GREETINGS !!! Our IndieGoGo campaign may have ended but our swim has just begun- you can still donate to help us get upstream.

just click below!

As of January 2013, we have completed all shooting in three different locations. We edited a rough cut this summer, as well as the color- corrected trailer above ^ this fall. We are delving deep into post-production to compete a final edit. We will need to raise money for sound sweetening and an online edit that includes titles and color correction to make the film 'festival ready' ! The anticipated release date is Spring 2014. 

Please visit my website http://saroltajanecump.com/goldfish.htm for updates.

We recently screened the trailer  http://salmonfilmfestival.org/ in Fort Bragg, CA and The League of Women Voters in Benicia, CA to some very enthusiastic audiences . We are very excited for future screenings of the finished film! Please consider donating, and remember Every Drop Counts!

thank you,

Sarolta J. Cump

November 2013

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'The Gold Fish' film is a queer slapstick musical about water politics and salmon migration. Directed by Sarolta Jane Cump and in collaboration with The Water Underground.

Be a part of helping the Salmon get upstream! We need YOU! Every drop counts. This film will reach a broad audience, and become a centerpiece of education, community science, and water activism by the ever-growing Water Underground.

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Follow the plucky Salmon, Ms. Coho, in her struggle to get upstream to spawn. At the Gold Fish Water Casino she must gamble her eggs for river passage. She encounters a Water Nymph dealing dirty cards, an ancient Crocodile stuck playing host to the casino’s vaudeville numbers, the bumbling Army Chorus of Engineers, and an array of displaced River Creatures.

As a storm brews in the distance, the Water Tycoon shuffles in for a cataclysmic show down. Will the Water Nymph confront its PTSD from the Water Wars? Will the River at last become a Waterfall? Will the Salmon and her newfound allies rise up, or will it all go down the drain?

The Gold Fish will be shot in HD and run 30 minutes, following a three act structure. Rife with double entendre and stunning visuals, the Gold Fish engages the audience with the politics of water and dam removal using memorable characters, camp humor and show tunes.

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All participants are members of The Water Underground, a loose and variously membered cadre of artists, scientists, and water activists who share the revolutionary hope for water to rise. We position ourselves not within the static preordained water infrastructure contemporary society takes for granted– but as part of a living, shifting nexus of natural, technological, social, and spiritual forces.

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SO many people have been working to make this film happen, contributing their time and fabulousness. These are just a few!

CAST

Annie Danger (Salmon) is a radical performer and trans woman living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She hails from the desert southwest and a long line of teachers, nurses, and engineers. This legacy shows up in her work as she ties together far-reaching, radical ideas into interactive thrills, commonsense conclusions, and, occasionally, audience transcendence. Danger's work has appeared repeatedly in the National Queer Arts Festival, Michelle Tea's Sister Spit: the Next Generation, Keith Hennessy's Too Much!, the Fresh Meat Festival, and many, many smaller locales. She is a regular recipient of grant money from the Queer Community Center and the Creating Queer Communities grant. 

J Dellecave (Water Nymph) has been passionately creating, performing,
studying, and producing experimental performance since choreographing jungle gym routines to Olivia Newton John (a long, long time ago). A child of small town dance schools, collegiate trained modern dancer, twenty-something of the queerbo cabaret revival, and thirty-something of the downtown NYC dance scene, J holds a BFA in Dance from Temple University, an MA in Performance Studies from New York University, and is currently a PhD student in Critical Dance Studies at University of California, Riverside. The Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, UCR Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellowship, Leeway Foundation, and Dance Advance recognize J’s choreographic and scholarly work. J has performed nationally and internationally in her own and other people’s choreography. 

Stormy Henry Knight (Ghost Crocidilian) is the multi-talented star of Maggots and Men, a musician and key builder of Streetopia.

Ivy Jeanne McClelland (River) has been creating work that weaves social ecology, radical history and personal narrative to engage an ongoing dialogue about race, class, gender and sexuality. Using drawing, painting, filmmaking, installation, and performance, her work is informed by a working class, feminist and queer perspective.  She  is currently involved with project development for Jakmel Ekspresyon, a newly emerging community arts center in Jacmel, Haiti. Ivy is also a reknowned singer, and songwriter performing in many bands including Black Rainbow and Allergic to BullShit.

Qilo Matzen (Tycoon) has performed throughout North America and Europe: touring the Balkans with arts/activist collective Building Bloc (2006) and co-directing Change of State Performance Project (2005-2009). Creeks, bathrooms and black box theatres set the stage for Qilo's immersive and somatically informed performances. Recent work includes dancing at the Marin Headlands for the Arts and collaborating with paige starling sorvillo. Qilo's education spans North Carolina's swamps, U. Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (BFA) and Moving on Center.

Rayna Matthews (Choreographer of Engineers, Floyd) Performer and mover and shaker. bio soon!

Brontez Purnell (Choreographer of Water Jets) Dancer, writer, rock star! bio soon!

CREW

Sarolta Jane Cump (Director, Screenplay Adaptation, Producer)  A Bay Area  director known as a stalwart advocate of feminist and DIY ethos, Sarolta Jane Cump's work sifts through intersections of public and private histories, using humor and lyrical visuals. Her work has toured microcinemas and museums internationally and played in squats and backyards. Cump’s 19-minute film "California is an Island" (2009) was selected for the juried film program of the 2010 National Queer Cultural Arts Festival, and debuted at Craig Baldwin’s Other Cinema series. In 2009, she received an MFA in film and video production from York University in Toronto, where she studied with director John Greyson.

Elia Singer (Assistant Director, Production Manager) 

Elia has worked on numerous commissioned projects for artists including the activist teachings of renowned performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Kirk Read the extraordinaire performance artist and author of How I Learned to Snap. Elia has sat on a number of juries and participated in film festival programming in the Toronto film communities. Recently, Elia has been living, teaching and movie making in the San Francisco area.

Avery Hudson (Director of Photography)

Avery was the D.P. on Mother Country and Lucha. Check back soon for a full bio.

Sarah Kennedy (Second Camera) Cinematographer, co-editor, co-producer of feature doc Live, Nude, Girls UNITE winner of Golden Spire at the 2000 San Francisco International Film Festival and 2nd Camera on By Hook or By Crook.

Sof T. (Music Director) has been making art out of his bay area crabshell for what seems like forever now. His visual and graphic art has been known to decorate radical political publications and walls, his installation have been heard to interact with crowds in alternative art venues and projects and his written/spoken words rumored to have been whispered in unassuming poetry nights and  dimly lit back rooms.This recent undertaking of the musical direction of 'The Gold Fish' musical, marks a quite natural tangent from his central role in the post production of Sarolta Jane Cump's previous film 'California is an Island'.

Alice Woelfle-Erskine (Choir Director) more soon!

Zeph Fishlyn (Set Designer) has worked in a variety of media over the years while maintaining a steady engagement with topics of transgression and transformation. Since August 2007 she has been collaborating as illustrator/educator with the Beehive Design Collective, creating accessible narrative graphics that spark radical storytelling and community response to globalization, resource extraction and climate change. She was co-Art Director of Maggots and Men, an award-winning experimental film twisting the Russian Revolution to queer ends.

Ariel (El) Springfield- (Prop & costume creator & wrangler extraordinaire) more soon!

Jerry Lee (Lighting designer) more soon!Fresh outta the van from Sister Spit 2012 tour!

Jeanette Aguliar (AC)

July Cole (Playwright) is a writer, performer, and educator who lives
and works in Oakland and San Francisco. A lifelong admirer of rivers, Cole co-edited
Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground, began developing the Gold Fish as a one-act play in 2007, and recently earned an MS in Environmental Studies and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Montana. Cole has collaborated, performed, and published with other members of the Water Underground since 2004, and currently teaches a class in science fiction at UC Berkeley with Cleo Woelfle-Erskine.

Cleo Woelfle-Erskine (Associate Producer and Educational Consultant) is a hydrologist, educator, and scholar of watercurrently pursuing a PhD in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley. Since co-founding the Greywater Guerrillas in 1999, he has led dozens of community-based workshops on rainwater harvesting and greywater reuse across North America. Woelfle-Erskine's current work includes research into the water savings, ecological implications,and social impact of home greywater and rainwater systems, theoretical writing on watercommons, and local collaborations developing mutual aid-based models to disseminatesustainable water systems widely. His books include Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground, Urban Wilds: Gardeners Stories of the Struggle for Land and Justice, and Creating Rain Gardens: Capturing the Rain for your own Water-Efficient Garden.

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WHAT DO WE DO WITH ALL THAT MONEY?!

We are prepping for our second shoot on June 16th & 17th! One of these shoots will be in the East Bay Regional Parks so we will be kicking down some money to the parks for a permit as well as securing insurance and transportation. Our fabulous Camera person Avery Hudson has secured us a free jib! We are renting two first Canon EOS c300 cameras and professional sound gear.We are aiming for the highest of production values with a bare bones budget because we know this film can reach a broad audience. The cast & crew are working on a stipend and volunteer basis which is extremely generous. We still need to get these stipends covered. We also will have food for all cast crew and extras for the big FINALE SHOOT provided by Yasmine of queer food for love.

Film (even when it's video) is an expensive endeavor, but it is also an enduring one that will allow us to bring The Gold Fish to audiences far and wide, along with  The Water Underground's pro-active fabulously queer citizen science ethos. We will be using the money raised to cover bare bones expenses for the production costs during 5 days of shooting this May and June.

 We believe that part of creating and sustaining community is recognizing and attempting to address the persistent economic inequalities in the film/art/science/world. Ideally, we want to offer each of our participants a modest stipend for their time, energy, hard work, and fabulousness. We want our fish to be taken care of as best we can. We think the end result will be a better film, and one that better benefits everyone involved. 

For the past six months we have been doing some outrageously creative and educational fun-raising projects in the Bay Area and have been digging into our own pockets. So far, we have used these funds to complete the intitial sound recordings of the film's five songs (to be used for playback during filming) with a sound engineer at BAVC and bring in professional musicians as well as start building some beautiful sets.  The Crocker Museum performance last October helped pay for materials for us to make props and some fantastic finned and feathered papier mache masks. We are extrememly resourceful AND NEED YOU to bring The Gold Fish to the screen. Every drop counts and we appreciate whatever you can give, sincerely and truly! 

We will continue to fundraise and apply for grants through the summer and fall,  to create a few pieces of simple animation, edit, and do a sound mix with the goal of getting this fish out in the water by SPRING 2013. Though grants these days are much slimmer and harder to fish for,  having actual footage to show for appliciations vastly increases our chances.  We will continue to be strategic

WHAT DO I GET ?

You get our sincere gratitude for your support, and the knowledge that you are helping put more finny fabulousness in the world while geting the word out about water politics. By contributing to our indiegogo fund,  you are also helping us demonstrate to potential funders our ability to raise funds from our own communities. This translates as potential audience and hugely supports our grant writing efforts.

Of course, we also have some darling perks crafted by some amazing folks - check out the gallery for pics. We will send out updates to all contributors as we move into filming. And next spring. as the bears rub their eyes and come out of hibernation, you'll get to see film that you helped make happen!

cloud catcher T-shirt!

  Hand etched bottles and mugs!

   Hand screen printed hankies!

and much, much more.

WHERE WILL THE GOLD FISH SWIM TO? 

TARGET AUDIENCE

The film is intended to reach an intergenerational and varied but overlapping audience through its use of mythical narrative and iconic figures to talk about large problems in a specific way. Core audience will come from members of the LQBTIQ community;environmentalists, social activists and people concerned with water and climate change issues. Gold Fish will also appeal to high school and college science & ecology educators and their students.

DISTRIBUTION/MARKETING STRATEGY

Film festivals with environmental, queer, and /or feminist and/or focuses will be targeted for initial exposure. We have begun development of New Media strategies to incorporate the film into a larger web based interactive educational project. This is   an integral component of the long-term strategy of exposure and intersecting with other resources and organizations. We will be offering downloadable copies of the film and marketing to educational institutions with a curriculum developed by the Water Underground.

ORIGINS

The Gold Fish originated as a three person, one act play that Juy Cole wrote while on tour with the book Dam Nation in 2007. In October 2011, the Water CA media book project invited 'The Gold Fish' to be performed at the Crocker Museum in Sacramento, and Cole expanded the piece into a three-act musical. Cole and collaborator Cleo Woelfle-Erskine enlisted filmmaker Sarolta Jane Cump to direct the play and adapt it into a film. This January, The Gold Fish accepted an invitation from the Wild & Scenic Film Festival to perform at their Dam Removal Event .