30 Short Films Celebrate Legacy of Strand Releasing
Veteran director Tommy O’Haver, a visiting professor at Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film and Television, is one of 30 filmmakers asked to create a one-minute film celebrating arthouse film distributor Strand Releasing’s 30th anniversary. The retrospective, called “30/30 VISION: 3 Decades of Strand Releasing,” will screen at prestigious museums all over the country and includes films by John Waters, Lulu Wang, and Catherine Breillat.
Culver City, California-based Strand Releasing is a distributor of independent and foreign films, as well as cinema highlighting the LGBTQ community. Knowing this, O’Haver said he decided to make his one-minute short, shot entirely on an iPhone, a musical celebrating queer cinema. He used the melody of “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General,” by the D’Oyly Carter Opera Company, but re-wrote the lyrics to depict queer cinema with a full choir.
O’Haver collaborated with SFTV faculty Charles Swanson, director of photography, and Sharon Mooney, editor, as well as students Nicole Kalcic, production designer, and Brandon Estrella, producer. O’Haver taught at LMU as an adjunct professor before taking a break in 2016 to write and direct the Netflix film, “The Most Hated Woman in America” (2017). He has also directed major films, such as “Get Over It” (2001), “An American Crime” (2007), and “Ella Enchanted” (2004).
O’Haver’s connection with Strand Releasing dates back to the early years of his film career, when co-founder Hu produced his first feature film, “Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss,” in 1998. O’Haver and Strand Releasing’s long-lasting relationship is how he got invited to participate in the “30/30 VISION” project.
The compilation of all 30 short films will screen this fall at various venues, including the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The Los Angeles screening will be at the Hammer Museum on December 13 and includes a conversation with Strand Releasing founders Marcus Hu and Jon Gerrans.
Reporter Riley Apodaca is a junior English major.
Top Image: On set of Tommy O’Haver’s one-minute musical.
