ABOUT
Thirty Leaves
Thirty Leaves is a production organization I started to frame the independent media work I generate and collaborate with others to create. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, we focus on producing, writing, and directing films and other media for educational purposes.
We also take on projects that support the media arts field, such as strategic planning, conferences, speaking and writing, all with the focus of creating public awareness of independent media as a necessary and vital cultural movement.
There is no mystery to Thirty Leaves. We come up with ideas, partner with other individuals or organizations in the non profit world, and raise funding to create our projects to our own standards. They are distributed and seen in a variety of contexts, from broadcast and festivals, to schools and workshops, to museums and other groups of all kinds. Our goal is to engage the public with our work, trigger as much dialogue as we possibly can, and work towards social transformation.
Why Thirty Leaves? Buddhist monk and teacher Thich Nat Han wrote, “it takes thirty leaves on a tree to make one apple.” A nice metaphor I’ve always kept in mind for the sheer amount of energy and individuals coming together to get a media project off the ground.
Helen De Michiel
Helen De Michiel is a director,writer and producer whose work includes film, television and video installations. Her 1995 feature film Tarantella, starring Mira Sorvino, has been shown, among others at the Seattle Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival, and won the Audience Award at the 1996 Torino International Woman’s Film Festival. After the theatrical release it was broadcast on public TV nationwide in 1997-98 through The Independent Television Service, and is currently available in home video and DVD. Her documentary, Turn Here Sweet Corn(1990) was seen nationally on the PBS series POV, and is in distribution to environmental organizations as an educational and organizing tool. It has received awards from Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Earthpeace International Film Festival and the American Film & Video Festival. An earlier work, Consider Anything, Only Don’t Cry (1988) received the “Best New Vision” Golden Gate Award at the 1989 San Francisco International Film Festival.
Her films are included in the media art collection/archive of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Her video installation The Listening Project (1994), is part of Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center Permanent Collection and won the 1995 “Muse” Award in New Media & Technology from the American Museum Association. She has been the recipient of several NEA Awards and a Rockefeller Foundation Intercultural Film/Video Fellowship, among others.Since 1996 she has served as the National Director for NAMAC (The National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture), the national arts service organization for the media arts field. In 2001 she was appointed to the board of The George F. Peabody Award for Electronic Media. She has an MFA in film and visual arts from the University of California, San Diego. She lives with her family in Berkeley, California.