The first movie to be featured as a Film.com Movie of the Week is 24 Hours on Craigslist, by director Michael Ferris Gibson and Zealot Pictures & Heretic Films, documenting a random day-in-the-life on Craigslist San Francisco.

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24 Hours On Craigslist
Studio: Heretic Films
Genre: Documentary
Starring
Rachel Berney, Holly Dalton, Darleen Hollis, Tina McRee
Director: Michael Ferris Gibson
Runtime: 79 minutes
Official Site

SYNOPSIS:
The independent documentary film 24 Hours on Craigslist focuses on the popular and rapidly growing web site www.craigslist.org. The film remains true as possible to the sensible, grassroots nature of 'craigslist' and its non-commercial approach to providing individuals with a voice into their community from their advertisements placed on the web site.

24 Hours on Craigslist is an honest expose of a day in the life of the craigslist community in the city where it all started: San Francisco. Filmed entirely from user posts, the documentary provides a glimpse of the variety and breadth of the experiences of the website’s users. Eight film crews, also found through a single post on craigslist, were sent to film 121 different stories posted on August 4, 2003. The documentary’s rapid editing style highlights the individuals in the context of their postings, and allows the subjects' comments to move the film along without the use of voice-over narration. An Ethel Merman drag queen searches for the perfect backup band for her Led Zeppelin covers. A suburban professional woman assembles a diabetic cat support group. A couple seeks the perfect rabbi for their marriage. A would-be mother finds her ideal sperm donor. Doors for sale, one-night stands, compulsive roommates, transsexual erotic services: the mundane and the sublime, the ridiculous and the profound, all come together to paint a portrait of a thriving, humanistic community.

DIRECTOR Q & A:

1.How has Craigslist changed (if at all) since you made the film?
Bigger. Lots bigger. Craigslist has grown by 100% every year since it's inception and, since I made the film three years ago, that basically means that today it has 8x the traffic it did when I was using it. This exponential growth, of course, is basically in line with the internet in general, but it has been impressive that craigslist.org, with only 23 employees, has been able to keep up with, and sometimes outpace, the other corporate internet giants with thousands of employees like yahoo, google, msn, etc.

With growth does come change, of course, and it has always been a challenge to Craig and his staff to keep the community trustworthy. So far, by essentially dividing into more geographically-specific locations (Los Angeles vs Orange County vs Inland Empire, etc) craigslist has been able to maintain a generally effective and trustworthy service. With the size, however, also comes more potential for bad press. As I was making the film, there might have been one negative story about craigslist a month (involving scams, prostitution, drugs, etc), but as the volume of traffic has exponentially increased, there now seems to be about one negative story a week. Mind you, this is one story for over 200 different craigslist cities and literally tens of BILLIONS of page views. Frankly I think craiglist is as useful as ever, but with so many millions of people using it now, it's getting easier to dig up a little dirt.

2. What were the struggles with bringing this project to completion?
Well, aside from some late night folks on 'Casual Encounters' trying to have sex with the cameraman, the craigslist community was generally very responsive and enthusiastic about making the project. We had 121 posters who volunteered during the 24 hour period to be documented, so subject material was not hard to come by.

The biggest challenge came in the usual form: money. I picked the craigslist project because I thought it would be cheap to make. And it was: I found all the crew through craigslist and they were all willing to work for very little. But still when you make a feature length film and want to achieve a cinematic standard that is at least film-festival-worthy, there are many costs which are impossible to dodge. The final budget at distribution came in at around $100,000. But that was $100K that I didn't have laying around. Fortunately, one of my craigslist-cameraman had a wealthy friend who ended up swooping in with completion funds. In that way you could say that using craigslist itself helped to fund the film.

3. If you could pick another city besides San Francisco for a Craigslist film which city would you pick?
New York. I mean, c'mom, just think about it. What could be more of a contrast to the Bay Area's flash-mob, medical 420-feel-good atmosphere than a day on CL in NYC? Someone should definitely make that film someday, but I've moved on to other things.

4. How active were you in the production of The Hamiltons?
I was one of the executive producers, and basically I helped with casting, fundraising, a few technical hook-ups and some legal paperwork. The real force behind that film are The Butcher Brothers and their "special" vision of the horror genre. God, I love those guys.

5. IMDb.com shows only 16 films with "Esperanto" listed as one of the languages. Your first film, Numb, is one of them. Does the film have Esperanto subtitles?
Haha, no subtitles. We had actors come and do real Esperanto dialog for a few characters in that film. Basically, it's a post-apocalyptic science fiction piece, and in venturing through this dark future world the protagonist comes across a small band of people trying to rebuild the world into a new utopian paradise. I felt the artificial language Esperanto would be fitting for a group with such an idealistic vision.

6. What have you been up to since Craigslist was released and what are you currently working on?
I've had my hand in a lot of pies over that last three years, but the one with the most sticky filling that just won't come off my fingers is a documentary about wikipedia.org. I'm currently producing this literally globe-trotting doc with Sam Green, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind The Weather Underground. Nic Hill is directing, the award-winner director/producer of the graffiti doc Piece by Piece. Look for us at Sundance 2008 (hopefully) with Truth in Numbers: The Wikipeida Story!

DIRECTOR NOTES:
You know craigslist—it’s the secret engine that drives the Bay Area economy, the place where, if you live anywhere near San Francisco, you likely found your last job, apartment, car, couch, band-mate, dance lesson, bankruptcy attorney or Friday-night date. I started using craigslist back in 1997, when it was briefly called listfoundation and, like many Bay Area filmmakers, I often contemplated making a craigslist movie because, well, if you live in this area for any length of time, you discover that virtually EVERYONE has a craigslist story. It's the ultimate urban touchstone, a digital "commons" where people from essentially all walks of life converge to connect over not only the basic necessities (jobs, housing etc) but also just about anything you could imagine (and many things you can't.)
-Michael Ferris Gibson

About Movie of the Week:
Film.com will showcase established and up-and-coming filmmakers and their films throughout 2007. The initial catalog of movies is provided to Film.com through its relationship with GreenCine (http://www.greencine.com), a San Francisco-based company with an extensive library of independent, international and documentary films. GreenCine offers more than 50,000 titles in over 250 genres for sale or rent, with 10,000 of these films available on demand for streaming or download.

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