January/February 2006

Watching 2,000 short films in four months isn’t something you take on in your free time. It requires a finely honed system. For Roberta Munroe, one of the Sundance Film Festival’s two short film programmers, that system resembles an assembly line of video playback equipment. Since 2001, Munroe has spent an enormous chunk of her time from August to November ensconced in her LA apartment, situated amidst a television on a wheeling cart, her DVD-enabled laptop, two DVD players (one all-region, one region 1), and two VCRs (one PAL, one NTSC).

System Failure: Violence, Abuse and Neglect in the California Youth Authority has all the elements you’ve come to expect from an earnest, well-intentioned documentary. There are heartrending interviews with young people who have been incarcerated in California’s juvenile prisons, their parents, and the advocates who work with them. These interviews are well lit and seamlessly edited.

In the heart of San Francisco’s Japantown at the Radisson Miyako Hotel, a roomful of filmmakers and community activists celebrated the 25th anniversary of a not-for-profit organization that funds, exhibits, and distributes Asian Pacific American film.

In October of 2000, my then 20-year-old brother Jonathan was sent to the oncology unit of Massachusetts General Hospital from the Tufts University campus infirmary after a month of persistent head and neck aches and a “suspicious” blood test. While in the waiting room, he stopped a nurse to ask what the word “oncology” meant. Less than 24 hours later he was diagnosed with leukemia.

Dear Doc Doctor:

I’m in my first week of editing, and I have this horrible feeling that my 100 hours of footage won’t be enough even for a short. How can I stretch my film beyond the short format?