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  • Forever Young

    Neil Young appeared live with his film CSNY/Déjà Vu at the SFFS and Swords to Plowshares benefit at the Sundance Kabuki Thurs., July 17. Pictured here, from left,... more

Dry your tears: Lise Swenson, top left, scopes the Salton Sea for her new film. (Photo courtesy Swenson)

In Production

Putting flash to mustache, plus: Swenson's Salton Sea adventures

By Michael Fox

SF360.org editor’s note: This is the first edition of Michael Fox’s "In Production" column on Bay Area filmmaking, which will be appearing every other week in SF360.org.

Director’s Manual, Lesson 1: The idea for a film can literally strike anywhere. Laura Lukitsch was chilling at a rest stop in Arizona in 2003, en route to her sister’s wedding in New Mexico, when a busload of men on their way to the World Beard and Mustache Championships pulled in. She took out her new camera—which she was still learning to use—and discovered it had magical magnetic properties. "They came up to me and gave me an interview because it was the biggest camera there," the San Francisco filmmaker said with a chuckle the other day on the phone. When Lukitsch showed the sequence to family and friends, she got an unexpectedly passionate response. "Guys wanted to buy the footage," she recalled. "There was more to this than meets the eye. It seemed to bring up issues of family, of tradition, of religion, even male bonding."

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