They’re back: This time, Cicadas star in feature film

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Laurie DeWitt⁄The Gazette Gaithersburg filmmakers Rohit C. Rao (left) and Greg Kihlström take on the invasion of the cicadas in ‘‘Brood X: Year of the Cicada,” which will be shown Monday as part of the Environmental Film Festival.

‘‘I am not a nature guy,” insists Rohit C. Rao.

‘‘Our wives kill bugs for us,” his colleague and friend Greg Kihlström adds.

But in spring 2004, when these filmmakers heard the cicadas were coming, they weren’t about to let the creepiness factor stop them from filming such a momentous event. Nor did these owners of Filmic Pictures want to make a five-minute short. Since these particular cicadas dig out of the dirt only once every 17 years, a feature film was in order.

Their movie ‘‘Brood X: Year of the Cicada,” a takeoff on the cicada’s more specific designation, Brood 10, will be shown as part of the 14th annual Environmental Film Festival on Monday in the District’s Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives.

Festival coordinator Helen Strong calls the film ‘‘informative and amusing.” People often think environmental films will mostly detail doom, gloom and global warming, she admits, but the festival also includes films that ‘‘celebrate and investigate.” In this case, Strong was fascinated with reactions to these bugs, recalling, ‘‘The filmmakers interviewed people eating them. Others were frightened, and some wanted them as pets.”

Cicadas ‘r’ us

‘‘We played up the fact we didn’t know much about them,” Rao confesses. ‘‘It’s not just a nature film. People have told me it belongs on MTV.”

Yet the filmmakers weren’t mere dilettantes looking for an easy laugh. After watching the movie, he promises, ‘‘you’ll know more about cicadas than you want to know.”

The challenges were plentiful. With nature’s clock ticking, the filmmakers knew if they didn’t get it right, they wouldn’t be able an opportunity to re-shoot until they were in their late 40s.

While time was a factor, surviving the great outdoors also posed a problem. Admittedly more accustomed to sitting in air-conditioned offices than tramping through woodlands, these suburbanites had to cope with heat, humidity and what seemed to be the invasion of millions of kamikaze flying cigars. Searching for spots with a large cicada population, they set up cameras, mostly in Chevy Chase, and from dawn to dusk, filmed the cicadas crawling out of their neatly mined circular holes.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a nature film without a few experts. And these cicada know-it-alls came in all sizes. Probably the most memorable is the Silver Spring cicada gourmand, who shared his last freezer bag of cicadas with the filmmakers. He had collected pounds of this so-called delicacy back in 1987. Kihlström tasted these pan-fried fritters, calling the garlic dipping sauce ‘‘delicious,” while the cicadas tasted like the ‘‘inside of a freezer.”

The filmmakers also learned a lot from a classroom of Chevy Chase Elementary School fourth-grade experts, who patiently offered a short primer to the less knowledgeable grown-ups. Rao and Kihlström also made a pilgrimage to Cincinnati to meet Dr. Gene Kritsky, the world’s greatest cicada authority.

‘‘This guy loves his bugs,” Rao enthuses.

Makin’ movies

Neither filmmaker planned to become a moviemaker. Growing up in strict Seventh-day Adventist homes, even going to movie theaters was mostly verboten. The self-taught computer and filmmaking business partners met while studying at a small parochial university in Michigan.

While Kihlström grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs majoring in photography, the Silver Spring born Rao confounded his parents by majoring in English.

‘‘My dad would have been happier if I had become a bio-premed major rather than an English major,” he admits.

After a stint at a handful of colleges, Rao was offered a computer job in Arizona, leaving college for a fat paycheck. Even with all his ‘‘techie” success, Rao hoped to become an independent filmmaker. His father came to his rescue, lending him $30,000 to make ‘‘Blocks,” his first movie. While Rao admits not having paid his dad back yet, he feels it was a good investment — especially when a Lionsgate Pictures executive saw the short and offered Rao work at the Los Angeles-based company.

But Southern California wasn’t so sunny for the maverick moviemaker. He found that movie executives ‘‘dilute” a filmmaker’s vision, insisting on doing it their own way. And in a town where everyone is a filmmaker, Rao didn’t care for the title.

Six years ago, Rao teamed up with Kihlström to create a graphic and video business in Chevy Chase. Their bread and butter comes from creating videos for corporations and government agencies, while their movie making venture is still strictly part-time. And it’s all in the family, with their wives acting as producers.

Now that ‘‘Brood X” is out, the partners hope to make a film about the Internet implosion and a historic documentary about the flooding of the Indian owned land in South Dakota by the Corps of Engineers in the 1940s.

Still smarting from his religious upbringing, Rao also hopes to create a documentary following Seventh-day Adventist students through a parochial high school and see how they weather leaving their protective cocoon at age 17. Umm, sounds a bit like the cicadas.

‘‘Brood X: Year of the Cicada” will be shown at noon Monday in the Charles Sumner Museum and Archives, 1201 12th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. Filmmaker Rohit Rao will hold a discussion afterwards. Admission is free. Call 202-342-2564.

The Environmental Film Festival will feature a retrospective of Terrence Malick’s films at AFI Silver Theatre, 8633 Colesville Road, Silver Spring, on Saturday: ‘‘Badlands,” 3 p.m. and ‘‘The New World,” 7:30 p.m.; Sunday: ‘‘The Thin Red Line,” 1:30 p.m. and ‘‘Days of Heaven,” 5 p.m. Tickets are $9.25, $7.50 for AFI members, seniors (65 and older) and students. Visit www.dcenvironmentalfilmfest.org or call 202-342-2564.