San Juan native Akira Boch premieres movie ‘The Crumbles’ in San Francisco at Asian film festival
San Juan native Akira Boch premieres movie ‘The Crumbles’ in San Francisco at Asian film festival
Akira Boch, a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles film school, started experimenting with film and video as a kid growing up in San Benito County.
“I grew up in San Juan, right next door to El Teatro,” he said. “It definitely influenced me going into filmmaking.”
Boch’s first feature film – which he wrote, directed and edited – will have its world premiere Saturday at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. The movie features more than one person with a connection to El Teatro Campesino, the playhouse founded by Luis Valdez and based in San Juan.
“We would get together on the weekends and make videos and short films and produce plays put on at El Teatro,” Boch said, of his friendship with Luis’ sons Kinan and Anahuac Valdez. “I was able to be on the set of ‘La Bamba,’ which was shot right around that same high school period.”
Boch’s film “The Crumbles” is about Darla, a musician who hasn’t been willing to take a risk to start a band. When a friend moves in with her, the duo recruits other members and takes on the challenge of playing in a rock band. But before they get very far, the members of the band are already clashing. The lead Darla is played by Katie Hipol, an actress who started out her training at El Teatro when she was 15. She also plays the guitar and ukele, talent that lent itself to the musical film. Boch also cast Adrian Torres and Seth Millwood, who are ensemble actors for El Teatro.
“After I wrote the script, I went through this really long process of looking for people,” Boch
said. “I searched in Los Angles and had open casting calls. We went out and saw a lot of different bands and considered using real musicians.”
At the suggestion of Anahuac or Kinan – Boch can’t recall which – he auditioned Katie for the part and taped her performance. His collaborators in Los Angeles were impressed, and she got the part.
“At El Teatro, you get a lot of experience at a young age,” he said. “The same is not true necessarily for people in Los Angeles. There is so much competition at a young age that often they can’t just get the experience regardless of how much initial talent they have.”
Boch’s idea for the story about friends in a band came up about four years ago when a few of his former band mates were going through tough times.
“I wanted to remind them of an earlier time,” he said. “Essentially when you are young in your early 20s the possibilities are endless, and I wanted to capture the period when people are stepping out and trying to fulfill a long-held fantasy. I wanted to show how reality usually ends up winning out and that it can be harsh, but it causes you to be resilient and grow from that.”
The movie is dubbed a “tragicomedy” because it balances between the humor and the more serious moments.
Boch made the movie on a shoestring budget and enlisted help from film school friends and others he’s worked with through the years. He has worked on short films, music videos and documentaries. He said the biggest difference in making a feature is the time and money.
“The preparation for this took far longer than anything I’ve worked on and also on the post production,” he said.
The San Francisco event is the first film festival in which Boch’s film will show, though he said they have been invited to a couple other festivals later in the season and are waiting on responses from others.
“I’ve actually shown other short films (at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival) so I have a relationship with them,” he said. “I don’t necessarily call myself an Asian American filmmaker, but the fact is that I am Asian American and many people who worked on the crew are Asian American.”
He said two of the lead actresses are also Asian American – Teresa Michelle Lee is Vietnamese American and Katie Hipol is part Filipina.
“The issue of race never actually comes up throughout the film, but to me that was kind of the point of doing that because essentially I wanted to normalize these characters as much as possible so people see them as multi-dimensional personalities rather than just recognizing them for their race or ethnicity,” Boch said.
Boch is a graduate of San Benito High School and has an MFA from UCLA’s film school in film directing. He has invited family and friends who live in the area to the film festival.
“I am more interested than excited to see what the audiences’ reaction is going to be,” Boch said, the week before the festival. “It’s always a little nerve-wracking to show something for the first time.”
“The Crumbles”
The first feature film from San Juan native Akira Boch, “The Crumbles,” will have its world premiere at the 2012 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, March 10, at 3:15 p.m., at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas. The movie will air again March 14, at 6 p.m. at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas. Tickets are $12 for general admission or $11 for student/senior/disabled. For more on the film, visit www.thecrumbles.com
Details: http://festival.caamedia.org/30/
