The Judy Finelli Project (working title)
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CLIP_for_WEBSITE.mp4
Images
Website
http://www.denkerfilmworks.com
Topics
Arts & Culture: Theatrical Movement
Health: Disease/treatment
Human Development: Children, Youth
Human Rights: Disability
Budget
Raised to date: $52,982.00
Estimate to complete: $300,000.00
Total Estimated Budget: $352,982.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 04/16/2009
Status
Production
Media Type
Video
Project End Use
TV
Key Personnel
Lisa Denker
director/producer
Growing up in a family of artists and designers, Lisa was always making things with her hands and developing her visual skills. Lisa studied film-making at L.A City College and later at the Art Center College of Design film program. Unable to afford the cost of film school, Lisa went directly into the Los Angeles film industry, working as an Art Director & Set Decorator. She worked on features & productions such as: Gas, Food and Lodging (Dir. Alison Anders); the Grammy Award winning Ain't It Heavy music video for Melissa Etheridge, and was the Set Decorator on Citizen Ruth (Dir. Alexander Payne). She also worked on union films such as Warner Brothers Batman Returns (Dir. Tim Burton). Following her move to the Bay Area, Lisa pursued directing and videography, working on industrials, educational films and documentaries.
Lisa Denker’s Heart of the Sea / Kapolioka’ehukai2003, a one hour portrait of Hawaiian legend Rell Sunn, was broadcast nationally on PBS’s The Independent Lens, as well as Broadcast internationally. The film has garnered many awards, including PBS’s Independent Lens Audience Award 2003, the Audience Award Best Documentary Feature at the San Francisco International Film Festival 2003, the Audience Award at the Newport Beach Film Festival, the Aloha Spirit Award at the Hawaii International Film Festival 2002 and Best Documentary Award at the Ashland Independent Film Festival.
Bobby Johnston
composer
Bobby Johnston (Composer) is quickly earning a reputation as one of the most unique composers working in independent film today. Bobby records exclusively with acoustic instruments and performs every note of music himself. Bobby uses instruments in both traditional and unorthodox ways, seeking out fresh orchestrations and performance techniques, giving each film an effective, individual, musical voice. Bobby’s credits include several award-winning documentaries and independent features, and has been featured extensively on the long-running NPR program "This American Life.
Outreach/Engagement Plan(s)
Funders
| Name | Amount | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Private contributors | $10,982.00 | 01/01/2008 | |
| The Fleishhacker Foundation | $7,000.00 | 01/01/2007 | |
| Creative Work Fund | $35,000.00 | 01/01/2006 |
Location
508 Talbot Avenue
Albany, 94706
Short Synopsis
The Judy Finelli Project (working title) is a one hour documentary revealing Judy’s influential contribution to the American New Circus Movement through her co-founding of the San Francisco School of Circus Arts. While juggling Multiple Sclerosis, Circus, and searching for a remedy, circus now offers her a unique antidote.
Description/Treatment
The film interweaves live-action, interviews, archival footage and photographs, comprising ten chapters: 1. Ritual & Repetition, 2. Proclivity, 3. A Slavic Seed, 4. The Pickles, 5. Circus Deluge, 6. Words Become Arrows, 7. The Judy Club, 8. Drop Away, Come Forward, 9. Send In The Clowns, and 10. Antidote.
Judy's childhood influences and interests evolve into her focus on circus arts. In the 1960's and 1970's she performs as a juggler, when circus was breaking away from the traditional three-ring circus. American circus froze in the cliche of “The-Greatest-Show-on-Earth” spectacle. In the rebellious '60s the ring dissolves and circus becomes accessible; in the '70s, the influence of the touring Moscow Circus elevates circus to an art, revolutionizing America’s concept of what circus can become. Judy, traveling to Russia in 1970, visits Russia’s celebrated national circus schools. The seed is planted, circus concepts she discovers on this visit never leave Judy; in 1984 she and Wendy Parkman co-found the San Francisco School of Circus Arts.
Judy, as a performer, joins the innovative Pickle Family Circus in 1982, which was in the avant-garde was of the New Circus Movement. She has a child, and in 1984 Judy and Wendy co-found the Pickle Family Circus School. She becomes Artistic Director of the Pickle Family Circus in 1987. In 1989, Judy has an MRI and a spinal tap revealing that she has Multiple Sclerosis. Due to her illness, she resigns as Artistic Director in 1991. Needing more than Western medicine seems to offer, Judy, in her pursuit of answers to her illness immerses herself in numerous alternative therapies.
In 2004, faced with her own mortality, having exhausted her search in alternative medicine, and with her health in full advanced MS, she realizes that she still has much to contribute despite being bound to a wheelchair. She returns to the SanFrancisco School of Circus Arts as a teacher-mentor, a calling that takes Judy beyond the sharing of her creative performing experience with these students, plumbing deeper realms that connect to survival. The profound effect of her work with the school mirrors the richly nourishing nature of circus.
The film ends at magic hour, with the camera slowly retreating from an extreme close-up of Judy's face. With Judy in the foreground, the bay and Golden Gate Bridge behind her, we hear softly the ambient sounds of the bay accompanying her voice-over:
“Things are rarely ever the way they should be. One tries andfails…
We need the circus. We need to see limits being pushed, to see the clowns…”
Music enters, the view continues to widen, revealing her alone in her wheelchair, on a pier, inside a red circus ring-curb with the Golden Gate Bridge behind her. The image continues with the credit roll, fade to black.
Click here to ask for more information about this project: