BAVC News
MediaMaker Fellows at the 20th Camden International Film Festival
The 2024 BAVC MediaMaker Fellows traveled by plane and car from across the country to midcoast Maine for the 20th Camden International Film Festival. It was a thrill and a pleasure to attend along with festival staff from the last two decades, documentary filmmakers from across the globe, and industry professionals who know that CIFF is something special. We reunited with BAVC Media-supported filmmakers who were at CIFF to screen new films and pitch their latest projects. Throughout the long weekend we participated in all of our favorite annual traditions (the Points North Pitch, the Town Hall, 1-on-1 industry meetings, [...]
Announcing Playback Lab, Free Video Preservation for San Francisco Residents
BAVC Media and SF COMMONS have unveiled our new community preservation center, the Playback Lab! Inspired by the Memory Lab Network at public libraries nationwide, BAVC Media and SF COMMONS now offer free, do-it-yourself audiovisual preservation services for San Francisco residents. Boasting a variety of playback machines, the SF COMMONS Playback Lab empowers our community to control their own stories held on video formats most common to the average creator. “We’re really playing against the clock with analog media, and quickly running out of time to save crucial stories that give character to our local community. San Francisco has had [...]
An Interview With BAVC Media’s Development Manager: Jess Epstein
An Interview With BAVC Media’s Development Manager: Jess Epstein Tell us a little bit about yourself (career, hobbies, anything you’d like us to know). Hi! I am so excited to be joining BAVC. I’m originally from Massachusetts but have called New York home for nearly 15 years. I studied Visual Culture and Social Change and minored in Documentary in undergrad and have a MA in Arts Administration from Baruch College. I’m a freelance producer currently working on my first feature documentary, which is a dream come true! I feel like I’ve been building a career working towards this goal [...]
PROVISIONS Filmmaking Foundations: Where to Start with Keith Battle
PROVISIONS is a new series from BAVC Media, featuring interviews, advice, and insights into the creative process from our mediamaking community. Keith Battle is a born storyteller, an educator with over ten years of experience, and BAVC Media’s Director of Advanced Training and Workforce Development. He equips up-and-coming filmmakers with video production skills to get their projects off the ground and tell their stories. We recently caught up with him about what he wished he knew before making his first film, pre-shoot anxiety, over-planning, and if you actually need to level up your gear. This conversation has been edited for [...]
Our vision for a Bay Area media hub
Dear friends, supporters, and colleagues, We recently moved into a new space at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center in the heart of SoMa. We did this to follow a vision: create a Bay Area media hub where makers can gather to produce new work, form connections, preserve community memories, and build their skills through hands-on practice. Across our many programs, we are offering in-person workshops to young people, emerging makers, and established professionals; convening documentary fellows from throughout the Bay Area and across the country; establishing a local media archive and preservation lab that will be open to the [...]
An Interview With BAVC Media’s Co-Director of the MediaMaker Fellowship: Jin Yoo-Kim
Tell us a little bit about yourself! I think the first thing most people know about me is that I was born in Bolivia. My identity has been a constantly shifting journey. My first language was Korean since both of my parents are Korean. My second language was Spanish, and I only learned English when I came to the U.S. when I was six years old. My primary language now is the language of documentation. Early on in my identity journey I realized I would most likely be an outsider in any community I “belong” to and I moved around [...]
An Interview With BAVC Media’s Director of Marketing & Communications: Daniel Díaz
Get to know BAVC Media’s Director of Marketing & Communications, Daniel Díaz! Daniel Díaz, BAVC Media's Director of Marketing & Communications started his role with us in November of last year. Daniel is responsible for the organization’s brand, marketing, communications, and design strategies. We're so excited to have Daniel on the BAVC Media team so Isa Nakazawa, our Director of Community Engagement, asked him a few questions to help our community get to know him better. Tell us a little bit about what got you into the field of Marketing and Communications and why you find the work compelling. I [...]
PROVISIONS: Ethics of Documentary Filmmaking with Rodrigo Reyes
PROVISIONS is a new series from BAVC Media, featuring interviews, advice, and insights into the creative process from our mediamaking community. Director Rodrigo Reyes makes films deeply grounded in his identity as an immigrant artist, pushing the boundaries of non-fiction storytelling. His most recent film, Sansón and Me, is a documentary a decade in the making which began when Reyes worked as a court interpreter in rural California for the then 19-year-old undocumented Mexican migrant Sansón Noé Andrade, who was sentenced to two life sentences without parole. Unable to film inside the prison, Sansón’s story is told through reenactments by [...]
Morgan Morel: Farewell BAVC
For the past 5 and a half years I’ve had my dream job at BAVC Media. From my very first week up until my last I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many amazing people, organizations, and collections. I’ve been moved to the brink of tears countless times while digitizing images and sounds containing memories of art, activism, history, and culture. Since the 90’s BAVC’s Preservation Department has been instrumental in advancing the state of audiovisual preservation, and advocating for the preservation of at-risk tape media. BAVC has also been very good to me. The growth I’ve experienced [...]
BAVC Media to lead national field-building initiatives in 2023
Over the next couple of years, BAVC Media will be leading new and/or expanded national projects to advance the field of independent media making and preservation, and arts organization leadership overall. We're committed to these projects because we believe that by sharing information and resources, we can help create a stronger and more equitable field. Our success proposition relies upon collaboration and leveraging our collective resources. Specifically, BAVC Media was selected to lead the following projects over the next couple of years: A Nation-Wide Survey of Audiovisual Preservation (National Endowment for the Humanities) A project to conduct a national study [...]
