Bill Chayes This is Me

Education

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1. 1. Chayes Productions - Jews and Buddhism: Belief Amended, Faith Revealed

   www.chayesproductions.com/bio. - [Cached]

   Published on: 3/29/2008   Last Visited: 3/29/2008

   Bill Chayes began his career in film production, exhibition design and education by working with classic film documentarians Richard Leacock at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and John Marshall at the Center for Documentary Anthropology in Cambridge, Mass.
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   Bill began a teaching career at Tufts University and Clark University in Massachusetts that culminated when he became Senior Lecturer in Film Production at San Francisco State University and was awarded the Meritorious Performance and Professional Excellence Award.
   
   He served Berkeley, California's Magnes Museum as Exhibition Designer and Curator of Film, Photography, Digital Art and Music where he designed and/or curated over 70 major exhibitions.
   
   As producer/director of documentary, experimental and educational films, Chayes has won many national and international awards.
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   As exhibition designer Bill recently completed the design and installation of the major exhibition Paul Robeson: The Tallest Tree in our Forest, for the African American Museum and Library at Oakland.
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   Bill graduated with a degree in Architecture from the University of Michigan. He and his wife Michelle, an artist and RN, live and work in Petaluma, California with their two daughters, Imogene and Frida.
   
   CONTACTS:
   
   Bill Chayes Chayes Productions 956 Chileno Valley Road Petaluma, CA 94952 Tel: (707) 782-9131 E-mail: billchayes@gotsky.com

2. 2. News

   www.stlfilm.com/news.htm - [Cached]

   Published on: 3/20/1999   Last Visited: 9/18/2000

   For entry form and information, contact : Bill Chayes, Video Competition Coordinator, Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell Street, Berkeley, CA 94705, (510) 549-6952 FAX : (510) 549-6941, email : jewsvideo@aol.com entry forms available at : www.jewishfilms.com .
   
   PRESS RELEASE : The Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee is seeking to bring to Kansas City new, small budget, independent feature films without distribution or with limited distribution for our monthly film series, Indy Film Showcase. There will be a special screening and a Q&A session with the filmmaker. We have open dates in December 1999 and all of 2000.
   
   We will provide : - Roundtrip airfare and accommodations for at least a one over nightstay. - Return postage for the 35 mm or 16 mm print. - A connection with a local art house exhibitor to enable a limited run of the film, though we can not guarantee such a run. - A press screening the week before the premiere.

3. 3. Metroactive Movies | 'Los Romeros: The Royal Family of the Guitar'

   www.metroactive.com/sonoma/gui - [Cached]

   Published on: 11/30/2001   Last Visited: 11/30/2001

   Bill Chayes
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   When Petaluma filmmaker Bill Chayes first heard of Los Romeros--the world-class foursome of classical guitarists known for decades as "the royal family of the guitar"--he knew he'd uncovered the subject of his next film.
   
   Chayes and professional partner John Harris had already made one successful movie, the PBS documentary Divine Food: A Hundred Years in the Kosher Delicatessen Trade, and were eager to make another when Harris--a retired Berkeley cookbook publisher, author, and guitar aficionado--mentioned the Romeros.
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   "When John started telling me these amazing stories," Chayes says, "the whole Romero family history, their artistic accomplishments, their place in the music world, I said, 'John, that's got to be a great film.'"
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   What got Chayes' cinematic pulse racing was the story of Celedonio Romero, a poor Spanish guitar teacher who fled the oppression of fascist dictator Francisco Franco and ultimately won fame and fortune in America as the founder of the world's first classical guitar quartet.
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   "An amazing group of people," says Chayes, who works as a curator at the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley. "Very charismatic. The reason they became so popular in the '60s was that they brought a flair to the popular stage that hadn't been there previously. They broke the rarefied air of the classical oeuvre. They broke down the barrier."
   
   Though Celedonio passed away in 1996, the quartet lives on through Celin and Pepe and includes grandsons Celino and Lito.
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   "The Romeros were a phenomenon," says Chayes. "And they still are. They perform hundreds of concerts a year and are treated like rocks stars in Spain, in Asia, all around the world."
   
   Harris and Chayes soon learned that KPBS, a public television channel in San Diego--where the Romeros have lived since emigrating from Spain--had once been keen to produce a Romeros documentary, but the project had never made it off the wish list.
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   With Chayes and Harris eager to make the film, interest at KPBS rekindled, and the station struck a coproduction deal with the two filmmakers.
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   Fortunately, Harris had already formed an alliance with Angel Romero, from whom the filmmaker had purchased some guitars--"Angel has one of the best guitar collections in the world," Harris points out--and the whole family soon signed on to the project, inviting Chayes and Harris into their lives for over a year.
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   "That's the way it is around their house," agrees Chayes. "At any moment, someone might pick up a guitar and start playing this fantastic, world-class music."
   
   Aside from the Romeros' own home movies, such family rituals had never been filmed until Chayes and Harris were allowed into the Romero's home.
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   Chayes is now on to his next project, also music related. The Right to Sing--which he is making with filmmaker Karen Robbins--tells the story of the political protest songs of the '60s and will feature interviews with Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez.