Alliance for Independent Motion Media

Smitten

A love story about art

Film Description

Rene di Rosa is smitten by art. A former San Francisco Chronicle reporter turned Napa Valley vintner Rene is unusual, because his goal is neither about interior decorating nor increasing social status, but about the pure joy of discovery. He started buying art in the 1960s and now has over 2,000 works of contemporary art by Northern California artists. SMITTEN is not only about a man and his vast and extraordinary collection, is also offers a delightful commentary on the "art" of aging successfully. Rene dares to age actively as his search and love for his art collection seems to be what drives his passionate and energetic spirit, even well into his eighties. He says, "It is my greatest pleasure. Without it, I can't function."

News:

Smitten is available for purchase for home use and for schools, colleges, universities, libraries and museums. For info: go to www.pbs.org/smitten. In fall 2007, Smitten will launch on iTunes.

Screenings:

PBS national broadcast; Mill Valley Film Festival - World Premiere; International Festival of Films on Art, Montreal; Silverdocs Film Festival; Cleveland International Film Festival; Palm Springs Internatioanl Festival of Short Film; LA International Short Film Festival; Atlanta Film Festival; Cinequest Film Festival, San Jose;
Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema; Santa Fe Film Festival; Sonoma Valley Film Festival; Santa Cruz Film Festival; Ashland Independent Film Festival; Mendocino Film Festival; Denver Film Festival; Waterfront Film Festival; Pixar, Emeryville, CA; IFP Market, New York; Copia, Napa, CA; Exploratorium, San Francisco; Mechanics Institute, San Francisco; Friday Night Films, Petaluma, CA; Take2 Cinema, Point Reyes Station.

Biographies

FILMMAKERS Nancy Kelly

Nancy Kelly has been making independent fiction and non-fiction films for more than 25 years. Her new film, Smitten, is a documentary about Rene di Rosa, who has the world's largest collection of northern California contemporary art. Smitten is the second in a trilogy of films she is making about the transformative power of art.

Nancy wrote, produced and directed the documentary, Downside UP, which aired nationally on PBS Downside UP is a first-person story about America's largest museum of contemporary art (MASS MoCA), which opened in the abandoned Massachusetts factory where her grandparents and parents once worked. Downside UP explores whether something as ephemeral as contemporary art can breathe life into a dying city.

Ms Kelly developed, produced and directed the critically acclaimed American Playhouse Theatrical film Thousand Pieces of Gold, which stars Rosalind Chao and Chris Cooper. The Los Angeles Times compared her work to the "lyricism of a John Ford, a Budd Boetticher, a George Stephens...but always opening up a new world." Thousand Pieces of Gold tells the story of a young Chinese woman who comes to America during the late Gold Rush as a slave. It was developed in association with the Sundance Institute and theatrically released in the top 20 US markets. Its premiere airing on American Playhouse ranks among the series broadcasts. J & M Entertainment sold the television rights to every country in the world. ShowTime, Sundance, Encore and the Romance cable channels broadcast the film. Thousand Pieces of Gold was featured in over 20 international film festivals, both in the US and abroad. It received the Audience Award at the Ft. Lauderdale Film Festival and the Best Feature of the Year Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

She also produced and directed the award-winning documentaries Cowgirls: Portraits of American Ranch Women; A Cowhand's Song: Crisis on the Range; and Sweeping Ocean Views. Cowgirls aired on the National Geographic Explorer Program. It won a Blue Ribbon at the American Film Festival, a Golden Apple at the National Educational Film Festival, Best Documentary from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, Best of the Sinking Creek Film Festival and Best of the Palo Alto Film Festival. Sweeping Ocean Views received a local Emmy nomination. She produced and directed OneTrees, the pilot of SPARK, KQED San Francisco art series, and several other segments for the series first two seasons.

With Gwendolyn Clancy, she is currently completing When We Were Cowgirls, a work of creative non-fiction about her experiences working as a ranch hand. With funding from the Dreihaus Foundation, the Illinois Council for the Humanities and the Marin Arts Council, she is developing Stories to Tell, Dreams to Live, a documentary about Chicago immigrant youth theater company, the Albany Park Theater Project. Nancy is on the Steering Committee of New Day Films, the most successful distribution cooperative in the media industry.

Her work has been in the international film festivals in: San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Denver, Hawaii, Cleveland, London, Moscow, Vancouver, Cork, Galway and Amiens, as well as the Deauville Festival of American Cinema, South by Southwest Film Festival, and Festival of Young Cinema (Paris). Ms Kelly's work has screened at the Directors Guild of America, National Film Theater (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), the IFP Market (New York), the Cannes Film Market, and the Gene Autry Museum (Los Angeles).

Her work has been funded by the Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Independent Television Service, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Playhouse, LEF Foundation, Marin Arts Council, and the Humanities Councils and Foundations of Massachusetts, California, Illinois, Oregon, Nevada and Wyoming. She has attended the June Lab at the Sundance Institute, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and been a resident at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Montalvo, Mesa Refuge and UCross. She is married to the film editor Kenji Yamamoto.

Kenji Yamamoto

Kenji co-produced and edited Smitten (PBS, 2006), was associate producer and editor of Downside UP (Independent Lens, 2003), and produced and edited the independent feature film Thousand Pieces of Gold (PBS American Playhouse, 1993).

He has edited a wide range of documentary and theatrical films, including: Immigration Calculations (2007), a KQED production produced by Jennifer Taylor and Sheraz Sadiq and Soul of Justice: The Life and Times of Thelton Henderson (2005) produced and directed by Abby Ginzberg. Soul of Justice is an hour-long documentary portrait of the dynamic federal judge, Thelton Henderson, who is both honored and vilified for standing up to his beliefs of equal treatment of all races. He also edited the DVD extras for the HBO series Deadwood (2004), produced and directed by David Schwarz; and Thirst (2003), an hour-long documentary about how three communities Bolivia, India and California have dealt with the pressure to privatize their municipal water facilities. Thirst aired on PBSâ€™s P.O.V. series and was produced and directed by Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman. He edited Cowgirls: Portraits of American Ranch Women (1985), by Nancy Kelly, which aired on the National Geographic Explorer series; Emiko Omoriâ€™s short, The Departure (1984); Felicia Loweâ€™s documentary China: Land of My Father (1979); and Don Briggsâ€™ documentary Parrotâ€™s Ferry is the Limit (1980). He edited a number of segments, including the pilot, for SPARK*, KQEDâ€™s documentary art show. He was a contributing editor of Hidden in Plain Sight (2003), a feature-length documentary about US government support of the School of the Americas, which was produced and directed by John Smihula; School Colors, an award-winning PBS Frontline documentary about class and racism at Berkeley High, produced and directed by Steven Olsson & Scott Andrews; The Business of America (1984), an award-winning hour-long documentary that asks whether American companies can be trusted; and A Cowhand's Song: Crisis on the Range (1982), a documentary short about family ranchers who run their cattle on the public lands, produced and directed by Gwendolyn Clancy and Nancy Kelly. Kenji attended the June Filmmakerâ€™s Lab at the Sundance Institute (with Thousand Pieces of Gold) and twice been an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts. He studied directing with Judith Weston in Los Angeles and Jean Shelton in San Francisco and studied painting and photography at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Awards