Jean Strauss has chosen several paths in her life, most recently legislative activist and documentary filmmaker. With her new feature documentary, she’s combined her two passions into a film that’s going to touch the hearts of a lot of people.

For the Life of Me, follows Dave, a fifty-two year old adoptee as he embarks on a journey to find his birthmother. His saga, with its unexpected and moving epiphany, illuminates the impact secrets can have over an entire lifetime…

FTLOM receives SMOGDANCE FILM FESTIVAL Audience Award for Best Picture!

The short version of For the Life of Me – a 29 minute cut of the feature film focusing solely on the story of Dave Kiley – premiered at the 12th annual Smogdance Film Festival (which runs concurrent with Sundance) on January 24th. The film garnered rave reviews and a surprise audience award. With the beautiful and compelling films in the open category, and filmmakers from as far away as Iran in attendance, it was an unexpected (but welcome!) honor. Perhaps an even greater reward for me was to sit in the Laemmle Theater for the two screenings and witness the audience reactions to Dave’s story. Audible weeping can be as profound as a standing ovation…

A deep thanks to Elise Lewis (and her husband and family) for their support of this festival and others!

In addition, the film had recent screenings on three new continents: Antarctica, South America, and Africa. Top this off with the news at the end of the month that For the Life of Me has been selected by the Women’s International Film Festival in Miami, and January was a stellar month!

Making a film, like writing a book or any creative endeavor, feels like giving birth. One hopes that everyone else will love ‘one’s child’ and see the potential in it. As one filmmaker recently said to me, “We are all so in love with our subjects that we expect everyone else to be too.” Rejection (also known as ‘not being selected’) can feel highly personal. Yet in the very competitive environment of independent film today, it’s often a matter of just not enough spaces for all the stories that are out there.

December was a month where our first rejections came in, from places that receive so many entries that they are long shots. Sundance. Slamdance. Palm Springs. Big Sky. Sundance had over 9800 films submitted. Programmers must need therapy after such a daunting pile of films to sort through. With social issues from global warming to war to economic meltdowns to presidential campaigns, the competition isn’t just around the storytelling, but often the issues themselves. We are proud to have tried to break into the premiere festivals and we don’t feel rejected so much as… dwarfed!

The very same day we received the rejection from Sundance, the Cleveland International Film Festival programmers called to say they love the film and wanted it. What a huge thrill to receive this nod from Cleveland, which was in our top five list. We were ecstatic. On the heels of this were additional selection nods from Smogdance, Sedona, and Kent, as well as invitations from adoption organizations for screenings in Sacramento, Boston, and Rochester. Every invite, felt like Christmas, every enthusiastic embrace a validation of the importance of the stories “For the Life of Me” tells.

Dave Kiley, the star of the film, has never been able to attend a screening, but will be there in Cleveland for the feature premiere, and his attendance will enhance the experience for us all. It takes a lot of courage to be the subject of a documentary film, to put your life story ‘out there’ for all to see. Dave, and the other adoptees whose stories grace the film, are helping to illuminate the impact lifelong secrecy has had upon the lives of adopted citizens. It is their willingness to be in the spotlight which helps others to understand the need for reform…

To date, almost half the festivals that FTLOM has been submitted to have received sponsorship. We’ve thus far had a 55% acceptance rate, double what we’d hoped for. So to our very special festival sponsorship team, which has helped nurture our submission process, a hearty bravo: our first sponsors Nicole Burton and Pam Hasegawa, standout Elise Holden (my biggest fan I think!), her husband Holden, her parents and inlaws Sissy & John Bateman and Karen & Eliot Tokat, Denise Carroll & Nikki Tidwell, Peter Daulton & Catherine Craig, Anne Blair, Roberta MacDonald and all of NCCAR, Lawrence Newman, and of course Jon Strauss, you are all helping to make this happen with your support. Thank you!

In 2005, the Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival, the longest running women’s film festival in the world, was a transforming experience for me as a filmmaker. I was humbled to have The Triumvirate included in the schedule of high quality films and to be able to spend four days getting to know some incredibly talented filmmakers as one of the invitees. So when the 2009 Festival invited For the Life of Me, choosing RMWFF as the venue to premiere the film was a no-brainer. The women running the festival are simply incredible, and respect filmmakers in a way that few festival programmers do. Being selected as a two-time attendee was an honor – and the festival exceeded all my expectations.

The premiere audience was fantastic – and an engaging Q&A followed the screening. Joining me on the stage were Rich Uhrlaub and Jeffrey Hannasch, two men who are transforming the way adoptee records are handled in Colorado. It meant so much to have them there – and to have my festival sponsor, Anne Blair, travel all the way from Puget Sound to attend the screening with her sisters.

Thirteen filmmakers representing ten films were invited to attend this year’s festival. We bonded as we were pampered at the elegant St. Mary’s Inn for four days. There is no other festival I know of which provides such a nurturing and productive environment for filmmakers, with its non-competitive, collabortive, supportive schedule. In addition to the festival, For the Life of Me was seen at a community screening at the University of Colorado and at a local alternative high school. Its impossible to quantify the impact these events had on audiences and upon us as filmmakers. Almost every filmmaker in attendance had dedicated years to making their films, many mortgaging their homes, and even risking their lives, to tell stories about issues that captured their hearts from around the world. Films covered everything from the ongoing environmental disaster in the Niger Delta, the amazing community of health workers surviving on the Burma border, the injustice of domestic abuse seen through the eyes of women serving life sentences in prison for killing their abusers, to the trial of a civil rights murderer. Having adoption reform included with these weighty world issues was incredible and saying I was humbled to be in attendance with these women doesn’t quite cover it.

People ask me what its like to attend a film festival, and each one is different. RMWFF is an experience that’s defined by words like fulfillment, fruition, inspiration and enlightenment, and, well… extended slumber party. My only regret is that it only lasted four days…

COLORADO II
Rich Uhrlaub got us an additional screen in Colorado. I kidnapped the mother of one of the RMWFF filmmakers and the two of us sped up to Denver to the Mercury Cafe to one of the most unique screenings I’ve ever attended for any film. Suffice it to say, clinking glasses, credit card machines and cash registers, waiters asking viewers if they wanted a beer, a sunlit screen, and ceiling thumps from Zydeco dancers upstairs (not to mention the catchy Cajun music) did not deter a hardy audience from enjoying the film. The audience included my oldest son’s best pal, Pieter, a South African who drove all the way from Connecticut (okay, so the screening happened to coincide with his cross country trip) to attend the film. Great beer, a great audience, and a marvelous Q&A. Bravo Rich and Jason!

Yikes. Its freezing in Lubbock! For some reason, I didn’t expect the west plains of Texas to ever be cold, at least not in October. Another presumption bites the dust. Just goes to confirm – you’ve got to experience things before you lock in assumptions about them. 2009 is proof that the Lubbock can be freezing and Seattle can be sizzling hot.

Jon and I are ensconced in an apartment near the Texas Tech football stadium, surrounded by college students. Just like old times. It’s been a great boon for me to be here. Few distractions, lots of time to work.

In addition to the release of For the Life of Me, we’re gearing up for the release of Silver Shorts, Vol. 1, a collection of my first four films: the adoption trilogy of The Triumvirate, Holding Hands, Vital Records, and the award-winning short, Breathing: the Mark Stanley Story. Big fun! I haven’t looked at them in a while, and each one brings back a slew of memories. The Triumvirate was just a student film, made while I was at New York Film Academy. That little film taught me so much – perhaps, most important, that you don’t have to be directly involved with adoption issues to be touched by them. The Triumvirate has invited many non-triad audiences to question closed records.

Each project has been classroom. As I look at each film, I wonder how differently others might have cut it, what different perspectives they might have used to tell the stories. There are hundreds of choices in the editing, down to the individual frames of images as well as the additional elements of words, sounds, music. What would someone else do with the footage? What other stories lie within the hours of tape that should also have been told? And what different points of view might have changed the stories that were told to arrive at different conclusions?

I’m reminded that we can strive to be balanced in documentary work, but its impossible to be unbiased. From the questions asked, to the way in which subjects are filmed to the choices of cuts made, bias is there. Like a scientist trying to prove a theory, one starts off a documentary with an expectation of a certain conclusion, a desired summation, born of passion and personal experience. And then the movie takes you in new directions, leading to ephiphanies that you couldn’t have foreseen in the beginning

Being open to what each film ‘wants to be’ is the essence of the work. It’s, well, it’s like discovering that the Texas plains can be really cold in October. It’s a surprise, something that makes you ponder a good question: what else don’t I know that I thought I DID know? The answer lies through the lens of the camera, and through being open to what’s revealed in each frame…

The dvd’s arrive via UPS in ten boxes mid afternoon. One of the boxes is pretty beat up and a dvd is partially exposed, its cover cracked. But even so – it’s beautiful! After four years, For the Life of Me finally feels real. I cut open the damaged case, slide the dvd into the player and … it works perfectly. Not one skip.

Everyone probably has similar rushes. Weeks and months and years culminate in a moment. It feels, not like an ending, but like a beginning…