2011 Frozen Film Festival Winners

Music Video: Demolition Disco, by the band Big Mama, director Kronck (Maximillian Gerlach, Jessican Benzing)

International Film: It's Natural to Be Afraid, director Justin Doherty

Music Documentary: Last Fast Ride- The Life and Death of a Punk Goddess, director Lilly Scourtis Ayers

Environmental Film: Chasing Water, director Peter McBride

Filmstock Film: Fruit Flies, director Christine Lucy Latimer

Digital Film: I am..., director Ramesh Devu

Feature Documentary: The Bellman Equation, director Gabriel Leif Bellman

Short Documentary: Fixation, director Alex Trudeau Viriato

Animation: Red Rider's Lament, director Jeremy Bessoff

First Time Director: Ocean Monk, director Sanjay Rawal

Student Director: Sudden Death, director Adam Hall

Best Surf/Skate Film: Shaped, director Walter Georis

The Frozen Film Festival will take place from July 7th-9th, 2011 in San Francisco, CA.
What does beat-boxing, porn, global warming, Jack Johnson, Henry Rollins, animation, famous mathematician Richard Bellman, punk music, and the band The Replacements all have in common? This July, they are all FROZEN.

The fifth annual S.F. Frozen Film Festival showcases the year's best new independent avant-garde pop culture films!

The 2011 lineup dives deep into the world of the local SF Theater scene, hip hop & beat-boxing, fixed gear biking, mathematics, surfing, erotic film-making - and pairs it with hilarious short, dramatic, documentary, and animated film collections.

Thursday, July 7th, 2011
7:00pm
SF FFF OPENING NIGHT FILMMAKER MIXER
Live performances by Sara Judge, Zedekiah Child, and other local talented musical guests who are helping to kick off the 2011 festival opening night! There will also be art, interesting people, drinks, special announcements, friends, fun and even some networking. Come help kick off our 2011 festival in style.

Location: PresidioSpace, 249 9th (near Howard), San Francisco, CA

5:00pm - Adventures of an Earthling
Friday, July 8th [Roxie Theater, SF]
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Adventures of an Earthling - Documentary filmmaker Mishara Canino-Hussung follows her husband as he investigates an old family story about the role his mother played in a series of mysterious sightings in upstate New York in the early 1990s. Her husband, fellow filmmaker Bill Hussung, is skeptical of the stories, but hopes to please his mother as she battles cancer in New York City. What follows is a quirky and contemporary look at the power of mythology, with two surprise endings that are sure to leave audiences wondering about the true nature of the mysterious lights in the night sky just north of New York City. Directed by: Mishara Canino-Hussung.

6:30pm Best Green Documentaries of 2011
Friday, July 8th [Roxie Theater, SF]
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Save Earth, Save Us - In a laboratory, a professor shows his students an experiment. He puts a frog in the water, and boils it slowly. It dies without realizing the change of temperature at the end. On the other hand, the global warming dries an old lady to death without letting her realize. Directed by: Tatsuro Manno.
Chasing Water - Follow the Colorado River, source to sea, with photographer Pete McBride who takes an intimate look at the watershed as he attempts to follow the irrigation water that sustains his family's Colorado ranch, down river to the sea. Traversing 1500 miles and draining seven states, the Colorado River supports over 30 million people across the southwest. It is not the longest or largest U.S. river, but it is one of the most loved and litigated in the world.

Today, this resource is depleted and stressed. Follow its path with an artistic, aerial view on a personal journey to understand this national treasure. McBride teamed up with his bush-pilot father to capture unique footage and also shadowed the adventure of Jon Waterman who became the first to paddle the entire length of the river. Directed by: Pete McBride.
Sick-Amour - Sick-Amour is a 33-minute documentary / love story celebrating the forlorn and lonely tree that Joel Tauber adopted in the middle of a giant parking lot at the Rose Bowl. Directed by: Joel Tauber.

7:30pm - Firewall of Sound + Local Music Videos
Friday, July 8th [Roxie Theater, SF]
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MP3 format and file-sharing have dramatically changed the music business, for better and worse. Devin DiMattia scores some impressive interviews in his feature debut, part love-letter to music, part intelligent explanation of a difficult gray area. Firewall of Sound balances hope and hopelessness by telling the story of an industry through the experiences of its people, with a strong lean toward independent music. Members of The Mountain Goats, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Superchunk, as well as bloggers, managers, club owners, and others speak up on their experiences in a landscape where the idea of making money by making music is all but out the window.

Buried amidst the level-headed hypothesizing and fascinating coin-counting are nuggets of musical bliss, such as watching Julian Koster of The Music Tapes and Neutral Milk Hotel create beauty with a bow and a saw in front of a rapturous audience or hearing a winking Perry Wright discuss the audience's need for their musicians to suffer in their names. Directed by: Devin DiMattia.

Music Video: SERGE LE BONOBO
Directed by: Eric Boadella
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Serge le Bonobo is a French late-60s freak-beat song. The music video was shot during the San Francisco Love Parade; let's get this party started! In the streets of San Francisco one can find a place to be themself.

Music Video: The Box
Directed by: Michael Schrecker
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The Box, the first music video from The Fingermonsters album, 'Monsta Mash'. A combination of stop motion, live action, and green screen effects, with a low-fi feel for the seriously uptempo music. Guaranteed to bring a smile to every face, and beats to every finger.

9:00pm
Last Fast Ride - The Life, Love and Death of a Punk Goddess
Friday, July 8th [Roxie Theater, SF]
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Last Fast Ride - The Life, Love and Death of a Punk Goddess - She was smart, beautiful and talented, and as lead singer of the Insaints, would-be rock star Marian Anderson reigns as one of the Bay Area's most provocative and controversial lead singers of the '90's punk scene. The fetish model and dominatrix quickly became known for her wild and lewd live sex acts during performances, which often involved other women and bananas. Narrated by pop-culture icon, Henry Rollins, Last Fast Ride - the Life, Love and Death of a Punk Goddess is the cautionary tale of the youth, tormented adolescence and tragic untimely demise of this legendary performer. Directed by: Lilly Ayers.

10:30pm Best Animated Shorts of 2011
Friday, July 8th [Roxie Theater, SF]
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Kidnap - A little chicken is late to school, but her excuse is too wild to believe: getting kidnapped on the way to school. This chicken is a really good actress and Kung fu master! After her explanation, you have to believe that her adventure is so true. Directed by: Sijia Luo.

Surviving Hunger - This is a short film animation produced by Song, Balgum. The animation is placed on a desert-like landscape where there are just sands and dry air with no foods. I am using two characters for this storyline. One is a big frog-looking character who wonders around for food. The other is a cute little character that comes towards the big character to use himself as a bait. The story is going to be a conflict between these two characters. Directed by: Song Belgum.

Gift - A chicken who has a special ability escapes from a chicken cage. While he runs away from a butcher, the chicken's special ability comes out dramatically. Directed by: Shaun Kim.

Triboluminescence - Triboluminescence is an investigation of pulsating, revolving geometrical forms that unfold from an infinitely small origin point. Directed by: Ben Ridgway.

The Girl And The Fox - A young girl must track a mysterious fox through a foreboding wilderness. Directed by: Tyler J. Kupferer.

Pirate Scum - See their sinful lust explode with dirty pirate deeds! Directed by: Patrick Lake.

Demolition Disco - Big Mama (by. KRONCK) - The music video 'Big Mama' is a satiric examination on sound and video levels dealing with conventions regarding beauty & aesthetics. Enter the realm of digital insanity when a big pack of humor strikes dark & dirty electronic bass-music attitude! Big Mama HA HA! Directed by: Maximilian Gerlach.

Over There Is Over Here - Over There Is Over Here explores the dialectics of time, space, real and unreal to define and critique the position of those who have left Iran in the last 4-5 years in relation to current political prisoners in Iran. The project uses 3D animation and data glitch as a way to illustrate presence-less presence and to show the collapse of time. In my animation, the concept of time is used as a non-linear and collapsed concept in which the past and present have come together in order to create an unreal reality. Through a self-reflexive narrator, Over There Is Over Here alternates between the literary definition of a third person narrator to my actual, physical third person role outside Iran as narrator of the story. Directed by: Morehshin Allahyari.

The Birds Upstairs - Frustrated attempts to bear children overwhelm the lives of an aristocratic, avian couple in the early nineteenth century. Directed by: Christopher Jarvis.

Out on a Limb - A young bird reaching out, vulnerable to the unknown, craving freedom from the struggle, against the conformity imposed upon by the flock's expectations. Directed by: Daisy Lin.

Something Left, Something Taken - Everyone who enters a crime scene, leaves something behind and takes something away. Something Left, Something Taken is a 10 minute animated dark comedy about a vacationing couples' encounter with a man they believe to be the Zodiac Killer. Directed by: Max Porter + Ru Kuwahata.

11:30pm Best Horror/SCI-FI/Thriller Shorts of 2011
Films: Capsule, SAE, Clemency.
Friday, July 8th [Roxie Theater, SF]
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Capsule - Two astronauts struggle to stay alive as their crashed space capsule slowly runs out of oxygen. Directed by: Antonio Altamirano.

SAE - In a quiet hospital a little girl (Sae) waits for her father to die. In her sadness a dark world emerges. Soon Sae begins to see hallucinations of demons and runs wild in the hospital. A psychologist (Dr. Elliot Sinclair) has been assigned to Sae to figure out what is wrong with her. In time Dr. Sinclair realizes that these hallucinations are far more real then ever imagined. Directed by: Christopher Oroza.

Clemency - A reporter confronts a sadistic killer who takes her on a terrifying thrill ride she will never forget. Directed by: Joseph Albabese.

Saturday, July 9th, 2011
12:00pm Best Experimental Art House Shorts of 2011
Saturday, July 9th [Roxie Theater, SF]
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The Love Trilogy - The stereotypical private-school film student: vain, obsessive, socially inept. This film offers the viewer a glimpse into the life of a promising New York film student through a compilation of his most personal works. Directed by: John Kersten.

Fruit Flies - his film seals under perforated 16mm splicing tape all of the fruit flies that drowned in the vinegar trap on my kitchen counter last summer. Directed by: Christine Lucy Latimer.

Lake Mandala - A seascape is reconstructed as a pattern of concentric circles. Ambient sounds evoke the lakeshore, as the rhythmic form slowly expands, evolves, and transforms. Directed by: Steve Wood.

kai'e'e makani - This surf film creates a collage of images and sounds collected from the north and south of Cornwall, England. Part sound installation, the film concentrates on the rhythm of waves from above and below the surface. The film aims to display a more original and dynamic approach to surf film sound design. Directed by: Sophie Long.

Hot Velcro Action - Rrrrip. Rrrrrrrrrrip. Rip. rip. rip rip rip ripripip...
The luscious tearing sounds build to a thundering crescendo in the title sequence of this surprising short from first-time film-maker, Michael Cantor. Welcome to Hot Velcro Action, a bizarre and spell-binding odyssey of image and sound created from the movement of 5217 individually decorated velcro dots in stop-motion across a 24x17 grid. When the ripping subsides, the pixel-bots assemble, mining the velcro landscape for fleeting fragments of the human story -- traffic on the 101, a pristine mountain lake, a gorgeous ass. In the end, the clamorous din of memes collapses into nothing. And starts again. Directed by: Michael Cantor.

Dias De Los Muertos - Stop motion animation celebrating the art and themes of 'Dia de los Muertos'. Directed by: Scott Renk.

B'raesheet - An animated setting to music of an ancient myth of the experience of a vision experienced prior to birth. Directed by: John Teton.

Waning - Waning is a short film about the connection of life and light. The story follows an aspiring model who one day meets a photographer with a unique portfolio, seeking beauty in death. Directed by: Gina Haraszti.

You Cannot Learn To How To Be Honest - Confronting the disturbing footage he's been tasked with editing, a filmmaker attempts to find a catharsis in the chaos by turning the images loose on himself and his apartment. Directed by: Jason Oppliger.

12:45pm Best Surf Films of 2011
Films: Ocean Monk, Shaped.
Saturday, July 9th [Roxie Theater, SF]
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Ocean Monk - Ocean Monk chronicles the inner and outer search of a group of monks who make their home in New York City. Students of the late Indian teacher, Sri Chinmoy who lived in Queens for over 40 years, this band of friends discovered the beauty and power of the nearby surfing beaches and incorporated their love for the ocean into their search for enlightenment. Shot in HD, Ocean Monk explores the ideals which drive their life as well as the pounding winter surf which sustains them. Featuring music from Sigur Ros. Appearances by Kelly Slater, Jack Johnson and Titus Kinimaka. Directed by: Sanjay Rawal.

Shaped - This documentary film will pay tribute to the men and women of the surf world that were there in the 1960s, working in the trenches, creating and un-knowingly shaping the future of surfing as we know it today. This handful of influential innovators had no idea at the time how their work would change the lives of millions of people through their innovative thinking and commitment to their craft. Directed by: Walter Georis.

2:10pm Best Short Documentaries of 2011
Films: Fixation, Challenging Impossibility.
Saturday, July 9th [Roxie Theater, SF]
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Fixation - The documentary following single speed cyclists through The Bay Area and Los Angeles, and for the first time covering all aspects: City Riders, Messengers, Velodromes, Freestyle, Bike Shops, Bike Polo, Brakeless and more. Discover the passion, freedom and excitement behind only having one gear. Directed by: Alex Trudeau Viriato.

Challenging Impossibility - What role can inner peace play in life? Can it help us combat age, fatigue and depression? Peace advocate and spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy believed it could. In fact, he had so much faith in the power of inner peace that he dedicated his life to demonstrating that peaceful people could lead to a peaceful world. Through a dazzling variety of activities from art, literature and music to diplomacy, meditation and humanitarian aid he fostered peace amongst individuals in the hope that it would inspire nations to peace. In 1985 he transformed this philosophy of rapt introspection into a powerful challenge to impossibility.

At the age of 54 he took up weightlifting. Over the ensuing years his achievements didn't lessen, rather with age came increased strength. Sri Chinmoy defied all notions of age being a barrier to physical development. In fact, at the age of 76 he set personal bests in a number of lifts, not measured in the tens or hundreds of pounds, but in the thousands. Challenging Impossibility illustrates that one should never give up, that we can write and rewrite our history through inspired enthusiasm and a faith in our inmost capacities.

This 28-minute short film features bodybuilding and strength legends Bill Pearl, Frank Zane, Hugo Girard, Mike Katz and Dan Lurie as well as nine-time Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis. Challenging Impossibility also features music by Explosions in the Sky and Arvo Pärt as well as appearances by Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Sting and Susan Sarandon. Directed by: Natabara Rollosson and Sanjay Rawal.

3:25pm Best Comedic Shorts of 2011
Saturday, July 9th [Roxie Theater, SF]
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Boys and Girls - Boys & Girls is a classic story about a guy and a girl going through the anxious rituals of preparing for a first date—with a twist!
Directed by: Chris Tipton-King.

Bagtax - Bag Tax is a black-and-white silent film about one tax-adverse woman's journey to avoid paying the new DC Bag Tax. As she slowly collects 'free' pennies from various friends and strangers, her resolve to avoid the tax results in increasingly manic behavior until the startling and hilarious conclusion. The film features a cast and crew entirely comprised of DC talent as well as a completely original score. Directed by: J.W.Crump.

Do I? - Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free. Come along on this journey of fear, anxiety and panic. We fight our battles everyday, but the greatest battle we need to fight is within ourselves. Artists Aloud productions presents 'do I?' : A roller coaster ride into the mind of madness and one man's journey of introspection. For the first-time ever he faces his biggest enemy: himself. Directed by: Vikram Ahuja.

Balls - A pseudo-intellectual redneck with the gift of gab, Billy, can't help but buy things. Wen the pawnshop owner is tired of his brother-in-law's bullshit. A lurker comes in with a VHS porno. Billy buys it. A stripper comes in with an fake engagement ring. Billy buys it. A musician comes in with a key-tar, Billy tries to buy, but Owen fires him. As Billy's leaving, an armed robbers comes in. And Billy talks the robber out of robbing the store and buys his gun. Billy keeps his job. Owen turns a profit. And the robber gets his money. Then Billy shots the robber. Directed by: Jeremy Smith.

Sudden Death - Los Angeles has been overtaken by a virus known as Sudden Death Syndrome, a disease that causes its victim to die suddenly and has only one symptom... spontaneously breaking into well-choreographed song and dance. Directed by: Adam Hall.

Shiny Thing - Harriet Kitchener's got the shine factor; she's a standout, a star. But this time, Lochlan is not going to let his mother steal the show. Directed by: Lisa Gloufchis.

4:30pm Best Dramatic Shorts of 2011
Saturday, July 9th [Roxie Theater, SF]
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51st & Baltimore - 51st and Baltimore is a humorous short film that explores the hidden complexities of the simple task of crossing a street. With just enough irony, cheap laughs and quantum mechanics makes 51st and Baltimore a lighthearted and fun film to watch. Directed by: Philip Collins.

I Am… - What you see is NOT what you see. Directed by: Ramesh Devu.

Unfaithfully Yours - Unfaithfully Yours is a tragic tale of love, marriage and deception. Directed by: Chaya Supannarat.

It's Natural To Be Afraid - Mya is coming into this country. Sam is coming out of mourning. Ryan is coming into adulthood. Are any of them where they want to be? Challenged to regain his life following a period of deep mourning, Sam steps back into the world at exactly the same time Mya arrives in town from Israel. Their lives seem destined to just miss each other until a young man, unsure of his own place in the world, intervenes dramatically. Directed by: Justin Doherty.

Red Rider's Lament - A tragicomic Western animation employing plastic cowboys and construction paper sets to explore the enactment of masculinity in the Old West. Directed by: Jeremy Bessoff.

After the Shearing - In AFTER THE SHEARING, a young girl living on a sheep farm learns of her mother's battle with cancer and tries to save her by making a magical potion. Directed by: Vanessa Rojas.

Controlled Burn - When Olivia Browning's husband, Hugh, is ravaged by Alzheimer's Disease, she must make a decisive choice to determine his future, as she attempts to reconstruct the past. Directed by: Dan Van Wert.

6:05pm Beatboxing - The Fifth Element of Hiphop + Malcolm X
Saturday, July 9th [Roxie Theater, SF]
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Malcolm X (Music Video) - I (Jesse Rosenberg) was asked by the hip-hop group Stormshadowz to create a video for their new song 'Malcolm X.' I included scenes from protests in Oakland following the jury verdict on the Oscar Grant murder case, in front of a Malcolm X mural in San Francisco, and interesting local spots in Oakland and Berkeley. Directed by: Jesse Rosenberg.

Beatboxing - The Fifth Element of Hiphop (Music Documentary) - It was in the late 70s that a youth culture evolved in the poorer parts of New York which combined several disciplines under the name of Hip Hop. Apart from the four classic elements of Graffiti writing, DJing, Breakdancing, and Rapping, the musical side of this culture was enhanced by a fifth element called 'Beatboxing'. From the hardship of poverty and the lack of instruments, a pioneer was inspired to imitate drum rhythms with his mouth - his brilliance creating the term 'Human Beatbox'. The documentary integrally covers a variety of musical technical abilities. Beatboxing has become a multilingual and diverse instrument applied in all genres of music. The documentary shows how this modern style of music has spread and how it continues to enrich the entertainment world. Directed by: Klaus Schneyder.

7:10pm Dad Made Dirty Movies
Saturday, July 9th [Roxie Theater, SF]
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Dad Made Dirty Movies - A tribute to the greatest erotic filmmaker in the US: A.C. Stephen. Having fled from communist Bulgaria when his name was still Stephen C. Apostolof, Stephen shot to stardom in the Hollywood of the 60s with innocent soft porns. Together with his close friend Ed Wood, he became the father of sexploitation cinema - erotic entertainment before the liberalization of pornography. Directed by: Jordan Todorov.

8:15 The Bellman Equation
Saturday, July 9th [Roxie Theater, SF]
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The Bellman Equation - What is the Bellman Equation? This film searches for the mathematician who helped invent the Atom Bomb and invented the field of dynamic programming while being persecuted by McCarthy. A 12 year odyssey by the grandson of Richard Bellman, to solve the many issues surrounding Richard Bellman's life and death. Bellman remained an enigmatic figure to all who knew him, and his stature as one of the great mathematicians in history brings his grandson to some interesting revelations. Directed by: Gabriel Bellman.

10:00pm Color Me Obsessed, a film about The Replacements
Saturday, July 9th [Roxie Theater, SF]
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Color Me Obsessed, a film about The Replacements - Director Gorman Bechard brings an extraordinary vision to a unique filmmaking challenge with COLOR ME OBSESSED, the first documentary on the influential '80s indie-rock band, The Replacements. Combining the band's mystique with the passion of their fans, Bechard made a music documentary with no music and not one single image of the band. 'People believe in god without ever seeing or hearing him. I'd like viewers to believe in the band that way.' Rockers (Colin Meloy, Craig Finn, Goo Goo Dolls), journalists (Robert Christgau, Legs McNeil), fans both famous and not, Bechard interviews the believers and delivers the potentially true story of The Replacements, America's last best band. Despite containing not one note of music, COLOR ME OBSESSED is a doc that really rocks! Directed by: Gorman Bechard.