Trevor Jenkins
‘Chasing the Elephant’
A young girl’s journey to stardom brings with it an elephant
sized anxiety that quite literally chases her through the streets
of New York in this fanciful entry from aspiring filmmaker Trevor
Jenkins.
Trevor Jenkins
‘Chasing the Elephant’
A young girl’s journey to stardom brings with it an elephant sized anxiety that quite literally chases her through the streets of New York in this fanciful entry from aspiring filmmaker Trevor Jenkins. The 28-year-old hopes to parlay the short into big screen success.
“I worked with (actor/producer) Harvey Keitel on ‘Red Dragon’ and on another independent called ‘Crime Spree,'” said Jenkins. “The feature version of ‘Elephant,’ which is called ‘Swimming with the Virgin,’ is being produced through his company. Right now It’s in that period of putting money together.”
Jenkins got his start making home movies as a teen. After enrolling in a college film class and discovering “that that’s what I’d been doing anyway,” he decided to pursue the art as a career. A graduate of Georgia’s Savannah College of Art and Design, he worked stints in casting and production before taping ‘Elephant’ in 2003. Production was completed in 2004, and he is currently working on a promotional trailer for the feature adaptation with actor Harry Van Gorkum.
Aside from its regular time slot, the film has been selected for screening Friday as part of the festival’s Juror’s Choice benefit.
Showing: The Granada Theatre, Saturday at 10:10am.
Sean Becker, ‘Parallel/Parallel’
San Benito High School graduate Sean Becker studied chaos and parallel theories to properly pose the question of what might happen if we ever truly met ourselves.
In a novel twist, the 23-year-old presented his film in a dual screen format, each frame following the same character in a different universe.
“On the right side things change and change and change from the left,” said Becker. “But they both end up in a park and they both sit down, and it turns out that they’re sitting on the same bench as their counterpart in the other universe. What happens when there is a moment where their universes combine?”
Becker’s career path got its start right here in the South Valley, where he took video production classes in high school. He started out as a business marketing major at San Jose State University, but quickly shifted his focus to reflect his passions. Most recently, he’s been creating pre-recorded videos and featurettes for UPN’s Seriously Unusual Television.
“Parallel/Parallel” is a Juror’s Choice selection and will be screened as part of a film festival benefit Friday as well as during it’s regularly scheduled run time.
Showing: The granada Theatre, Saturday at 1:10pm.
Warren Haack,
‘A Rough Cut Life’
Warren Haack’s “A Rough Cut Life” is a story nearly 15 years in the making, but this tale of narrow-gauge railway construction is a peek at the real old west. Snow drifts, derailment, hardship and pride marked the lives of the men who worked to build these lines, and Haack brings them to life through archival footage and still pictures.
“In 1990, I met these two brothers that were pretty old retired steam locomotive engineers. They started telling me their stories and I said, ‘I need to preserve this,'” said Haack. “I don’t know why, but I started interviewing them on tape.”
The finished product is a piece that includes footage dating back to 1930, which has been challenging to restore.
“This lady in Placerville had some 8mm footage that was from around 1935,” said Haack. “It was in terrible shape, but I sent it off to a lab where they washed it and cured it six times, and it came out beautifully.”
Haack, worked for eight years as a sound designer for Harcourt Brace Films, and is a film professor at San Francisco State University. He began his career as a documentarian with 1970’s “Selective Service System” and now works on personal projects through his company Tuolumne Films.
Showing: The Granada Theatre, Saturday at 1:00pm
