Founder and filmmaker Mark Decena has always been a storyteller and when he found filmmaking, it just clicked. He explains, “My first exposure to film production was on sets shooting commercials. When a low budget job came up that couldn’t afford a director, my creative partner and I stepped in to co-direct, and the rest is history.” This eventually resulted in Decena’s first “feature film, Dopamine , that went through all phases of the Sundance system: the Filmmaker/ Screenwriter Labs, the Film Festival, and [it was] bought by the Sundance Channel [which]
“Doctor David’s work as an infectious disease epidemiologist regularly brought him to Uganda, and he wanted to bring attention to a program he had begun that provided unattainable generic AIDS medication to his patients. In all, the film helped raise a million dollars, and saved many lives until the generic medications were widely available to the masses.” The experience solidified Decena’s path towards documentary filmmaking. Since then, Decena has worked on many documentaries, which have included “bringing awareness to the inadequacies of the United Nations’ non- binding pledges and political promises”
included a theatrical release. It was mind blowingly heady stuff for a former Army brat, raised by a single mom since the age of six, in the East Bay town of Fremont.” His film, Dopamine , was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Prize in 2003. The film follows the romance between a San Franciscan computer programmer and a schoolteacher in the immediate post-dot. com boom days. Unexpectedly, it was his narrative feature film that would lead him to documentaries.
of the 2015 Paris Climate Accords in Not Without Us or “shedding light on the precious resource of water along the Colorado River basin in Watershed, helping to raise $10M to reconnect the river to its delta, or using stand up comedy to bring awareness to global development issues in Stand Up Planet .” Decena has always been an environmentalist. However, “it wasn’t until attending the 2011 World Social Forum in
“bringing awareness to the inadequacies of the United Nations’ non-binding pledges and political promises”
Decena recalls, “[ Dopamine was] the closing night film at the San Francisco International Film Festival. The line was around the block at the Castro Theater, making our home-town premier a raucous, full house...I was, needless to say, on cloud nine. But within the swirl of greetings from family and friends afterwards, my good friend David Bangsberg came up to me and said, ‘Congratulations, Mark, That was wonderful. But now are you ready to do a really important film?’” Although a jarring remark after the home- town premiere of his first feature, it directly led Decena to film his first documentary short.
Dakar, Senegal, that I was introduced to the social movements of the Global South. I became more and more cognizant of the social injustices of racism, xenophobia, and capitalism that the Climate Justice movements were fighting, including environmental racism. As a filmmaker of color and seeing those most affected were BIPOC folks, I committed to making films that supported a variety of social movements that examined the root causes of climate change, extreme income inequality, and patriarchy. It became clear that all of the dots connect, bringing us to our current state of systemic crises.”
272
Powered by FlippingBook