BY ALEX HO

In print | November 8, 2007

Art reflects life, as the saying goes. This week, the two will become all the more intertwined during the Sixth Annual First Person Festival of Memoir and Documentary Art, running in Philadelphia from Nov. 7 to 11. Vicki Solot, the festival’s creator, said, “I always was very … interested in people’s stories.”

Solot also observed a similar movement in historiography “where individual impressions and memories of what had happened became valid ways of accounting for historical events.” Solot has similarly made a point of giving voice to marginalized communities in her festival. Showing on Friday as part of the fest’s “Free @ 5 Series,” the documentary “Garlic and Watermelons” looks at a Gypsy community displaced because of preparations for the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

Another doc “If You Break the Skin, You Must Come In” tells a story much closer to home. Originally, director David Kessler was making a documentary about Philly-based photographer Zoe Strauss. Meanwhile, Kessler was teaching kids in foster care how to shoot film and enlisted their help for the film. Soon enough, the cameras were turned on the youth and their lives.

The fest focuses equally on the written word. On opening night, Laura Schenone read from her forthcoming book “Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken” about her journey back to her family’s home in Genoa in search of her great-grandmother’s ravioli recipe. On Saturday, in “Race Matters,” June Cross will tell of how, as a mixed race child, she was given up by her mother and sent to live with a black couple. Afterwards will be a discussion with Bryn Mawr College sociology professor Mary Johnson Osirim.

Quite a few events in the festival combine the two mediums. One such program, “Life and Death over Coffee,” on Friday will feature Michael Gates Gill’s memoir “How Starbucks Saved My Life.” Comfortably living as a top advertising executive, Gill was abruptly laid off of and, desperate for health insurance, became a Starbucks barista. The reading is coupled with a short film documenting comedian Michael Malkoff’s attempt to visit every one of Manhat-tan’s 171 Starbucks cafes in a single day.

The fest is also holding several workshops. In “Worn Stories” and “Portrait of a Thing,” participants will use old personal belongings to tease out past memories. There will also be a workshop on blogging, certainly a powerful new medium for first person arts. Solot said, “with respect to young filmmakers, emerging artists, we’re instrumental in … giving them much wider visibility.” The fest’s biggest success story to date was this year’s memoir winner Deborah Derrickson Kossmann. After winning, Koss-mann saw her story published in the NY Times column “Modern Love” and now has a book deal.

Perhaps the biggest event is the Philly premiere of “Strange Culture,” which exposes the case of Steven Kurtz, an art professor at SUNY Buffalo accused of bioterrorism and detained by the FBI. Self-reflexively experimenting with dramatizing nonfiction (with reenactments by actors Thomas Jay Ryan and Tilda Swinton) and infusing its subject with a scathing activist message, “Strange Culture” melds the fest’s two goals of exploring both the entertainment value and social value of nonfiction art.

“Personal stories allow you to [jump] into somebody else’s skin,” Solot said. “At this time, when we tend to demonize other cultures … the opportunity to really … understand how other people live and how they see the world is especially valuable.”

All of the festivals events are held on 2111 Sansom Street. For more information, go to http://www.firstpersonfestival.com.

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