Fwd: Need to cancel meet up tonight, response to Ova demands, please see email.
Ovarian Psycos
From: "Ovarian Psycos - Documentary" <ovarianps...@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 9, 2016 11:53 AM
Subject: Need to cancel meet up tonight, response to Ova demands, please see email.
To: <xela...@gmail.com>, <Ovarian...@gmail.com>
Cc: "Joanna Sokolowski" <joannaso...@gmail.com>, "Kate Trumbull-LaValle" <ketru...@gmail.com>, <xoc...@gmail.com>
Hey Xela & Ovarian Psycos Core Collective,
(We are also copying Andi on this email since she is central to the film, wants to host screenings, and take part in upcoming festivals and events, and has been part of this process too.)
Unfortunately, it turns out Joanna won’t be back in time to make the meeting scheduled for tonight – she is still in Oregon. Our apologies. Since your last email, we have been pouring over your notes, requests and demands and wanted to address them clearly as soon as possible – so here it goes. Please see our written response to your email below, and as always, ask us any questions.
Please allow us to first state that one of our primary goals for this documentary project has been to produce a film that honored the story of the Ovas, showcased the daily fight that you all embark on everyday, and examine the personal reasons that motivate your activism. Making this film has been an honor and a privilege. In our minds, one of the most important markers of the film’s success was your acceptance of it. And after screening for Xela, Andi, and Evie individually, and then again, for the Ova collective members past and present, to hear that you loved, liked, supported it, felt like it honored your story and was useful to your mission, we were overcome with joy and relief. Knowing this ignited us with excitement about bringing this film into the world. We have always wanted for you – the collective, and specifically the women featured – to feel proud about your participation in this project.
Our relationship and sense of responsibility to the women in the film, especially Xela, Andi and Evie who share their lives so intimately, is deeply important to us. To see how our relationship with Xela and the current core collective has devolved – and devolved so quickly - since the announcement of the LA premiere is deeply upsetting for us professionally, but also makes us profoundly sad personally. We understand the film’s release has brought a tremendous amount of attention and stress to the Ovas during a time that the neighborhood is struggling within the context of rapid gentrification and displacement, on top of all the other issues you struggle against, like policy brutality and gendered violence. We also know that you are all busy, overworked, and fighting collectively to keep the Ovas and La Conxa afloat, to address the needs of the community, to organize Luna Rides, events and an annual Clitoral Mass, and are also all working hard individually for yourselves, partners and families. We admire your strength and commitment; we always have. We want to support you and your work. Please know we had hoped the film would be a contribution to the work, at the very least a historical record that documented and paid homage to your continued efforts, not a distraction from it.
We came to the collective four years ago as outsider filmmakers asking your permission to document not only the Ova story, but the personal stories and motivations that drives the work. And since our first meeting our relationship has been complex. Up until recently, and primarily through our relationship with Xela, we’ve been able to navigate these complexities side by side, working together, talking openly and honestly with respect and connecting with one another through our shared goals not just for the film itself, but what the film could say, what it could it do, how it could make an impact for folks in meaningful ways. It hasn’t always been seamless, but it’s been done with heart and care and kindness from both parties.
We do recognize the privilege and power we carry with our lens, our cameras, as documentary filmmakers, and above all, you have demanded that we be transparent about our goals and intentions, act responsibly, ethically, and be accountable for our actions. We want you to know we have taken this seriously, this is a core value to our work, it has been from the get-go, and we’ve tried to be good listeners over the years, make ourselves available, and while we may have made missteps, we have made our best effort to pursue this project – the film and our relationship with you - with integrity and honor our commitments to you.
As we all know, the documentary field has been a long interrogated practice. But it is also a genre that has been used in what we believe to be powerful, important and meaningful ways by radicals, feminists, activists, women & POC filmmakers. Most of our filmmaking mentors, who we’ve consulted closely with on this project, are women and filmmakers of color, who use the documentary form not to “objectively document or record” but to build an argument against injustice, to capture a moment in time otherwise forgotten, minimized or silenced, or craft a narrative to expand, challenge, or break apart our normative ways of thinking or relating to one another. But it’s an imperfect form and practice, and the best doc filmmakers we know operate within these murky waters and walk a fine line around the issues of race, class, representation, power, and privilege. We came to you knowing this, with eyes wide open, and made our best attempt to work on this project with integrity, honesty, and to be clear with the folks in the film, and the collective over the years.
We do understand the complexities and potential dangers of being outsider filmmakers, white feminists crafting a film about your work as women of color in East Los Angeles. And that is why off camera conversations, meetings, updates, check-ins have been a part of our filmmaking process from the beginning. That is why your verbal and legal written permission to appear in film has been so vital. Your final approval of the film was also so important, having Xela, Andi and Evie up with the film at its premiere was so important, and having Ovas tour with the film has been so important, as well as updating you about the status of the film during this festival run has been important to us. Even so, and despite all of this, we understand there is still confusion and the collective today, a wholly different collective than the one that originally signed on to this, has concerns.
We have deep respect and admiration for Xela, Andi and Evie, and the work the collective does and want to apologize for our part in any confusion about issues relating to the film and its distribution. We hope this email helps to answer your questions, and below we address your demands and the various issues you’ve raised.
Finally, we write this email with a tremendous amount of respect and deeply hope we can reconcile these issues and continue to move forward together with the film.
Your Demands:
Below we’ve tried to explain what we are able to do, and what we are not. We have thought long and hard about all of this, reached out to folks we trust for advise, have done a lot of reading and research. We’ve tried to make it as clear as possible, but please let us know if you have any questions.
FROM YOUR EMAIL: Kate and Joana own the licensing rights to the doc and its their ultimate decision whether they will include a legal document as in an addendum to rectify this shit.
Copyright/Ownership/ Film production funding/licensing:
We own the rights to the film, both versions of the film, the festival version at 73 minutes and the hour-long version for public television, still currently being edited. We do not own your stories, we do not own your life rights, we only own the film and the footage. This film is an independent project, conceived and created by us independently and as the producers and directors we are responsible for all our agreements, with individuals who appear in the film, with funders who gave us support, with our distributor, etc. We take all of the liability and the risk. For example, we’ve had liability insurance during production, and today we pay for an insurance policy called Errors and Omissions Insurance, to cover the release of the film. We are the creators of this film, and copyright and ownership for the film (the project, the program) is the basis for us to make our agreements. We cannot amend those agreements.
This film was funded and is a co-production of the Independent Television Service (ITVS) through its Open Call Initiative, and they funded over 89% of the film. Additional funds were raised through ITVS’s Diversity Development Fund, California Council for the Humanities, Pacific Pioneer Fund, two Kickstarter campaigns, and “Producers Cash” (an industry term for our own personal money). The ITVS funding is essentially a license deal with PBS, who will air an hour-long version of the film tentatively in May 2017 on public television. Essentially, ITVS gave us money to make the film in exchange for the option to screen it on PBS. We received the PBS offer in 2013, as you know and as we informed you then, via text message to Xela and in a meeting with the collective thereafter.
This TV version of the film is not complete and we are currently working on it now. Support from these funders pay for all production expenses of the film. Expenses include but are not limited salaries and day rates for producers, DP’s, editors, animator, associate producers, translator, transcriber, assistant editors, consultants, the cost of film gear, editing software, hard drives, per diems, travel, post production costs like color, sound edit, sound mix/design, legal, insurance, bookkeeping, office expenses, shipping, licensing footage and music, etc…during all stages of production, from research, pre-production, production, editing, and outreach. How the funds were to be spent from both Kickstarter campaigns in 2013 and 2016 are clearly outlined on our campaign pages and also in detail (attached).
FROM YOUR EMAIL: we expect all budgets and monies in and out the film to be made available for OPC's review…as in hard copies. *We want to see everything.
Budgets & Contracts:
Again, this film was conceived and created as an independent film and we have always managed all aspects of the project independently. We understand that the core collective want to understand more about the filmmaking process, and we are happy to answer your specific questions about the budgets and contracts, but we will not turn over our financials or contracts in hard copies.
FROM YOUR EMAIL: Profit share of all distribution- 100% to la conxa bank account that will therefore contribute to the endless unpaid and necessary work OPC continues to bare the brunt of.. we dont get to raise our kids kicking it at the house.. we work and then work some more.
First off, the making of this film has represented full time work for a majority of four years, and looking ahead into distribution, many more months will be spent with editing, packaging and promotion of the ITVS broadcast, deliverables, and accounting.
Secondly, we want to point out that no one featured in the film was paid for their participation in the film. This is the ethical standard practice in documentary to not pay for stories, and was important to us for journalist integrity. This has always been very clear. This was addressed at our very first meeting with the collective in the summer 2012, and has been reiterated over the years. It is vital – incredibly important to us that folks appeared in the film motivated by their own interest and/or belief in the value of the project and/or to share their stories with audiences, not because we paid them, or promised money in exchange for their participation, support, or endorsement of the film.
Though we didn’t feel comfortable directly paying for your participation, we recognize the hard unpaid work that the Ovas do, the time you have given us, and it has been personally important for us to contribute and support you over the years in ways that felt comfortable to us. After both of our Kickstarter campaigns in 2013 and 2016 to fund production, we offered a donation to the collective ($1,000 in 2013, and $1003 in 2016), we wanted to help support the Ovas and bought $372 worth of stickers for KS backers, we licensed and paid a fee for Xela’s music to appear in the film, and paid a fee to use Andi’s artwork in our animation, we’ve made personal contributions to fundraisers over the years to support the Ova’s work, including Tracy’s (from New Orleans) fundraiser for Ovarian Psycos back in 2013, Andi and Glo’s “Psychopath” journey back east, Joan’s recent D.C. trip, we bought several tickets for MCM’s dinner to recognize Ovarian Psycos last year.
As for profit sharing of potential sales, this request was first introduced to us by Xela during a phone conversation immediately after SXSW. We carefully considered this. We met with Xela on 3/21/16 at Blaze Pizza and told her we had no way of knowing if and when the film would recoup, but agreed that if the film were to make a profit after all expenses, including film production, outreach, distribution and promotional costs, we would consider donating a percentage of the proceeds of our net profit from distribution to the collective. We also shared a variety of suggestions for how we as filmmakers, and the film could potentially benefit the collective financially, please see our attached notes from this meeting.
To date, the film has not earned a profit, nor has it received money from the sale or exhibition of the film. Women Make Movies is releasing the film in their Fall catalogue this year, and will take between 30-70% of all sales (depending on what type of sale or exhibition, please see attached), then after that ITVS takes approximately 42% of our net sales since they funded over 89% of the project. The rest we use to pay off the film and our expenses.
Like most documentary films, we don’t expect to make much of a profit, if anything at all, but we have thoughtfully listened and considered your demands, and hear you that financially sustaining La Conxa is a priority and immediate concern for you now. We want to be responsive. We want you to feel good about your participation. Documentary filmmaking is a long and slow process, it is not lucrative, but we have tried to brainstorm a way the film could help financially support the Ovas and space without jeopardizing our own financial commitments or sustainability:
We can offer Ovarian Psycos collective a donation of 25% of net profit earned via Women Make Movies (our distributor) that Sylvia Frances Films (us the producers) receives for a term of two years, starting January 2017, no matter if the film recoups or not. We will take that loss if necessary. Net profits refers to profits we see after Women Make Movies and ITVS takes their cut, and after all distribution expenses (including but not limited to, subtitling, DVD creation, design, promotional costs, etc). Women Make Movies will send royalty statements to us twice a year in January and July. If you accept our donation, payouts to the Ovas would be sent January 2017, July 2017, January 2018, with a final payment in July 2018.
*Also, after the broadcast in 2017 we can donate DVDs for you to sell for individual use. You can keep all profits from those sales.
Documentary and the field of “Impact:”
For your consideration: Many documentary films are the centerpiece for impact campaigns. This is something we have talked with Xela about in the recent past, including the potential of using the documentary to reach and impact young women and women of color using the film Ovarian Psycos. If you are still interested in pursuing this we have a colleague, Sonya Childress, who works with folks who appear in documentary films, and filmmakers through Firelight Media. She most recently worked closely with many members of the Black Panthers who appeared in the PBS doc by Stanley Nelson, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/the-black-panthers-vanguard-of-the-revolution/).
You can check her bio out here: http://firelightmedia.tv/about/#_staff/3 and check out her twitter: https://twitter.com/SonyaChildress
She generously offered to meet with us/you if you all would have any interest in learning about the type of work she does, and thinking about how this film could be used in more impactful ways. We are not experts in this field, but she is, and she might have great ideas about using the film for deeper community engagement. If you would like us to set up a meeting, or connect her to you, we are more than happy to do so.
Press PR:
For your consideration: We know you have had to deal with the press quite a bit due to your own efforts, but also because of the film. As fans of the film, fans of the Ovas, Tracy and Eseel from After Bruce – they worked PR for our SXSW and LA premiere - have offered you as a collective a pro bono 90-minute session if you should so choose to use them. They are and have been a great resource to us, have social justice at the heart of their work, and we admire and respect their work. They know the doc world well and could be a great resource to you as well.
FROM YOUR EMAILL to be involved in the screenings as much as possible.
We would like this too. We would like to ask you: How do you want to use this film? And, how can we help you in your goals with this film? We think our goals (filmmakers and Ovas) can work in concert with one another. We know it takes a lot of work to organize screenings, dates, travel, potential screening fees, etc, which is why we brought on Women Make Movies. How can we work together, if that is your goal? Or how can we support your own efforts?
As you know, festivals and screening the film widely for us is important. Big tier festivals are great for press, but there are many smaller niche festivals that get a great engaged audience and have more targeted community audiences, like feminist film fests, LGBTQ film fests and film fests in Mexico and across Latin America. Generating interest for our PBS broadcast is important. Equally important is screening the film in a grassroots and community setting, educationally, etc.
If you are still interested, we’d love to set up a call with Xela and an Ova rep(s) to meet with Kristen Fitzpatrick from Women Make Movies. It is Kristen’s job to coordinate festival screenings, and community screenings. She knows we would like to prioritize Ova travel whenever funding is available. She is more than happy to accommodate this and help us strategize around these goals.
Many festivals continue to reach out (please see screenings are pending below need answer ASAP) – in fact we have a long list ready to accept the film (Milan, San Diego, Paris, New Orleans, and more). There will be times we as filmmakers will attend the festival or event or screening, but we can work this out case by case and can continue to prioritize travel accommodations for the women who appear in the film and/or Ovas when available. We will always offer the opportunity to travel with the film to Xela, Andi, and Evie, since they are central to the story of the film.
Kristen has also brainstormed a long list of potential community and activist groups who we can also work with to set up screenings and potentially use travel available from film festivals to support travel to these events, and I know the Ovas/Xela have your own connections. We shared her spreadsheet at our last meeting at La Conxa.
Please also know, the film will start to screen without us all in attendance, as it is a living film now in the world, it will be on PBS, and available to folks to buy, rent or screen. This is what we had always hoped and planned for. For us, distribution has been about sharing the film with a broad audience on a variety of platforms, and not just at festivals, but in universities, in communities, internationally, and on public television, and a distributor is the entity that helps disseminate the film into the world.
Communication & Transparency:
Since approaching
you four years ago we have made our best effort to be transparent about our intentions.
We have tried to always be up front that this was an independent film, meant
for a wide audience, for PBS, that it was both important to maintain editorial control,
but also to make a film that you would feel was truthful to your experience.
We have done our best to communicate clearly with Xela, Andi and Evie and the collective throughout this process, though we primarily communicated with Xela over the last four years since she has been so foundational to the film. Whenever there were concerns over the years, we have always tried to meet and resolve them promptly. Whenever there were questions, we made every effort to answer honestly and clearly. Perhaps we were not clear enough, but we were not dishonest.
To say we did not discuss distribution goals with you all or Xela is not the case. Before the premiere of the film, Xela and the filmmakers talked many times how to use the film educationally, how to use the film in a community setting, about festival submissions, and the potential for international sales. As mentioned, we met at Blaze Pizza with Andi, Joan and Xela before SXSW to discuss issues surrounding our Kickstarter, but also give a run down about festivals, screenings, the TV broadcast and potential distribution opportunities. After SXSW, Xela and Kate had a lengthy conversation on the phone about distribution, Kate told Xela about Women Make Movies and that we were thinking about signing with them. We talked about why we were learning toward signing with them – because they are a feminist non-profit committed to the same goals of the film that we are and that we do not have the funding, capacity or the experience to manage our own distribution. We signed with Women Make Movies to support and help manage the educational and screening goals of the film and help us manage the distribution. We then soon after met at Blaze Pizza with Xela again about distribution, discussed the different aspects – including educational screenings, film festivals and community screening. While in New York, we introduced Xela and Andi to Kristen at a dinner, a rep from our distributor Women Make Movies and she explained the role WMM would have with the film.
Considering
how much we had talked and planned, it is very difficult to hear that you feel
we are blatantly taking this film and somehow leaving you out intentionally. We
have made a concerted effort to include you in our plans. Prior to SXSW in October 2015, we
were having planning meetings with Xela at Holy Grounds about how the film
could be the center of an impact campaign to teach young women of color in the
neighborhood to tell their own stories in partnership with Echo Park Film
Center. We even brainstormed potential ELA
community partners and drafted a grant, listing Xela as the Project Director. We’ve
attached the grant draft to this email for your review.
Since March 2016 we began to send regular email updates about the status and questions relating to the film, please see emails attached. We invited Joan to our sound mixing after she expressed interest in how the film worked behind the scenes.
And there seems to be confusion about the LA premiere, though we had updated everyone about our LA plans even before being invited to Outfest, including a meeting at La Conxa with Adriana, Joan, Andi, and Joss soon after SXSW. In that meeting prior to securing an LA premiere we addressed ways in which we could show the film prior to the premiere if you had wanted, knowing folks might be impatient waiting for the film to come to ELA.
Now, we understand even with all of this, there is still confusion and clearly you are angry. This has been a busy, and confusing process, for us as well. And yes, we may have not communicated all of the moving parts clearly in your eyes, but please believe us when we say, that our ultimate goal has been to try to.
FROM YOUR EMAIL: to be AT THE TABLE from here on out for anything and everything related to documentary
When it comes to representing the film at screenings or events, opportunities to work around impact or develop curriculum, meetings with folks who connect with us directly and want to work on the issues of the film, of course, we will continue to immediately connect with you and work together. But in terms of our relationships with our funder ITVS, the broadcast with Independent Lens, or invitations to us as filmmakers, we will remain independent and autonomous from the collective. We want to work with the collective as a partner in the film, and will continue to be transparent about what’s going on with the film, but we cannot promise that you will be involved in all aspects, in everything related to the documentary.
Upcoming Screenings:
Need answer today: please let us know if you would like to be involved, or if we should move ahead on our own.
· Milano FF – September 8 – 18th – No travel, but $200 (Euro or dollars?), we asked for fee to donate to Ovas.
· San Diego/Exitos de Cine Latino/S. Bay Focus , They want to screen OVAPSY somewhere during 8/26-9/1, They can offer 2 rooms, w/2 beds each, for two nights, no travel. Here is a link to the event: http://sdlatinofilm.com/exitosdelcinelatino/
· Frameline Encore/Oakland Pride Thursday, 9/8, at the Piedmont Theatre in Oakland, they can offer 2 nights and prob travel. **this one may be lost, i am not 100% sure as their deadline was a week ago.
· Portland FF - Aug 29 – September 5 – no travel, no fee
· Portland theatrical weekend run, Oct 21-23 – want to do a Kickstarter to bring up Ovas, but need to know ASAP. – (We mentioned this last meeting, so we are confirmed, but do you want to attend? Need answer ASAP. Otherwise, will run with no guests. )
· Atlanta, Georgia – Nov – 10-12 *Film is a Finalist in Race Matters Conference put on by Working Films, possible filmmaker/Ovatravel, or skype, – Need to know ASAP
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In closing, we can’t say it enough, we respect you and your work. And this note is specifically for Xela: Xela, we have a tremendous amount of love for you. We value your friendship, we value your time, your efforts, we admire you and what you have accomplished. We are here and we hear you. We can never assume to understand what its like to be up on the screen, under the microscope, in front of audiences, in front of strangers, and then, after all that, to hear criticism or to be questioned about your relationship with us, or attacked, or slighted. Please know we are humbled by your strength and resilience and commitment to this work. We have always wanted to do right by you with this film. That’s why we are still here, and that is why we hope we can get back to an amicable place and move forward with plans for this film.
We know this email is long winded, but we hope it helps explain where we are coming from, and please believe that our honest interest is to resolve these issues between us.
With respect,
Kate & Joanna