🍅 🎥 👶 🐈‍⬛ 💍

A TASTE OF TASTE WITH...

ONDI TIMONER

🛎️The Roxy, 👶 Bring the Baby!, 🎥 Shoot Super 8MM, and more.

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A TASTE OF TASTE WITH Ondi Timoner

🍅 🎥 👶 🐈‍⬛ 💍

January 16, 2025

Ondi Timoner is an Altadena, California-based filmmaker. Renowned for documentaries like the deeply personal LAST FLIGHT HOME and her first scripted film, MAPPLETHORPE, Ondi is a highly lauded and multi-award-winning storyteller. She is the only two-time Grand Jury prize winner at Sundance– for her documentary films DIG!, and WE LIVE IN PUBLIC (my favorite doc...ever). Her colorful career also encompasses hosting talk shows / podcasts and passionately advocating for social and environmental causes. She tells us that she has two more projects currently in production– be sure to keep your eyes peeled for ALL THAT WE ARE and THE RACE TO CATCH THE LAST NAZIS. Tomorrow, DIG! XX, the “enhanced, extended and reimagined cut” of DIG!, hits the screen for its theatrical release, and you can find screening info here (as well as screening info for her other new films, ALL GOD’S CHILDREN and THE INN BETWEEN). Lucky for us, Ondi’s here to tell us what she’s been into.

UPDATE: These were written before the fires and Ondi unfortunately lost everything. You can donate to her GoFundMe here.

Our friends Ondi, Morgan, and Juki lost their beautiful Altadena home in the Eaton Fire, along with everything they own: footage from Ondi’s many films (DIG!, MAPPLETHORPE, LAST FLIGHT HOME) and hundreds of hours of footage for upcoming films, all their archives, camera and recording equipment, art, clothes, books, awards, and every other possession.

GO FUND ME

WHAT Ondi Timoner IS INTO...

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What is the most inspiring film you have ever seen?

@ondi-timoner

Jan 16, 2025

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GARDEN

We joined the Altadena Community Garden (after being on a waiting list for three years… so long I forgot we ever signed up when they called.) Since then, we ride our bikes down there every couple weeks or when we are back in town, and as I toil - for no other purpose than attempting to raise healthy vegetables and do something that doesn’t include a screen. It’s the perfect tangible metaphor for living: We have to weed out the unwanted clutter and invasive influences so that we can grow the best, most nurturing edible plants into being - and then there is the harvest of food we have watered and grown! So thrilling! Meeting neighbors and swapping tips (usually it’s them guiding us:) is another highlight. So far we’ve grown collard greens, kale, tomatoes (through which we discovered stir fried green tomatoes yum), artichokes, squash (so much grew, we made them the centerpieces at our LA wedding and served an appetizer of squash, goat cheese and pomegranate), sorrel, basil, cilantro (hands down the most essential herb in my kitchen), eggplant, peppers, thyme and parsley (which led to the invention of our parsley pesto). As we become more and more plugged in and disconnected, the garden is a refuge and a physical reminder! I highly recommend, fellow sapiens!

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Shoot Super 8MM (and Film Overall)

I’ve been shooting Super 8MM since my brother David started us off on it in the mid-90’s when we began filming DIG! I immediately fell in love with it and incorporated it in all of my films and music videos etc where I might need a textured, esoteric, ethereal, nostalgic feeling (which is almost always unless I’m making something about the future/tech like WE LIVE IN PUBLIC or THE NEW AMERICANS!) I have, ironically, always described it as “perfectly imperfect” as I order boxes of it and explain why. I believe it captures the magic that exists all around us and makes it perceptible. When I was shooting MAPPLETHORPE, I knew it would be impossible to capture the script in only 19 shoot days, so to make sure there was peanut butter to hold the sandwich together at the end of the day, I kept a Super 8MM camera on my directors chair and would take the actors out or let them play on the set as Nancy Schreiber and there team were finishing lighting, so I could film them as if they were documenting each other! It added such texture and beauty to the film, as it brought the jungle alive in my series JUNGLETOWN, and brings an important dimension to the two films I am currently making.

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Bring the Baby!

I gave birth to my son Joaquim “Juki” just two days before exporting DIG! and submitting it to Sundance. So I found myself with an 11 week-old infant in my arms, breastfeeding between Q&As and even went home to do so after winning the Grand Jury Prize (when normally I would have been out til dawn celebrating) - so he kept my feet firmly on the ground, but also, made everything so much more entertaining. Over the next two years, I brought Juki with me to 17 countries and all over the states, as the film exploded in popularity, and I had an absolute blast witnessing this wild and beautiful world through the ever-curious and amazed eyes of a baby. I loved documenting Juki on our travels, dancing in his stroller in Paris, kicking back listening to classical street musicians in Vienna. Traveling with my son made the experience so much richer and also kept my feet on the ground. When we won Sundance again five years later with WE LIVE IN PUBLIC, I was so excited to take my him to Australia and New Zealand, Oaxaca and later Bhutan - so many more fascinating places with the films, and the resulting 21 year-old has a wisdom and confidence which I think must be at lest in part a result of this special upbringing.

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Go Meet the Cats of Istanbul

If you are looking at a flight that has a layover in Istanbul, book it and go meet the cats of Istanbul. They grace almost every nook in the endless winding streets of the city, but don’t worry that they are stray and hungry. They are free and undoubtedly cared for by someone on the block. If you can spare a week, spend it there, and drink in the symbiotic, holistic relationship of the living things in this city - where you will find practically no homeless either… because they take care of each other. This holy and incredible city connects Europe and Asia, but its greatest feature is chaos in perfect harmony. Our favorite walk is along the Galata Bridge at sunset, where birds fly by the hundreds over the fish market and awe-inspiring mosques, silhouetted against a golden sky.

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Marry your Composer

People ask me how I’ve completed and released six films in the last two years. The only true answer is, I married my composer. As we tumble through life together, we discuss the feeling of the scenes in our films and what instruments would best bring those home; we find the shape of the film and identify the sound of its overall themes; and then we separate - and I edit while Morgan writes and records the score - and we come back together to share the results. We also shoot together, so her music is all the better from having been there meeting the subjects and experiencing the locations we are portraying. It’s an endless collaboration, and collaboration is the greatest aphrodisiac.

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The Triple Berry Cream Cake

A dear friend catered my baby shower with the Triple Berry Cream Cake from Sweet Lady Jane, and there was no turning back.More light cream and sumptuous fresh berries than cake, it feels like love made edible, and makes the impossible seem possible. It has been my birthday cake of choice ever since and is always devoured instantly by my friends and family. Turns out, I am not the only one - many friends treasure this one-of-a-kind delight, so I get to have it more than once a year - and I always delight, transforming into a six year old as soon as it touches my lips.

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Walk, Walk, Walk

If you have a dog, walk them! If not, walk anyway! I have found my whole life that walking is the best way to feed my mind, body, and soul simultaneously… and to see and discover any new city. I travel a lot with my films, and sometimes I clock in 13 miles in a day… On any day at home, it’s a sacred time, as the sun sets and we walk our dogs. But if I can take care of phone calls, listen to podcasts, do Zooms and catch up with my partner and friends while moving my feet down the street, waving at neighbors and taking in the natural beauty that is waiting to be discovered around every corner - I will choose that any day. Wandering around a city is also our favorite way to experience any city in the world.

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Man’s Search for Meaning

This is a book by Austrian psychologist, Viktor Frankl, about his observations of the human condition, recorded while surviving the Holocaust. He identified work, love and suffering as the three ways we can find meaning in life - while suffering is how we can reach our highest potential, because it tests us the most. He observed how vital hope was for survival, and how some people were profoundly graceful and generous in their suffering… like those who gave away their meager piece of bread, or even how a starving woman made the last days on this earth count by appreciating a single track against a blue sky she was able to see through a slit in the wood… It is really the best guide to living I have found. A few years after reading it, I was approached to direct a documentary about the writers of Netflix’s Oscar-winning “All Quiet on the Western Front” as they adapt Man’s Search for Meaning into a screenplay. They are a power couple facing the biggest challenge of a lifetime: After 22 years of marriage and partnership, sports psychologist Simon Marshall, and 5X World Champion Triathlete, Lesley Paterson, get their dream job to adapt their favorite book Man’s Search for Meaning, but the same day they get the job, Simon receives a call from his doctor telling him that he has Stage 3 Pancreatic Cancer. The film we’ve been shooting follows their journey across the world, retracing Frankl’s life journey while pursuing cures for this deadly form of cancer. Our documentary is shaping up to be a modern Man’s Search of Meaning, because it is all about turning something devastating into a triumph by making it meaningful - and it has changed my life forever to take on the challenge of telling this essential story.

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Max Richter

We have all experienced a song, or two even, that have come to mark hugest moments in our lives. The power of music to fly through the air, capture our deepest feelings, and become the soundtrack to our lives became the subject of my first TV series, SOUND AFFECTS… but no composition has embedded in my soul as Prelude 2 by Max Richter. It helped me prepare for and experience the transition of my extraordinary father, Eli Timoner, who ended his life utilizing California’s right to medical-aid-dying. I would listen to it every day as I rode over to his home those last few weeks of his life, play it for him, and then it became the song that holds the audience through his passing in my film, LAST FLIGHT HOME. I highly recommend listening to Max Richter’s music if you are going through something larger than you can grasp, a loss, a massive change, and you need to touch the infinite.

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The Roxy

Staying at the Roxy in NY (formerly the Tribeca Grand) is akin to being on an elegant cruise in Manhattan. It’s my home away from home in the city. Everything is there: from live jazz in the massive atrium lobby with the glass elevator zipping up and down and the divine food and drinks (I recommend the lobster roll and a mescal cocktail) in recessed leather booths shaped like teacups, to the gorgeous red velvet theater below - which offers the best films on screen in Manhattan - curated by the brilliant Illyse Singer. After attending a killer film and fascinating Q&A, retreat to the Django, the speakeasy next door, which stays open til 4AM and is often where the hottest underground music acts play… What else could you ask for?

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