Three years after winning the Grand Jury Award at Slamdance, the makers of the hilarious, touching and inciting documentary Abel Raises Cain sign up for the From Here to Awesome festival and make it a key component to their hybrid distribution strategy.

"We're participating in the self-distribution movement, and I call it a movement because it's just beginning," Jenny Abel, who co-directed the film with Jeff Hockett, said. "People are afraid of the term 'self-distribution,' but it's empowering for a filmmaker…But I won't kid you, it's difficult to do everything yourself. Jeff and I are our own interns."

Jenny and Jeff's documentary took eight years to make. The film's production cost was about $100,000. Jenny and Jeff shot with a Canon XL-1 camera and edited with Final Cut Pro.

One of the biggest challenges was to go through the tens of thousands of newspaper clippings and audio and video tapes and decide which of the Alan's tales to include in the final film. For example, in the 1960s, Abel fronted the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA) which campaigned for a law requiring that all animals be forced to wear clothes. A gullible public and media ate it up, and Abel did hundreds of media interviews and appearances for SINA.

"My dad takes things a little far to prove a point but maybe that's necessary," Jenny Abel said in a recent phone interview. "His weird form of extremism is what people need."

In 1968, Jeanne Abel ran for president under the pseudonym of "Yetta Bronstein," an elderly Jewish mother with the campaign slogan, "Vote Yetta and watch things get better." In the 1970s when New York City was facing bankruptcy, Alan donned a black hood/mask and created the character "Omar," the cigar-chomping, fast-talking teacher at a "professional panhandler" school.

"My dad is an activist in his own weird way - I definitely believe that," Jenny said. "I believe my parents have always been ahead of their time."

It's amazing how many times the media bought into Alan Abel's tricks and reported on stunts like SINA as though they were real organizations or genuine news events. It's also amazing how many times the high visibility of Abel's pranks left news organizations no choice but to report on the pranks in which they were unwitting participants.

When Phil Donahue launched a new live TV show on NBC, Alan arranged for actors to sit in the Donahue audience and faint on cue when they stood to ask a question. The stunt - performed by the Fight Against Idiotic Neurotic Television/ F.A.I.N.T. - completely disrupted the broadcast and became a national news story all its own.

"Our culture gets so drunk on sensationalism. We need a dose of reality, not reality TV," Jenny said.

No doubt that Jenny Abel has lived a unique life due to her parent's wonderful eccentricities. Jenny describes her childhood this way: "It was crazy."

"But for me it was common. It was what everybody's family must have been like," she continued. "What's crazy for me is that it was normal….My parents walked around the house in their underwear and my dad is on TV again wearing a black mask. It was pretty crazy. Even now it's hard to go back and imagine what I was seeing."

Young Jenny and Alan Abel outside the White House in 1980

Another great Abel gag is Citizens Against Breastfeeding, an organization that urged mothers to stop breast feeding their children because - according to CAB - mothers receive sexual gratification from breast feeding and thus the activity is an incestuous perversion. Actors portraying CAB members protested outside the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. Alan Abel still gets media interview requests regarding CAB, and he happily goes into character every time.

"The fact that my father is still going strong continues to amaze me," Jenny said. "If everybody thought like my dad we would live in a very interesting world. And that's an understatement."

Abel Raises Cain scored on the 2005 film festival circuit, including the Grand Jury Award at Slamdance. Jenny and Jeff now bring the film to the world via self distribution. And they are hoping for a boost from participation in the From Here to Awesome festival. Jenny and Jeff have worked with Peter Broderick to develop a hybrid distribution strategy, and credit the growing digital cinema movement as a key factor in birthing the film.

"Had we not been part of this wave the film wouldn't have happened," Jenny said.

Buy Abel Raises Cain on DVD at www.abelraisescain.com.  Click here to read an interview with Alan Abel in this issue of IFD (and learn details about a screening of the film this Saturday in Los Angeles)

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