The Sicilian Jazz Project, one of the highlights of the Chicago International
Movies and Music Festival, will be performing Thursday, April 18 at 8pm in the Loyola University Crown Center Auditorium.

Renowned bass player, Roberto Occhipinti, and his brother Michael Occhipinti
created this unique project together. Michael does the arranging of the material,
and Roberto records and produces their CD’s in his Toronto studio, as well as
those of notable jazz and classical musicians the world over.

The project has its roots in Sicily where Alan Lomax (the musicologist who
discovered great folk singers, such as Leadbelly) recorded volumes of Sicilian
folk tunes in the 1950s. The Sicilian recordings incorporated street songs,
popular folk songs, fisherman songs, and tunes that were folkloric in nature.

Subsequently, the Occhipinti’s father was given these Sicilian recordings, and
Michael over the years arranged them for many American genres such as jazz,
funk, blues, world, and chamber music.

Roberto will be performing these arrangements Thursday night as a duo with
vocalist, guitarist, and percussionist, Dominic Mancuso. Roberto is in constant
demand in Canada, U.S., and Europe. He has played and recorded with top
musicians in the world including Jane Bunnett, Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez,
Dafnis Prieto, and Kurt Elling.

Roberto and Dominic are performing in conjunction with the documentary
screening of “La Voce Di Rosa”, director Nello Correale’s heartfelt tribute to
Sicilian folk singer, Rosa Balistreri who died in 1990. Balistreri was an influential
force in Italian music — a singer who embodied her land, and was considered the
voice of Sicily.

This is a rare event not to be missed as these musicians rarely perform in
Chicago, and they will present music inspired by Rosa Balistreri.

By Lanny Grilly

Watch past performances at The Sicilian Jazz Project YouTube channel.

Also visit Roberto Occhipinti’s website.

I’m a scavenger. From the design of my home to the design of my art, I work almost exclusively in found objects and repurpose them.

I directed a play last fall called Planet Karate! where I designed the set of the entire show from mostly found objects. And yes, the remote-controlled robot is made from a diaper genie.

It’s second nature for me to keep an eye out for interesting artifacts on a walk, and I often prefer to travel down an alley over a city street because you never know when LITERALLY today’s trash can be used as tomorrow’s trophy.

A unique challenge in designing a CIMMfest award is to incorporate items that embody the inseperable spirit of the fest – Movies and Music. And although I have a good eye for cool junk, I infrequently come across discarded movie equipment or musical instruments. That’s why it really helps to have an extra set of eyes to help you along the way, and over the years, the CIMMfest staff – be it Josh, Maxton, Carmine, Ricky or Tressa – has been INSTRUMENTAL in helping me scope out cool pieces an award.

If you ever want to get rid of old instruments, cameras or AV equipment, let me know… I can make room!

Over the years I’ve been compiling used or discarded AV equipment, instruments, cameras and the like that have potential to make a CIMMfest award uniqe and special. This year, however, that was the least of my concerns.

After having to ship the CIMMfest awards last year, my free reign over designing the awards was… constrained. Apparently 2′ x 2′ trophies weren’t practical to ship to award winners in Sri Lanka or some shit like that…

They had a point.

But bridle my creativity? Constrain my creations? HOW DARE YOU! So they told me “Build whatever you want – but make it fit inside a box, would yaa?!?!? Unless YOU wanna pay the shipping…”

CIMMfest is often called the little festival that could, so I decided to man up. Hell, I’m a designer, right? I can do this! So I started to think inside the box. I hate the opposite of that phrase, so in a way it made me embrace the concept. And to be fair, it’s been a fun challenge, and not as hard as I anticipated.. yet. So if you do win an award, take pride in that a lot of thought went into its design – and keep on the look out for more videos like this on assembling your CIMMfest 5 award out of the box!

David Rocco Facchini

All attendees of the Melvin Van Peebles Baadasssss Awards Show are granted FREE admission to any of his three groundbreaking films. Just present your Baadasssss Awards Show ticket.
 

CIMMfest Presents:

Melvin Van Peebles Baadasssss Awards Show
w/ live performance by Melvin Van Peebles widLaxative
Saturday, April 20th at 9:30pm
showing at Constellation
 

Join us Saturday night as we honor maverick filmmaker and Chicago native Melvin Van Peebles with the Baadasssss Award, named in his honor. This lifetime achievement award pays tribute to the outstanding accomplishments of maverick artists that helped to shape and obliterate barriers for today’s generation of filmmakers & artists.
 

The Melvin Van Peebles Award will feature a MVP film retrospective, a Q&A with Richard Steele of WBEZ 91.5, and a special live musical performance w/ Melvin Van Peebles widLaxative.
 

How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company and Enjoy It
Friday, April 19th at 6pm
showing at Logan Theater
 

Joe Angio’s biographical doc about Melvin Van Peebles, iconoclastic director of Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song, takes us deep into his life and times.
 

La permisson (The Story of a Three-Day Pass)
Friday, April 19th at 7pm
showing at Northwestern Block Cinema
 

A special 35 mm projection, Melvin Van Peebles’ directorial debut, which despite being French, was the first narrative feature film by an African-American in twenty years when he made it in 1967.
 

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song
Saturday, April 20th at 6pm
showing at Logan Theater
 

Now considered among the most consequential films in the history of African-American cinema, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song was credited by Variety as creating the blaxploitation genre.
 

Don’t Play Us Cheap
Sunday, April 21st at 3pm
showing at Logan Theater
 

The long-awaited follow up to Sweetback, an adaptation of Van Peebles’ own Broadway musical, the film follows a pair of extraterrestrials, a devil and imp to be exact, who assume human form and attempt to crash and burn a Harlem house party.
 

As the award designer for CIMMfest since 2011, there’s a challenge to come up with a theme every year that embodies the spirit of the recipients. My first year designing the awards I wanted to acknowledge the film making process as story tellers and wish them well as their film guided their adventure into the future. Thus, awards resembling a hot air balloon, rocket ship or zeppelin were created to wish them “Good Journey”.



Last year I wanted to ackowledge the more-than-human efforts it takes to make a film. As an animator and film maker myself, I understand the long hours, lack of sleep and food that happens when making a film… At times it’s almost like you’re more machine than man. Thus, in 2012 I designed robot trophies to honor the super human endurance it takes to be a film maker.



2013 is a big year for CIMMfest. Not only is it celebrating it’s fifth year anniversary (what is that, lace?) but it’s bigger and badder then ever! More venues, more artists and more exclusive opportunities for Chicago to personally touch base with legends such as Van Dyke Parks! In coming up with a theme this year I thought of the explosive nature of this festival, the impact of the films it showcases, and in the fest’s first year of presenting the Baddddasssss of the Year award to the godfather of the Blacksploitation genre, Melvin Van Peebles, I just thought – BOOM! (Although in writing this I guess I could have designed a series of vans…)



And there it is. BOOM! is the theme for 2013! This year the CIMMfest awards are to honor WEAPONS OF MASS PRODUCTION!

Now I have get them done!

David Rocco Facchini

 
Melvin Van Peebles Baadasssss Awards Show w/ live performance by Melvin Van Peebles widLaxative
Saturday, April 20, 9:30pm @ Constellation

OPENING NIGHT: A Night w/ Van Dyke Parks & Richard Parks
Thursday, April 18, 7pm @ Constellation

Melvin van Peebles photo ©Robin Holland / www.robinholland.com

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Musicwood is both an environmental documentary and a music documentary, and it treads unusual ground for both genres, locating the heart of the acoustic guitar in the heart of America’s biggest forest. For generations top luthiers have lovingly crafted their soundboards – the top piece of the instrument’s body – out of Sitka spruce from the Tongass National Forest on Alaska’s southeastern coastal strip. In recent years, logging in the forest has rapidly ramped up to serve growing Asian lumber markets; according to Greenpeace, at current rates of clear-cutting the centuries-old giants deep in the Tongass will be gone in a matter of decades.
 

The environmental group came up with an innovative strategy: eschewing its more radical tactics, it enlisted some of the world’s top guitar makers to come together as the Music Wood Coalition. Normally fierce competitors, Martin, Gibson, Taylor, Fender, and Yamaha collectively advocated for sustainable logging in the Tongass, following the standards of the international Forest Stewardship Council. Another wrinkle: in this case, the logging wasn’t being done by the stereotypical remorseless bureaucracy or rapacious multinational, but by the Sealaska Corporation, locally owned by Native Americans of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian tribes, who are understandably wary of white activists and executives suggesting what they ought to do with land taken from their ancestors and regained only through decades of legal and legislative struggle.
 

The first feature doc from Maxine Trump, a British TV veteran now based in the States, Musicwood chronicles this delicate dance of corporate, political, ecological, and musical interests, tinged with past injustice and fears for the monumental forest’s future, over years of negotiation, promise, and frustration. The story’s various angles are illustrated with historical asides; stunning and sobering scenes of the glorious but shrinking Tongass; and demonstrations of acoustic splendor from players like Steve Earle, Kaki King, and members of Yo La Tengo, Turin Brakes, and the Antlers. Musicwood premieres in Chicago at CIMMFest, April 20. We spoke to director Trump from her New York digs.

 
MFW: How did you become aware of the MusicWood Coalition and the connection between logging and guitar-making?

 

Maxine Trump: I was making another film on Alaska, on the Bering Sea, about fish issues – subsistence fishing issues and deep sea trawling, and how it was affecting Native Alaskans on the sea. That’s when I heard about the devastation on the land and about Greenpeace trying to get the guitar CEOs together, which just felt so unusual – that Greenpeace would sit down with CEOs like that, trying to get competitors together to look at this issue. They didn’t realize quite how drastic it had become for them, getting the spruce soundboards from Alaska. They get most of the other wood from around the world. A lot of those woods are in jeopardy too, but they didn’t understand how difficult it was going to be in America, sourcing wood from an American forest. It just felt so unique that I had to pick up a camera and try and persuade them to allow me to come along.
 
A big part of the story is their journey, almost as much as the actual issue of the logging – the guitar CEOs traveling this path from ignorance to engagement, to activism, to a sense of how frustrating it can be to engage with issues at that level.
 

What I didn’t want to do is make another green documentary that was – we all know that plenty of forests are in trouble, and we all feel a little, “Well, what actually can we do?” What I didn’t want this film to do was give you another heartbreaking story where there were no solutions. There had to be a story there that would interest people. As soon as I heard about [Taylor Guitars co-founder] Bob Taylor, [Martin CEO] Chris Martin, and Dave Berryman from Gibson getting together, it was a human interest story as well.
Was your own journey with this film and this issue similar?

 

It was. Being a Brit, what do I know about Native American issues? And because it is Native Americans logging in this area, I felt very aware that this isn’t my history. My producer is American, the cameraman is American, and we worked with Native American consultants as well, so my knowledge has totally grown. And of the rainforest. So few people know about the Tongass rainforest, and it’s absolutely spectacular. I’ve never seen anything like it. And I’ve been to the Redwoods, I’ve been a bit of an international traveler and seen a lot of areas in the world that are incredible. It’s a jewel.
 

There are three distinct interests in this film: Greenpeace, the guitar makers, and the Sealaska corporation. Was it difficult getting them all on board? Do you think not being American helped – not being viewed as coming to this with a preordained agenda?
 

My producer thinks it definitely did help. I can’t pretend that it wasn’t incredibly difficult to have these three voices and to try and ensure that we weren’t taking – you know, to be journalists, and to represent what was factually happening, and to be very level-headed in our journalism. We very much wanted to include the history of the Native Americans in the area, because they didn’t get all of their land. That’s the truth, and it’s been the very sad truth for a lot of Native Americans. I mean, we could have made three documentaries. So that was a huge challenge. It was only pointed out to me recently that maybe being an outsider helped. We had to talk at length, and, as every documentary maker has to do, encourage people to talk to us. Sometimes my British accent can help, and sometimes it can hinder [laughs].
 

I was thinking a lot watching it of the larger debate that’s going on about resource extraction and climate change in a world that’s changing economically. There’s a real echo in what the Natives from Sealaska say with what you hear from China and India: “For hundreds of years you exploited these resources, and now you don’t want us to do it? You don’t want us to profit from this lumber?”

 

I totally hear you.
 

Was this on your mind as you were making the film? The turns it took into these areas, did that surprise you?
 

I didn’t know what [to expect], and I think that’s what can be so wonderful about documentary making, and also so difficult. You never know where the story’s going to end up. You have to be open to the story taking you anywhere. There’s a huge history of environmentalism in the area – a long journey of environmentalists working really hard, and fighting hard against the federal government, because a lot of the area is federally owned and a lot of that forest is logged too. It did feel difficult [for Greenpeace] coming to Native Americans and saying, “Look what’s happened on the federal land next door. Can you do it better?” The federal land has much more limitations on clear-cut size, and that’s all due to environmental activism. Private land which is Native American-owned doesn’t have those same limitations. That’s why Greenpeace went to them and kind of said, “Listen, if you keep clear-cutting with no limits, you are running out of wood.”

I want to get into the music aspect as well. Do you play yourself?

 

No, I don’t, and I really wish I did [laughs]. Actually Chris Martin of Martin guitars doesn’t play. That made me feel better. But I am thinking of taking lessons, because some of those guitars I’ve seen in the workshops were just gorgeous. It’s more that I wouldn’t have made a documentary about guitars if I didn’t love music. And that the bands that I love just marvelously said yes. I’m a big fan of Yo La Tengo, I’m a big fan of Lambchop, I’m a big fan of the Antlers. That is a bit of a dream come true for me, because I really love folk music, I love acoustic guitar music.
 

Was that the driving factor in who you selected – just “people I like”?
Yes and no. We’ve had to live with the music, obviously, through countless screenings. [Josh Granger,] the producer and editor – the producer is also the editor – he’s very knowledgeable on music too, and we had to enjoy it. If you think of a soundtrack, generally it’s music you enjoy, or the tone is right. Yo La Tengo and Steve Earle have a legacy that people will trust, and that was very important. Like there are elders from the tribe in the film, I wanted a very elder statesman acoustic guitarist. And then with Kaki King, she’s a real virtuoso. It was important to me that you could see the actual guitar being played, and the skill. As Chris Martin says, you can make an acoustic guitar sound like an orchestra. It rings out, and those sounds are ringing as you’re still playing, so it’s layered. Kaki King really brings that out.
The movie ends in an uncertain place, as far as the issues it raises are concerned. Did you come away feeling like we’re just going to have to accept that guitars are not going to sound the same?

 

From watching the film I think there are two conclusions you can draw. One, over in America the [Forest Stewardship Council] certification is little known. In Europe it’s very well known and you see it everywhere. What I’m really happy with is that you can watch our film – and people have even said this to me – “Thank goodness there’s something I can do at the end of it. I can buy tissues that are FSC-certified. I can buy paper from Staples that is FSC-certified. I can buy guitars that are FSC-certified.” There’s something the audience can tangibly do.
 

Then, the story with the guitars – this is the state of the world, forests are changing, and we have to really look after our forests. If you have a flaw [in the wood grain], it doesn’t change the sound of the music, it doesn’t change the sound of the guitar. I think that’s why the guitar guys are happy that the film is out there, because they, all the time, are trying to encourage the traditionalists to not always seek the best of the best. I think that’s a good thing, fundamentally, if this film can reach the people that are buying the guitars and suggest to them, listen, just make a few different choices in what you buy, it doesn’t have to be a spruce tree that’s 300 years old. It could be a younger tree that makes a four-piece soundboard [instead of the traditional two-piece]. The sound isn’t different.
 
“Musicwood”
Chicago Premiere at CIMMfest: Sat., 4/20 @ 6PM.
VIEW EVENT DETAILS & TICKET INFO