‘FUNraiser’ supports independent filmmakers

By Catherine Lee
The Guardsman

The annual Artists’ Television Access “FUNraiser” combined silent and non-silent auctions, showcased live video mixes and hosted two bands to support the mainly volunteer-operated screening room and gallery.

For more than 20 years, ATA has maintained its community rooms for independent film and video artists with support from a mosaic of foundation and arts grants, organized fundraisers and the long-term dedication of about 20 core staffers.

“ATA is driven by people with a passion for the arts,” said Kent Howie, a volunteer coordinator and Board of Directors member since 1994.

Before the live auction began, the room filled with parents with toddlers, neighbors and the extended film community nurtured by ATA’s 26-year mission to “Support Underground Film” — their tagline and window sign on the Valencia Street storefront.

Attendees eased into the silent art auction with cups of spiked pink punch, orange Jarritos soda and red wine. They discretely marked their bids on index cards placed next to the art.

Art ranged from annotated stationary by author Beth Lisick to paintings by renowned street artists like Rigo 23, best known for his giant paintings on the sides of buildings like “One Tree” at 10th and Bryant streets.

The Live Auction

Crowded along the walls, standing on the staircases and hunched on the red velvet theater seats, everyone in the room played a part in the boisterous live auction.

“Artists! Activists!  ATA shows experimental, independent film five nights a week! Emerging artists come here and show – nobody else is doing what we do,” shouted the charismatic auctioneer Mike Missiaen, an 11-year volunteer and Board of Directors member since 2002.

The attendees and bidders cheered in response and he continued, “So can I get another $5 bucks for this amazing photograph? It’s by one of the founders of ATA – Marshall Weber.”

The highest bid of  the evening, made by Eli Crews and Beth Lisick, was $420 for a Chris Johanson painting.

“We’ve never spent that much on a piece, but it’s great. It’s for ATA and the artists,” said Crews.

City College Filmmakers

City College instructor and film maker Lise Swenson was a co-founder of ATA in 1984 and is still on the advisory board.

She has organized the “CCSF Student Showcase” events  at ATA since her first semester as a teacher at City College five years ago.

“The students are thrilled to be screening at ATA,” Swenson said.

Student film exposure at ATA is more of a real world screening than a campus screening, she said.

“The ATA context feels like what they’ll really experience as they continue to work and screen. More strangers come, and more film makers from the community attend the ATA event, so it’s just a different audience and a different experience than the 250-seat Diego Rivera Theater.”

Tracy Jarvis is one of Swenson’s former students who has become an ATA volunteer, inspired by the City College film screenings at ATA.

“There weren’t so many community-oriented spaces in San Francisco,” Jarvis said.
But the ATA mission of screening and supporting non-commercial video, media performance and art resonated with Jarvis.

“It’s nice to know that it’s a venue where I can show my work and my friends can have a space to screen or show,” she said.

Kent Howie agreed, “We’re not a rental space, we’re a collaboration space.  The most important thing to us is keeping the space open for artists.”

The activities of the busy six-hour event — from the cash handling, to the film projections, to the catering and cleaning after the event — were conducted by volunteers.  The only paid ATA staff member is the bookkeeper.

“The fundraiser is great and fun and we can obviously use the money,” Howie said. “But really what places like this need is the human energy to make it work. We do well because we have this amazing group of  people.”

Three-year volunteer and video arts teacher Grace Rosario Perkins agrees that the future of ATA is human driven, not doomed by lack of funding.

“The beauty of ATA is anyone can make a proposal for a screening, and we’ll make it happen,” Perkins said. “What ATA needs to survive is the people — people to volunteer for shows, to come to screenings and to be a part of our community.”