By James DeWeese
Motivated by a desire to give artistic form to their ideas, neighborhood residents in their teens, 20s, 30s and 40s assembled in the meeting room at the Sunnyside Community Services building on 39th Avenue last Thursday for the first evening of a four-part filmmaking workshop.With three meetings to go in the series of free workshops organized by the Humanist Center of Cultures, a community organization dedicated to cross-cultural understanding, participants will delve into the minutiae of filmmaking. The first class in the series headed up by Humanist Center volunteer Shinichi Murota served as an introduction to the vocabulary of filmmaking. The aim, Murota said, was to ensure that all the participants shared the same language. The second class was to address pre-production issues, such as casting, rehearsal and fund-raising. The third will focus on production, the actual process of shooting the movie. And the fourth will look at post-production, including editing and distribution.”There is no set goal for the workshop,” Murota said. “This is a place where people with enthusiasm get together and work on the project.”Ultimately, the participants, whose experience ranged from half an hour with a video camera to working as a production engineer for a Hungarian cable network in the city, will produce their own videos for the Fourth Annual Sunnyside Film Festival.The festival, slated to open Sept. 17 in Sunnyside Gardens and continue on Sept. 18 at Doughboy Park in Woodside, will feature shorts of up to 20 minutes focusing on the topics of diversity. Though the films are short, they are no small feat. Murota said a 20-minute film often requires as much as a week of shooting and two weeks of editing.Sunnyside Gardens, a planned community from the early 20th century, was laid out with large central gardens to promote interaction and communication among residents, said attendee Deirdre Brennan. “This is really like a rebirth of that,” said the 30-something actress and screenwriter. “The film festival is sort of like a modern way of doing this.”Brennan said she had dabbled in script writing and came to the seminar looking for the push she needed to translate her ideas into reality. Johnny Torres, a Sunnyside resident who was born in Colombia, said he had no filmmaking experience but a lot of ideas. The graphic designer and entrepreneur said he wanted to create a film rooted in the everyday interaction of people from different backgrounds in his multicultural neighborhood.Murota said the idea of the workshop is for relative newbies, such as Brennan and Torres, to partner with and learn from more experienced filmmakers.”I think I have some knowledge to share with you, but filmmaking is not my field,” Murota said. “This is a workshop not a class, so feel free to share in the workshop at any time.”Robert Koszta will be doing just that. The 36-year-old Sunnyside resident works for a Hungarian cable network in the city. Already familiar with digital editing techniques, he volunteered to share his expertise and Macintosh laptop with the class.As the participants got acquainted, they rattled off their ethnic backgrounds which ranged from second-generation Irish and Spanish to Romanian and Chinese. “Jersey,” 40-year-old Mark Rey said with a straight face, drawing laughs from his classmates, whose ethnic background was one of more than 10 represented.That is at least in part why the filmmaking seminars and yearly festival dedicated to diversity work so well in Sunnyside, said Murota, who conceived of the idea four years ago.”The interesting thing about Sunnyside is you go out on the street and you get diversity so easily,” Murota said. “You can shoot anywhere.”More information on the Humanist Center of Cultures is available at the organization's Web site: sunnyside.centerofcultures.info.Reach reporter James DeWeese by e-mail at news@timesledger.com, or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 157.
