Young film maker

• Posted By: Scott Harrison
• Posted On: 12:16 a.m. | September 27, 2011

Jan. 10, 1965: Cal Lewin, 13, checks negatives after shooting scenes for his next production, titled “The Bus Ride.” Several classmates are players in the film.

Los Angeles Times staff writer Sue Reilly reported on Lewin, who had won a national contest for teenage filmmakers:

NORTH HOLLYWOOD — When Cal Lewin yells “roll ‘em,” the whole neighborhood swings into action.

Cal, a 13-year-old comedy motion picture producer–director–editor–photographer-animated cartoonist, is the Valley’s youthful answer to [Mack] Sennett.

His first effort in the comedy film field, “The Great Pill,” netted him an award in the 8 mm black and white category in a national teenage movie contest.

It starred his father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Sid Lewin, and a neighborhood friend, Robert Malcolm, 12.

The film depicts the plight of a young man harassed by his parents into spending long hours practicing the violin and cleaning up his room.

All that is changed, however, when the hero with the aid of a trusty chemistry set devises a magic pill which gives him great power over his parents.

From the time he uses the pill, he just lounges around his messy room while his father practices the violin and his mother cleans up after him.

When asked where he got the inspiration for his story Cal replied, “Well, I play the violin,” and grinned at his dad, a movie and television script writer.

When this photo and story were published in the San Fernando Valley edition of The Times, Lewin was very involved in his next film project, titled “The Bus Ride.”

Over the next five years, Lewin won several additional film awards — and was again written up in The Times. Today, Lewin is still making educational and documentary films through his Opticus Media company.

When contacted recently, Lewin reported that he and his filmmaker wife, Victoria, recently completed a one-hour documentary, “Great Grandfather’s Drum,” about the history of Japanese Americans in Hawaii.

“Great Grandfather’s Drum has been made an official selection at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival and was broadcast last week on PBS in Hawaii,” Lewin wrote in an email.

And Lewin added, ”I still have that Bell & Howell 8mm camera shown in the photo.”