[Deathwatch] Sarah Jacobson, film maker, 33

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Thanks to a reader for this one... very late because I missed the
e-mail - Ed.


http://www.indiewire.com/people/people_040218sarah.html
Remembering DIY Queen Sarah Jacobson, 1971-2004
by Eugene Hernandez

Sarah Jacobson, whose feature film "Mary Jane's Not A Virgin Anymore"
screened at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, died Friday in New York
City after a battle with cancer. Beyond the attention she received for
that movie, Sarah led a DIY ("Do It Yourself") movement in the 1990s,
promoting and distributing her own work with her producer and mom, Ruth
Ellen Jacobson, speaking at festivals and events everywhere, and
writing about film for a number of publications. A tireless, at times
even shameless, promoter of her own work, Sarah was also a passionate
advocate for the films of fellow filmmakers.

Born in 1971 in Minneapolis, Sarah Jacobson was a boisterous, funny,
opinionated, energetic, confrontational, and caring presence in the
film community. At festivals and parties, whether during a seminar or
within a small group, she would often provoke conversations and debates
about topics including movies, music, masturbation, Molly Ringwald, and
men. "We're gonna fuck shit up!," she would often exclaim loudly and
with a big smile, to the dismay of some and the joy of many.

Inspired by such influences as "Stranger Than Paradise" and Sassy
magazine, Sarah formed Station Wagon Productions with her mom Ruth 10
years ago and the two women worked to develop, promote, and distribute
Sarah's films. Heading to the San Francisco Art Institute after a spell
at Bard College in New York, Jacobson studied under George Kuchar and
directed "I Was a Teenage Serial Killer," a film that she described as
the story of "a 19-year-old girl who has a series of run-ins with
various condescending men."

Online, where I met Sarah in 1995, she developed a website for her
small company and cultivated an email list to promote her projects and
meet new friends. The first time I hung out with her in person we met
at her home office in San Francisco and she later dragged me around The
Mission to meet her many friends at video stores, bars, and movie
theaters. Over burritos at Taqueria Cancun she told me more about her
own life and her commitment to making movies for and about young women.


After taking a trailer for her first feature, "Mary Jane's Not a Virgin
Anymore," to the 1995 IFP Market (then known as the Independent Feature
Film Market), Sarah returned to the IFFM in '96 with the feature
version after debuting it at the Chicago Underground Film Festival and
nabbing a great review from critic Roger Ebert. Sarah took the '96
market by storm, flooding parties with handmade "Not a Virgin" stickers
that she and her mom had made at Kinko's, a place she told me was the
DIY filmmaker's "home office." The screening went well, filling the
Angelika Film Center theater with festival programmers, filmmaker Jim
McKay and even Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, both of whom she admired. An
invitation to Sundance soon followed.

At Sundance, Sarah and her mom let me crash at her condo for a couple
of nights and I got a first hand look at their guerilla marketing
operation. Sarah worked long and hard to get to Sundance and was
thrilled to be invited, at the time she also told me at the time that
she was excited to be screening alongside films by a number of women,
including the Sichel sisters' "All of Me," Hannah Weyer's "Arresting
Gena," Jill Sprecher's "The Clockwatchers," and Julie Davis' "I Love
You...Don't Touch Me."

At Sundance in 1997, Sarah Jacobson (right) with "Mary Jane's Not A
Virgin Anymore" star Lisa Gerstein.

"Scrappy, raw, and quaintly unpretentious, 'Mary Jane's Not a Virgin
Anymore' surveys the punk universe of a small midwestern town with none
of the usual shock-value affectations," wrote programmer Rebecca
Yeldham in the festival's catalog. "Made for a song, it proves itself
the persistent train that could."

At the festival, Jacobson had a chance to meet John Waters and hang out
with Roger Ebert. After hours, Jacobson could be found with Brian
Flemming and his crew from the unique underground fest, Slumdance.
While the right distribution deal didn't come about, Jacobson and her
mom were bolstered by audience reactions to the film and decided to
take the film on the road on their own.

"What is DIY, you might ask?," Sarah wrote in indieWIRE in 1997,
introducing our section on the topic, "Well, it's a term co-opted from
the punk rock movement and it stands for Do It Yourself. For as
buzzword-y as the label is, it stands for a very important concept in
the independent world -- the idea that you don't need a big company or
lots of money to validate you." Continuing she added, "Lately in the
mainstream media there has been lots of excitement over 'indie' films.
But that excitement has turned into Indiewood with it's own set of
bullshit rules and limits. Not only do those pressures inhibit
creativity, it's not what I want as a filmmaker."

In Cleveland in March 1998, Jacobson joined a group of filmmakers at
the Midwest Filmmakers Conference at the Cleveland International Film
Festival. "My point of view is that there is a lot of hype for indie
film," explained Jacobson during a panel discussion at the Cleveland
International Film Festival. "But at the same time a lot of what is
coming out as 'indie' -- to me its 'Indiewood' -- there's a lot of
stuff that is really safe and conventional." In that moment Sarah
offered a word that so perfectly summed up the dichotomy of '90s
"independent" film. She continued to use the word regularly, as have we
at indieWIRE, and the term has become a part of the lexicon.

Since taking her feature on the road in the U.S. and in Europe (and
documenting parts of her journey for indieWIRE), Sarah has inspired
countless filmmakers and served as a resource for those who have taken
films out themselves. Countless times she would call or email me to tip
me off to a new film, filmmaker, or event worth indieWIRE's attention.
Her role in shaping our coverage over the years is immeasurable.

Along the way, Sarah continued to work. After moving to New York, she
took a job producing segments for the Oxygen cable network and
continued to write for a number of magazines and publications. Along
the way she re-discovered "Ladies And Gentlemen The Fabulous Stains"
and talked about it to anyone who would listen, even shooting a short
doc about the movie for John Pierson's TV show "Split Screen." Her
byline has appeared in countless outlets over the years, from indieWIRE
joint-venture IFCRant to Punk Planet and Grand Royale to Release Print
and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. She continued to advocate for women
in filmmaking and joined a group of women directors, led by filmmaking
idol Allison Anders, at a summit in California.

At the IFP Market in fall 2003, Sarah Jacobson with her mother Ruth
Ellen Jacobson. Photo by Eugene Hernandez

Nearly a year ago, determined to get back to narrative filmmaking,
Sarah asked me to meet her for lunch. Eating at Trailer Park in Chelsea
we talked about the state of independent filmmaking, the latest
Indiewood gossip, her plans to get a few projects off the ground. In
love with her boyfriend Aaron and anxious to get back into filmmaking,
Sarah seemed poised to strike once again. Despite a nagging ailment,
then not diagnosed as cancer, she was walking with the aid of a cane,
but seemed healthy and was teaching a film course here in Manhattan. At
indieWIRE's seventh-anniversary party in June, Sarah showed up with her
entire class of students, that week's lesson: networking. The
assignment: don't leave without three business cards. Despite receiving
the bad news about her illness later in the year, Sarah forged ahead,
taking a script to the IFP Market; she and her mom also made an
appearance at the event's closing awards ceremony.

A few weeks ago, as she became weaker, Sarah and her boyfriend, with
the help of critic and friend Ed Halter, began planning an
retrospective of her work to be shown at the Pioneer Theater. She had
planned to be on hand for the special evening. The event will continue
as a memorial tonight (Wednesday, February 18) at the Pioneer on Avenue
A in the East Village. Halter told indieWIRE on Tuesday that there is
interest in bringing the event to Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco.

A special indieWIRE discussion board has been created for her friends
and admirers to post their thoughts. A memorial service was held in New
York on Monday at a local synagogue.

"One thing that really inspires me, is no one can really stop you -- I
mean, who's gonna stop you?," Sarah asked during the session at the
Cleveland festival. "If the big theater doesn't let you in, go to the
next theater. If that theater doesn't let you in, go the museum. If the
museum does let you in, go the college. If the college doesn't let you
in, go to the skate park, go to the high school, the community center.
There's always a way to screen your film and there's always a way to
get it out there. I guess you just have to figure out what your goal is
-- do you want money? O.K. maybe the high school isn't a very good
idea."

And concluding her thoughts in indieWIRE's DIY section article, Sarah
summed up her philosophy well. "As a filmmaker, I get my main
inspiration from punk rock bands and scummy zine editors. Living at the
copy shop, putting up flyers, selling T-shirts and tapes to pay for
expenses, sleeping on floors of friends of a friend, working hard to
promote my film 'cuz if I don't, no one will, and finding an audience
who really cares about what my films are saying, building a
relationship that grows stronger with each film I make."

[ Tonight, Wednesday, February 18, the Pioneer Theater will screen a
selection of Sarah Jacobson's shorts at 7 p.m., followed by a screening
of "Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore" at 9 p.m. For more information,
please visit: http://www.twoboots.com/pioneer/. ]