Film Examines the Culture of World's Circuses

Filmmaker Angela Snow's desire to make a film about the inside world of circus performers seemed to be a natural fit.

Snow's aunt Karen Gersche was a founding member of the Big Apple Circus and her best friend's grandmother was the assitant to Ken Feld — the chief executive of Feld Entertainment. Feld Entertainment, of course, runs the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus.

"I've been hearing those stories from my aunt since I was little," said Snow, 26,  a Vermont native now living in Brooklyn, New York where she has her own production company, To the Moon Productions.

Snow is raising money through IndieGoGo for her documentary World Circus Culture that looks at the work of performers in major circus companies around the world readying for the Monte Carlo Circus Festival, dubbed "the Academy Awards of circus competitions."

So far she's raised $2,245 of her $12,000 goal to pay for the editing and post-production work. The IndieGoGo campaign ends Feb. 17, but donations can still be made on worldcircusculturemovie.com.

In the movie she interviews Feld with the Ringling Circus stopped in Tampa in December.

"To me it was obviously crucial to interview Ringling because they're a quintessential American circus," Snow said. "You can't have a circus film without him."

Feld provided a historical perspective to the film, Snow said, about how the circus was the entertainment in American and how it's changed over time with technology.

But circus is revered in Europe, or as Feld told Snow, circus is "made up of an international city."

In Europe, Snow said, a circus show can commonly fill a 5,000 seat venue.  

"In the U.S., circus went from Ringling and being a big spectacle and entertainment to a side show, freak show, carnie stereotype and Cirque du Soleil came along" and changed that perception," Snow said.

Snow traveled to Europe to follow the Fratellini Academy, Cirque d'hiver and other companies as she was tasked at college to create a documentary with a travel element. 

The Montreal-based circus centered on acrobatics and theatrics changed how North Americans thought of circus, she said.

"A lot of people think of Cirque outside of circus — it's Cirque and it's not circus," she said. "Cirque du Soleil and Ringling belong in the same chunk of circus, both are just different types."

The Columbia College graduate and once intern for documentarian Ken Burns plans for the movie includes entering it into the Sundance Film Festival, Sarasota Film Festival and gain television and international distribution.  

She added that she'll lean on Burns' advice for her history portions of the film. 

"He is the example of how to do that well," she said. "I'll be double checking him and making sure I"m on the right track."

Burns has supplied Snow with autographed DVDs for donors giving $100 or more and there are only two more left, according to the campaign site.

This update corrects that Angela Snow's best friend's grandmother was the assistant to Kenneth Feld and that Snow's aunt was a founding member of Big Apple Circus.