FAMOUS...IN THE DOMINICAN!

P-Star is Cuban/Puerto Rican, but the 1500 kids in attendance at the National Theater in the Dominican Republic didn’t give a damn- she was their star. The film played for the first time to a Spanish audience with Spanish subtitles at the Global Dominican Republic Film Festival last week, in four theaters across the island. At each screening kids were bused in from public schools- ranging from 5th grade to high school seniors. Though the film has played great for adults, and a majority of festival audiences are just that, it works on a special level with young people as they can relate and admire Priscilla and her dream to become a star and make her father proud. The screening for the little ones (age 5-9) was hilarious, as they clearly missed the internal struggles of the characters but were enthralled by the music. Every time a beat came on- whether it was a P-Star rap or just a simple musical transition, they would stand up and clap in unison to the beat!..which happened for about half the movie. On the other hand, The high school screening was followed by an hour long Q & A with kids asking some of the most personal and creative questions we have had…in Spanish! Marjan and I speak Spanish fairly fluently, but it was definitely still a challenge. A 14 year-old boy asked me “What mark did making this film leave on your own life?” Wow! Because P-Star caught a last-minute flu and could not travel with us, we got creative and had a rapping/singing competition after each screening for prizes. Ten young volunteers stepped on the stage and performed. We had to limit it to ten as the whole audience seemed to think they had some sort of skills and wanted to participate (which you do not find in the States). It got wild, with a diversity of talent; from a young boy sitting on the edge of the stage singing a love ballad to the chicas, to a teenage girl (with a teenage attitude) spitting the most popular Dominican gangsta’ rap on the radio as she jumped up and down to applause. After the screening we were swarmed for autographs. Now if P-Star was there- they definitely would not be trying to get my autograph…but I guess I was the next best thing. It felt good, I can’t lie. A documentary film director does not have many chances to feel like a celebrity!

Gracias DR!

PS. I just found out we won THE AUDIENCE AWARD at the festival!

 

PREMIERES (with a baby!)


Since our world premier at Tribeca Film Festival, A LOT has gone down- both personally and with the film. Most notably, our baby girl, Naila, was born just 7 days before the New York premiere, so she hit the ground running. And now at 6 months old, she has been to 6 film festivals and counting! She still sleeps right through the film, which I try not to take personally ;) Having the film, after 5 years of work, embark on a festival tour and navigating fatherhood at the same time is both an incredible challenge and a beautiful gift. My wife and producer of the film, Marjan, was still clearing music and negotiating financing while learning to breast feed and changing dirty diapers. Serious multi-tasking. (fyi when not in the color correction or sound mix or premiere after-party-  I was changing those diapers as well)

We followed Tribeca with our international premiere at the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto, Canada. Though it was incredibly hard to leave my newborn baby and brand new mother behind, this was a top festival to premiere at and participate in. After playing the film during Tribeca for 5000 people under the stars in Battery Park, and P-Star opening the night with an amazing live performance, we decided that whenever we could have her come along to the festivals to rock it, we should. Therefore, P-Star and Jesse were to fly in for opening night in Toronto. At the beginning of the premiere screening, however, they were nowhere in site. Their plane had still not landed. And as the film came to a close, there was still no word. The Q & A commenced, and I held it down alone, dragging out answers with long anecdotes, in an attempt to stall for their surprise arrival. Nothing. But just as the audience poured out of the Bloor Museum screening room, a taxi rolls up and P-Star and Jesse collide with the audience. A semi-circle of 200 plus was instantly formed around them and P-Star rapped on the street corner, just as she did at 9 years old in Harlem- when we first met.

(photo: birds-eye of outdoor screening, Tribeca)


(photo: P-Star rapping on street in Toronto after screening)


As I write, Naila, who has just eaten her first banana, has also gotten her first passport stamp in Zurich for the Zurich Film Festival, our European premiere. We were picked up at the airport by a 6 foot 6 blond James Bond type, wearing a dark suit, dark glasses, and an ear- piece like secret service. The 2010 tinted window Audi took us to the hotel, along lake Zurich. My first impression of Zurich was: very clean, very organized, very expensive! It helps to be hosted by the festival, however, and this festival really took good care. In addition to myself and Marjan (and Naila), they brought P-Star and Jesse as well. Opening night was a full house, the audience sitting on comfortable black leather seats, watching a Harlem story and reading the High German translation below. The Q&A, as always, was REAL. It is one thing with a fiction film where you have the actors come out to a roaring applause and field questions about preparation for their role etc versus a documentary about an intimate family drama and the true characters are there to explain their life choices. I know it must be hard for Jesse, a conflicted, loving and flawed father, to defend what he believes is right before a room full of strangers. And for Priscilla, who is peaking as a teenager these days, to answer questions about working with her father and missing out on her childhood. That said, as they appear in the film, they are both incredibly open to sharing their lives and true colors which always makes for an insightful Q&A. I can’t help to get nervous however, ever since Jesse said after our Tribeca screening “We would have got a reality show on MTV if that Tila Tequila bitch didn’t blow up!”  The screening ended with P-Star signing autographs for both a 7 year old and a 70 year old couple. For me, it validates that this film is not a “hip hop film” but rather a film that both children and parents/grandparents can relate to and enjoy.

Our next stop was Ghent, Belgium; a quaint cobble stoned city sprinkled by castles, high-end boutiques, and tucked away restaurants on a canal. The hospitality was unparalleled, but the culture is a bit wacky. On the way to our first screening, which took place in an old cathedral with impeccable acoustics, the festival coordinator shared, “you will just introduce the film, briefly, and then you may leave.” When I inquired about the Q&A, he noted, “Here in Belgium our people are shy and they always result in awkward silences so we do not do them anymore.” Wow…Marjan and I pondered, they flew us here, housed us and fed us for 4 days, and want nothing more from us than an intro..only for the first screening, I might add. 'Aight then, let's just kickit.

Tonight we had the opportunity to finally see Lee Daniels “Precious,” and were both moved to tears and empowered to keep making important films. Back at the hotel bar I introduced him to Havana Club, my favorite rum, and we thanked him for his masterpiece. He plans to watch P-Star Rising on the plane home, so maybe we’ll get on Oprah after all! That is what film fests are all about- connecting artists and building community, so it's nice when it happens.

By the time I write next, we will have played at the BET Urbanworld Festival (NYC), Camden (Maine), Sound Unseen (Minneapolis), Philadelphia, Bergen (Norway), Heartland (Indiana), and Sheffield (UK) and the Dominican Republic. I imagine at that time I will have some more exciting stories to share about our family journey with P-Star Rising.

For the play-by-play and photo uploads, please visit our facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/P-Star-Rising/45268662983?ref=ts

 

Check out P-Star's emotional acceptance speech at Heartland Film Festival

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz2mJ6j_cl0

 

(photo: live P-Star performance before screening)



Director's Commentary Video

A FINISHED FILM!

I am writing you just hours away from completing our film, in a sound mix studio in midtown Manhattan. It’s about 2 A.M., the same time I met Priscilla aka P-Star and her single father, Jesse, in the basement of a nightclub in this same neighborhood 5 years ago. She was 9 years old, and I was…younger and naive to the journey I would embark upon with the Diaz Family. I left the club that night after P-Star had wow’d the crowd with her charisma and raw lyrical skill, and followed the father-daughter duo back to their one-bedroom shelter, where their mission was born: For Priscilla to become a rapper and bring her daddy back in to the business he left behind to raise the family.

In the weeks, months, and years that followed, I built a relationship as a director, a cinematographer, a confidant and friend to Jesse, Priscilla, and her older sister Solsky. This relationship was built on trust, which allowed me and my producer, Marjan Tehrani, inside the home and hearts of the family, both in times of triumph and in times of internal and external struggle. I would say 60% of my time on this film was listening and 40% was filming the story. This ratio, which on the surface appears to be ineffective for getting a film shot, ultimately got me 270 hours of authentic and intimate footage to work with.

Not only did I form a bond with Jesse, but also Priscilla and I became very close. She shared with me both on and off camera the pressure that she was experiencing from her father and the industry, and her longing to be a child. She too was conflicted, however, because she had grown addicted to the music and wanted nothing more than to realize the family dream. I witnessed Priscilla grow from a little girl into a self-expressed teenager, and it was magical to capture her discovering her own voice and taking control of her own destiny.

And that is when I stopped filming. When I knew that Priscilla’s voice would be heard and that the family would persevere together.

Shooting the film turned out to be the easy part. It was now up to our editor, Dave Abelson, Marjan and I to create a compelling, dynamic, and authentic story. I do not use the word “authentic” lightly. In documentary, to me, it is the most important thing, as you are trusted with people’s lives and given the power to manipulate their reality for your storytelling convenience. It was our priority and our biggest challenge to capture and edit a film that the family themselves would watch and say, “that is me, that is my story.” And thank God…they did!

So now, after 4 years of shooting, 8 months of editing, 2 months of music composition, and 3 tedious weeks of technical aspects of filmmaking that the general public know nothing about but filmmakers know all too well (cause everything goes wrong!), the film is done and ready for it’s world premiere.

(photo: leaving the lab with finished film in bag, 2am)