News & Announcements

SF State's 48th annual Film Finals honors accomplished and neophyte filmmakers on May 16

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Laura Constantino, (415) 573-9917, SFSUfilmfestival@gmail.com

SF State's 48th annual Film Finals honors accomplished and neophyte filmmakers on May 16 Juried screening features top student films, opening remarks by Oscar-winning alum Steven Okazaki, and celebration of retiring professors Jim Kitses and Pat Ferrero

SAN FRANCISCO, March 26, 2008 -- The Cinema Department at San Francisco State University (SF State) presents the 48th edition of Film Finals: a showcase of the best student short movies as selected by a committee of faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students. The event will take place in the McKenna Theater, located in the Creative Arts Building on the SF State campus at 1600 Holloway Ave., on May 16 from 7 to 10 p.m. A reception with complimentary food and wine will precede the event from 5.30 to 6.30 pm in room 153 in the Creative Arts Building.

"Film Finals is created and produced by the next wave of groundbreaking filmmakers," said Professor Steve Ujlaki, chair of the Cinema Department. This year's Film Finals will also feature opening remarks by Steven Okazaki, SF State alum and Academy Award winning documentary filmmaker, and will honor the remarkable careers of two SF State cinema professors: Pat Ferrero and Jim Kitses.

Okazaki will open the 48th Film Finals Award Ceremony. After graduating from the SF State Cinema Department in 1976, Okazaki started working in children's programming for Churchill Film in Los Angeles. After the production of his first documentary Survivors, Okazaki's career has been an escalation of success: nominated for an Academy Award in 1995 for Unfinished Business and in 2006 for The Mushroom Club, he actually won the Oscar for Best Short Documentary in 1991 with Days of Waiting, the story of artist Estelle Ishigo, one of the few Caucasians to be interned with the Japanese Americans during World War II. After producing various successful documentaries for PBS and a narrative feature, Steven started a ten-year collaboration for HBO, where he recently produced "White Light/Black Rain," a powerful documentary about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that premiered at last year's Sundance Film Festival. Okazaki's work has explored different difficult subjects ranging from heroin addiction to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, focusing on the remarkable experiences of common people.

Besides teaching production classes at undergraduate and graduate levels, Ferrero is an independent filmmaker whose movies have been shown in various national and international festivals including Sundance, New York Film, and San Francisco and have been screened both on cable and PBS. She has also collaborated with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh and produced a series of nine shorts on Native Americans culture and environmental issues for the museum permanent collection.

Kitses, a Harvard graduate, is one of the most authoritative voices in the field of Western genre studies in the country. His well known publications include seminal works such as: "Horizon West: Directing the Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood" and its sequel "Horizons West -- Mann, Boetticher, Peckinpah: Studies of Authorship within the Western."

As stated by Ujlaki, "The Cinema Department at SF State is continuing in a tradition of training some of the world's top independent film makers and many Academy Award winners." The SF State Cinema Department, in fact, has educated generations of successful filmmakers that include Academy Award Winners Steven Zaillan (Best Screenplay, "Schindler's List," 1994), Christopher Boyes (Best Sound, "Titanic," 1998, "Pearl Harbor," 2001, "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," 2004) and Okazaki (Best Short Documentary, "Days of Waiting," 1991.)

Tickets will be available starting April 16 and can be purchased at the box office of the Creative Arts Building (Monday through Friday, 12-4 p.m. and 1 hour before all ticketed events), over the phone (415-338-2467), or online at Ticketweb.com. Tickets are $7 for the general public and $5 for students and seniors.

For more information please check our website and Myspace page:
cinema.sfsu.edu
www.myspace.com/sfsufilmfestival

New Novel Tackles Story of the Soviet Space Program and 'Laika,' the Dog Who Was the First Space Traveler

For Immediate Release

San Francisco. September 26, 2007. The first living being into space was not astronaut Alan Shepard?or cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. It was Laika, the heroic little Russian dog who set the stage for human space travel.

But Laika's story has a dark side. In Screwed Pooch, author Jan Millsapps reveals the ugly truth about how the dog was "screwed" from the outset.

On October 4, 1957, the Russians shocked the world with the launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. The Soviet Union had caught the United States flat-footed, and Nikita Khrushchev was positively gleeful.

Khrushchev wanted an immediate follow-up. He demanded a second satellite be launched in less than a month to coincide with the 40th Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Khrushchev got his Sputnik 2 on November 3, 1957 -- this time with a dog as a passenger.

Screwed Pooch, a new novel by award-winning author and filmmaker Jan Millsapps describes the historic mission of Laika, arguably the most famous dog in history. Meticulously researched, Screwed Pooch tells the story of Laika's launch into Earth orbit and sheds light on her role in the early space race as both heroine -- and victim. Millsapps reveals that, in the rush to launch Sputnik 2, there was no time to plan for bringing Laika back alive.

Millsapps has created a story based on two years of research into the Soviet space program. She describes Laika's mission and its impact on the humans she encountered, both real and fictional. We meet her beloved yet duplicitous trainer; the brilliant yet anonymous "chief designer" of the Sputniks; her canine gal pals; top dog Khrushchev and his heavy-handed KGB; and two women from Laika's Moscow neighborhood who mount a daring plan to rescue her.

Laika's unprecedented journey takes us from the snowy Moscow streets to top-secret labs and launch sites, and from the depths of a Soviet gulag to transcendent views of earth from outer space. Millsapps gives a distinct voice to the canine cosmonaut whose ultimate sacrifice turned dreams of human space travel into reality.

For Millsapps, the fact that Laika (and all space dogs) were female adds an ironic twist to the story.

"I love the fact that 'the right stuff' -- usually associated with male pluck and endeavor -- actually showed up first in a small female mutt,? she says. "It was important for me to locate and amplify that female voice, normally absent from early space history."

"Since Sputnik 2's telemetry failed after the first three orbits, it's impossible to say with certainty what happened to Laika during her mission," Millsapps explains, "which was great for me as a storyteller. The ending of Laika's story was begging for a fresh interpretation, and I was happy to oblige."

Screwed Pooch (348 pages, paperbound, $17.99) is published by BookSurge Publishing and is available through Amazon.com. Complete details about the book and Millsapps' research into the founders of the Soviet space program can be found at www.laikaspace.com.

About the Author

Jan Millsapps teaches screenwriting and digital cinema courses at San Francisco State University. She is a versatile and accomplished writer whose work exemplifies the digital age. She has produced films, videos, digital and interactive cinema, and has published in both print and online. She is a featured blogger on Apple's Learning Interchange and contributing editor for the online, rich media journal, "Academic Intersections."

Millsapps' films have been shown at the Smithsonian Institution, the Kennedy Center, the International Center of Photography in New York, and the De Young Museum in San Francisco. Her multimedia work has been featured at the National Educational Film and Video Festival, the Mill Valley Film Festival, San Francisco City Hall, and USC's Interactive Frictions Conference.

She holds a Ph.D. in composition and rhetoric from the University of South Carolina and recently received a certificate in cosmology from the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. She and her husband, composer and sound designer Phill Sawyer, live in San Francisco.

Screwed Pooch information at www.laikaspace.com.

FOR REVIEW COPIES OF SCREWED POOCH, contact Gary Carr, below.

Press Contact: Gary Carr, Rising Moon Marketing & Public Relations, (925) 672-8717, carrpool@pacbell.net