland and farmland from development, creating the Point Reyes National Seashore and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Narrated by Academy winning actress Frances McDormand

This Space Available
(86 min) China/India/USA

Description:

Billboards and commercial messages dominate the public space like never before. Can we reverse this visual pollution? This Space Available looks at diverse activists from the worlds of advertising, street art, and politics. Influenced by the writing of Marc Gobe (Emotional Branding), his daughter Gwenaelle directs with tremendous verve in her depiction of New Yorkers and others around the world, who want to reclaim the integrity of their cities against an onslaught of visual pollution.

Filmmaker Biographies:

Nancy Kelly and Kenji Yamamoto, award winning independent filmmakers, have been making critically acclaimed documentary and narrative films that have aired on PBS, Showtime, Sundance, Britain’s Channel Four, in theaters, museums, film festivals around the world, and even at an outdoor street cinema, for the last twenty-five years. Nancy and Kenji attended the Sundance June Lab with their narrative feature Thousand Pieces of Gold and Kenji attended the Sundance Documentary Lab with Jennifer Maytorena Taylor’s New Muslim Cool. Their films have been funded by the Ford Foundation, PBS American Playhouse, MacArthur Foundation, ITVS, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts, Gerbode Foundation, Driehaus Foundation, Columbia Foundation, Fleishhacker Foundation, Woods Fund of Chicago, LEF, Pacific Pioneer Fund, and many others. Nancy and Kenji recently completed a documentary trilogy about the transformative power of art that took over a decade to make. The third in the trilogy, Trust: Second Acts in Young Lives, premiered at the 2010 Mill Valley Film Festival, which coincided with their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

Gwenaelle Gobe’s work has been published and shown internationally, notably in the infamous Swindle Magazine and the New York based Swingset Magazine, Shepard Fairey’s Subliminal Projects Gallery, The Institute of International Visual Arts in London, the Substation Gallery in Singapore, and on Obey The Giant Clothing. Her 35mm cut-out animation, The Old Noise, screened at Film Forum’s First Sight Scene Festival, and at The Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles. Gwenaelle has a master’s degree in experimental animation from CalArts and Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from Bard.

Marc Gobé is the CEO of Emotional Branding LLC, a think tank that explores the role of brands and their impact on society. He began sharing his perspective and emotion-driven form of branding beginning in 2001 with the publishing of his first book, appropriately titled: Emotional Branding. This first book has since been translated into seventeen languages and has been integrated into the MBA programs of leading business schools worldwide. Marc continued to share his thought leadership on Emotional Branding through his follow-up books, Citizen Brand, BrandJam, and his most recent publication of Emotional Branding 2.0. Marc is a graduate of EPDI, The École Professionnelle de Design Industriel in Paris. He parleyed his design background into all corners of the branding and communications world. Marc is a sought-after keynote speaker, film producer, philanthropist, board member and business advisor to non-profit and corporate organizations.

TICKET INFORMATION

The mission of UNAFF is to promote social change through education.