Back Story
a film & speaker series
Anchor Alameda Association for Art & Film
presents
Back Story Film & Speaker Series
Beginning in August 2022, Anchor Alameda’s Backstory celebrates a local public figure or expert in conversation their choice of a particular film to share with the community, touching on that film's history, themes, and/or relevance to the speaker's life and/or current events. Back Story may be open to all ages, but may also include PG-13 or R-rated films that would not be appropriate for young children. Some themes, genres, and speakers are still to be determined but check back here to see how our schedule develops.
Back Story 2022-2023 is sponsored by the City of Alameda’s Public Art Grant program and produced by Anchor. It takes place at the historic Alameda Theatre & Cineplex.
Back Story #5: Join activist, politician, singer, and drag superstar of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Honey Mahogany in conversation about her film selection, The Color Purple at the Alameda Theatre and Cineplex on Sunday, Jul 16th, 2023 @ 2:30pm.
Born and raised in San Francisco, drag queen, business owner, and activist Honey Mahogany first gained international attention as a cast member on season 5 of the television series RuPaul’s Drag Race. Named San Francisco’s best drag queen and cabaret performer by the Bay Area Reporter, Best Drag Queen by SF Weekly, and a sought-after emcee across the globe, Honey’s more recent endeavors fuse art and politics. Honey’s work as a drag queen and activist has earned her commendations from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Sainthood from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, awards from both the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club and the San Francisco Young Democrats, and earned her a spot as a 2018 YBCA 100 Honoree.
Honey was then appointed to the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee (SF DCCC), becoming the first black trans-identified person to serve on the body. Honey continues to organize and fight for the most vulnerable communities in San Francisco every day in the District 6 Office, and she will be continuing her service on the SF DCCC as Chair.
Honey is also a founder of the Compton’s Transgender Cultural District, a sitting member of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, and co-owner of the Stud, at the time San Francisco’s oldest LGBTQ bar.
Honey will be interviewed by KQED’s Brian Watt
Brian Watt is KQED's morning radio news anchor. Prior to joining KQED in 2016, he worked as a Reporter for KPCC in Los Angeles and a producer at Marketplace. During eight years at KPCC, Brian covered business and economics, and his work won several awards. In 2008, he won the Los Angeles Press Club’s first-place award for Business and Financial Reporting, Broadcast. He’s also received honorable mention and been first runner up for the Press Club’s Radio Journalist of the Year. He won two Golden Mike awards from the Radio and TV News Association of Southern California. Brian holds degrees in theater from Yale University and the Sorbonne, and has worked as an actor in France, Italy, Brazil, Hungary and . . . Hollywood. He appeared in a few television shows, including The West Wing, Judging Amy and The District.
He also auditioned for… The Color Purple!
The Color Purple (1985, 154 mins.), directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the 1982 novel by Alice Walker, is a powerful cultural touchstone of modern American storytelling. Spinning the tale of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia, The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, this epic carries us on a spirit-affirming journey towards redemption and love.
Back Story Archive
Back Story #4: Join co-host of NPR’s Here and Now Deepa Fernandes in conversation about her film selection, Writing with Fire at the Alameda Theatre and Cineplex on Sunday, April 30th, 2023 @ 3:00pm. Deepa will be interviewed by the host of NPR’s The California Report Magazine, Sasha Khokha!
Deepa Fernandes is an award-winning radio and print journalist, a two-time first-generation immigrant, and a mother of two lively and lovely kids. Her career began in Sydney, Australia, at college radio station 2SER where she was first a news reader and went on to produce a news magazine show about Asia and the Pacific region.
After reporting and living across Latin America, Deepa landed in New York City where she produced and hosted shows on WBAI. Seeing a dearth of reporters of color, low-income reporters, and reporters from communities outside the mainstream, led her to start a youth media training program in NYC public schools, that grew to become a national media training organization, People's Production House. While running People's Production House and hosting a three-hour morning show on WBAI, Deepa also got her master's in journalism from Columbia University which landed her a prestigious JSK fellowship at Stanford. After Stanford, Deepa went on to Southern California Public Radio, KPCC, where she started a new beat for the station covering early childhood development.
In 2021 Deepa and her family moved back to the Bay Area (Alameda) to form a multigenerational household with her mother-in-law, Liz, an avid reader of the San Francisco Chronicle where Deepa had accepted a job as immigration correspondent and senior newsroom advisor on race and equity. Her work has won dozens of journalism awards.
Deepa's family currently lives in her music journalist and photographer husband Matt's childhood home, and she will broadcast live for Here & Now from the pantry closet turned recording booth. If you hear a dog in the background, it's just Bella, the beloved family pitty.. (click here for full biography)
Writing with Fire (2021, 92 mins.), directed by Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomast. In a cluttered news landscape dominated by men, emerges India's only newspaper run by Dalit women. Chief Reporter Meera and her journalists break traditions, redefining what it means to be powerful.
Sasha Khokha is the host of The California Report's weekly magazine program, which takes listeners on sound-rich excursions to meet the people that make the Golden State unique - through audio documentaries and long-form stories. As The California Report's Central Valley Bureau Chief based in Fresno for nearly a dozen years, Sasha brought the lives and concerns of rural Californians to listeners around the state. Her reporting helped expose the hidden price immigrant women janitors and farmworkers may pay to keep their jobs: sexual assault at work. It inspired two new California laws to protect them from sexual harassment. She was a key member of the reporting team for the Frontline film Rape on the Night Shift, which was nominated for two national Emmys. Sasha has also won a national Edward R. Murrow and a national PRNDI award for investigative reporting, as well as multiple prizes from the Society for Professional Journalists. Sasha is a proud alum of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Brown University.
Back Story #3: Join Holly Near in conversation about her film selection, Norma Rae. Taking place at the Alameda Theatre and Cineplex on Sunday, January 15, 2023 @ 3:00pm. Holly will be interviewed by her sister, Timothy Near!
Holly Near has been singing for a more equitable world for well over 50 years. One of the most powerful, consistent, and outspoken singers of our time, her concerts elevate spirits and inspire activism. Holly’s music and lyrics speak to anyone who believes in peace, justice, and feminism; a wonderful spectrum of humanity.
She built on her performing career with acting parts on seminal ‘70s television shows like Mod Squad, Room 222, and The Partridge Family. In 1970 she was a cast member of the Broadway musical Hair, and in the following year joined an anti-Vietnam War road show of music, comedy, and plays organized by antiwar activist Fred Gardner and actors Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland.
In 1972, Holly was one of the first women to create an independent record company. She has also become a spokesperson within the social change music movement. As Holly has observed, “Music can influence choices for better or for worse. A lullaby can put a troubled child to sleep, but Muzak can put a whole nation to sleep. A marching band can send our children off to war. It can also have everyone laughing, dancing, and loving as the lead off to a gay pride parade”.
Holly finds herself in a role that her amazing journey has uniquely prepared her to fill as the significance of her work over time has crystallized her iconic status. At once flattered, amazed, and centered, she graciously assumes the honoring that comes with time, proud to represent—through her voice and her music—the movements that are so fundamental to her spirit. (click here for full biography)
Norma Rae (1979, 110 mins.), directed by Martin Ritt follows Norma Rae Webster, a factory worker with little formal education in North Carolina who becomes involved in trade union activities at the textile factory where she works after her and her co-workers' health is compromised due to poor working conditions.
Norma Rae premiered at Cannes in 1979 where it competed for the Palme d’Ore. Sally Field won the 1980 Best Actress Oscar for her depiction of the young single mother and textile worker turned fearless labor activist.
Timothy Near has directed plays and musicals at major professional theatres around the U.S. including The Guthrie Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, Cal Shakes, Union Square Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Z Space Below, Berkeley’s Aurora Theater, Dance Mission in S.F., and The Public Theatre in NYC, among many others. She was the Artistic Director of San Jose Rep from 1987 to 2008.
She has worked with a wide variety of notable talents, including Holly Hunter, Lynne Redgrave, Culture Clash, and many others. She began her career as an actor, starting out in London and then acting in many prominent theatres around the U.S. and the world, and has significant experience and fluency working in ASL with the deaf community. She became a recurring character on Sesame Street in the 1970s and 80s alongside Linda the Librarian, and shared the Muppet Workshop stage with her sister Holly Near in an episode in 1981. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including an Obie.
After the free screening…
We hope you’ll join the producers of the Alameda International Film Festival for a beer and pizza party in the Alameda Historic Theatre Mezzanine.
For more information and tickets, CLICK HERE!
Sisters Timothy (left) and Holly (right) perform together at the Redwood Empire Fair, Ukiah, c. 1958.
Holly (center) performing with Ronnie Gilbert (left) and Pete Seeger (right) at
The Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA, 1984.
Described by the New York Times as “one of America’s finest artists and singers,” Frederica (“Flicka”) von Stade continues to be extolled as one of the music world’s most beloved figures. With impressive versatility, Ms. von Stade has effortlessly traversed an ever-broadening spectrum of musical styles and dramatic characterizations. She is an unmatched stylist in the French repertoire: a delectable Mignon or Périchole, a regal Marguerite in Berlioz’ La damnation de Faust, and, in one critic’s words, “the Mélisande of one’s dreams.” She is invited regularly to appear in concert with the world’s leading orchestras, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, London Symphony Orchestra, Washington’s National Symphony, and the Orchestra of La Scala.
Life is Beautiful (1997, 116 mins.) is Roberto Benigni’s comical, touching, and poignant treatment of the most difficult of experiences. Written and directed by its star, Benigni’s film was an Oscar-winner three times over.
When an open-minded Jewish waiter and his son become victims of the Holocaust, he uses a perfect mixture of will, humor, and imagination to protect his son from the dangers around their camp and the horrors of war.
Frederica von Stade was interviewed by local KDFC Classical Radio host Dianne Nicolini. The first female full-time announcer on KXTR in Kansas City, on KKHI in San Francisco, and on KDFC, she was inducted into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame in 2016. After growing up in Oakland, Dianne pursued a BA in Dramatic Art at UC Berkeley, and an MA in Theater at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. Dianne has kept midday listeners company on KDFC (since 1994) and KUSC (since 2014). If you ask her, the best part of her job is her incredible colleagues! The one thing she wishes everyone knew about classical music is that you don’t need to know anything about classical music to enjoy it!
Back Story #2: Frederica von Stade in conversation with Dianne Nicolini & Life is Beautiful took place at the historic Alameda Theatre and Cineplex on Sunday, November 6, 2022 @ 3:00pm.
Ray Ratto has been a San Francisco Bay Area sportswriter since the 1970s and a sports columnist since the 1980s. He co-hosts "Damon, Ratto & Kolsky" each weekday from 2-6pm on 95.7 The Game and writes columns for the website weekly, or whenever he damn well pleases.
A lifelong resident of Alameda, California, he was a Senior Insider for the TV station NBC Sports Bay Area (formerly Comcast Sportsnet Bay Area) from 2010 to 2019, and wrote columns for their website.
He has also written national columns for ESPN.com as well as CBS' sportsline.com. Ratto has co-hosted radio shows in the Bay Area for the past decade. He was a regular on the NBC Sports Bay Area show "The Happy Hour." He was a contributor at Deadspin and also writes columns for the San Jose Mercury News. Ratto is one of 60 sportswriters whose ranking of college football teams makes up the AP Poll.
Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, 95 mins.) is the darkly hilarious and eminently relevant masterpiece from George C. Scott and Stanley Kubrick with a career defining performance by Peter Sellers.
Dr. Strangelove tells the story of an insane American general who orders a bombing attack on the Soviet Union, triggering a path to nuclear holocaust that a war room full of politicians and generals frantically tries to stop.
Back Story #1: Ray Ratto & Dr. Strangelove took place at the historic Alameda Theatre and Cineplex on Sunday, August 21, 2022 @ 5:45pm.