Tam High Student's Film Screens Tonight

Tam High student Mayana Bonapart has been so inspired by the life of her uncle Andy that she made a short film about him – even though they never met.

Bonapart, 15, has been making the rounds at Bay Area movie houses in recent weeks to show off Escape from Suburbia, her 8-minute film about the life of her late uncle and the influence he's had on her in death. The film shows again tonight at the Rafael Film Center at 6:30pm as part of "Half-Remembered Stories," the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival's inaugural online multimedia exhibition exploring Jewish heritage from the digital generation's point of view.

Andy Bonapart, brother of Mayana's father Paul, died of hepatitis C in South Asia in 1983 when he was 23. Andy Bonapart was an avid traveler and immersed himself in the cultures of the place he visited, "from from Israel to Fiji, from Tahiti to Thailand, from Kathmandu to Mt. Everest," Mayana Bonapart wrote on the film's Web site.

Andy Bonapart left behind a trove of audio recordings and photos of his travels, and Mayana's discovery of those sparked her interest in making a short film about him.

"His whole story is so inspiring to me," Mayana said in the film. "He lived for what he wanted to do."

Andy Bonapart's story and ideals struck Mayana largely because of her comfortable life in Mill Valley, which she called "total suburbia."

"It is frustrating seeing the ignorance in people … in such a sheltered rich town," she said. "People are so fortunate here. More than half of these spoiled kids, including me sometimes, take that for granted."

"I can control what I do and following in Andy's footsteps and traveling the world is something that I've been wanting to do more than anything," she continued. "I want to meet people and I want to go places and I want to see things and I want to open my mind."

Mayana Bonapart is one of 11 young storytellers, ages 15 to 25, who collaborated with Citizen Film, a San Francisco documentary film company that produced the New Jewish Filmmaking Project, a multimedia exhibit on what Jewish identity has been and is becoming. The film is also streaming on a number of Web sites, including YouTube.

She said she wants to celebrate the life of her uncle rather than dwell on the painful loss of him at such a young age.

"Sometimes I think we've buried him too deep," she said. "Why not bring some of his chutzpah back to life?"