For Kati Genthner, a former Jacksonville resident and 2009 graduate of Pleasant Valley High school, a critical period in her life was made into a film. ‘Kati with an I’ was filmed over a three-day period in 2009 and follows Kati during the three tense days leading up to her graduation.
The documentary, which premiered in February at the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Mo., was the idea of Kati‘s documentary filmmaker half-brother Robert Greene.
Kati moved to Alabama with her family several years ago so that her father could help care for his ailing mother. After her grandmother died the family moved back to their native North Carolina while Kati moved in with a friend in Jacksonville to finish school. Throw in a boyfriend from Piedmont and uncertainty about life after high school, and an unexpected twist ending, and you have a film about an ordinary person facing the extraordinary dilemmas of growing up.
Speaking of his sister, Greene said she has always been good on camera.
“She just comes alive. She’s just one of those people that the camera really likes,” said Greene. “She’s weirdly honest in a way that a lot of people are more protective. She’s just very open and even though you can see her flaws she doesn’t hide from them. She’s got this self confidence I think that sort of comes through.”
Greene has been shooting film of his little sister since his days in film school. “Kati with an I” is his second feature film. His first, “Owning the Weather,” premiered in 2009. His latest film, “Fake it so Real”, about a group of independent pro wrestlers, is set to make its premier in early 2011. Greene has worked on several other films in his position as a post-production supervisor and documentary producer at 4th Row films in New York
Making a documentary of your sister’s struggles could be construed as exploitive, but Greene said Kati was comfortable making the movie and after watching the edited final version she approved.
“If you watch the film, we purposefully are doing a lot of things in the film that sort of remove that feeling of it. For me the fact that she calls it her film is a big part of it,” said Greene.
“Part of what we were going for is that she’s not quirky. She’s a normal person. I feel like a lot of films these days are about quirky characters with ticks, or they invented something amazing or they’re about to go off to a war. All these things are spectacular character traits.
“Her normalness, there’s something universal about it. I think people from the South, definitely people from the region will recognize a lot of stuff in there, but I’ve had people from Maine and upstate New York and all over the country say that ‘this really looked like my high school’ so we’re going after a sort of universal theme and she really contributes to that,” said Greene.
Kati’s movie picked up a Gotham Award nomination in the category of “Best film not playing at a theater near you,” and if it wins Greene said the distribution problems documentaries so often have to deal with woulf likely be solved for the film.
All five films nominated for a Gotham this year were shown at The Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan last week. You won’t be able to drive into Anniston and catch a viewing, but Greene said it might play in Atlanta later this year.
“The hope is that it’s going to continue to travel the festival circuit and then maybe it will be available for download and on Netflix,” said Greene.
Once you get the chance to view it, you’ll likely see familiar things. Pastoral landscapes in and around Piedmont flash by as Kati and her boyfriend ride together in the backseat, singing along with the car radio, and the arcade in Quintard Mall makes a cameo.
What Greene hopes is that viewers will see some of themselves in a young person faced with hard decisions and uncertain ends, surrounded by a world that refuses to wait for her answer.
“When you watch the film it feels intimate. She knows what the cameras doing. She knows what we’re doing. She feels comfortable and we’re not getting her in situations where she’s not being completely herself, and in the end the film says something bigger about youth and growing up, and if it does that then I think it’s justified.”
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