FRIENDSHIP FEST

Summer Pasture (China/USA) at the Pacific Rim Film Festival

Pacific Rim Film Festival celebrates 25 years of cross-cultural understanding


Break out the silver confetti! One of Santa Cruz's most beloved cultural events, the Pacific Rim Film Festival, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

Originally inspired by the Hawaii International Film Festival around the theme, "East Meets West: When Strangers Meet," our own home-grown PRFF marks its first quarter-century with an expanded program.

Twenty films from twelve countries will unspool over seven days, October 17-23, at four venues county-wide. And as always, except for the closing-night musical fundraiser, every single film will be shown free of charge.

This year's dramas, comedies and docs come from North Korea, Cambodia, Tibet, China, the Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand/Samoa, Japan, Taiwan, India, and the United States. Participating theatres include the Theatre Del Mar, the Rio Theatre, and the Riverfront Twin in Santa Cruz, and Green Valley Cinema in Watsonville.

Q & A sessions with filmmakers will follow select screenings.

Among this year's highlights is Starry Starry Night (2011, Taiwan, 80 minutes). Tom Lin's beauteous live-action adaptation of the celebrated Jimmy Liao picture book captures all the whimsy, magic, and artfulness of Liao's paintings in a very moving story of a 13-year-old girl and boy learning to navigate life, loss, love, and growing up. (Read more)

The kids bond through art (a jigsaw puzzle of Van Gogh's eponymous painting looms large in the story), and their projects bleed into their real-life landscape in fanciful ways. Giant origami animals march over bridges and own city streets; when the kids board a train out of town, it flies through Van Gogh's painted sky.

I was unfamiliar with Liao's lovely book until I saw the film and did some research. Look how gorgeously filmmaker Lin reimagines  some of the book's painted images, with all their humor and soulfulness intact. I loved this movie so much—don't miss it!

(Starry Starry Night plays twice Friday night at the Riverfront, 7 pm, and 9:30 pm.)

REEL CONNECTION

Pacific Rim Film Festival promotes cross-cultural understanding

The aloha spirit returns to Santa Cruz when the 24th Annual Pacific Rim Film Festival unspools this week. Originally inspired by the Hawaii International Film Festival, and dedicated to cross-cultural understanding around the theme, "When Strangers Meet," the six-day event runs October 19-24, offering twenty films from countries all around the Pacific Rim at five venues countywide. In addition to the Del Mar and the Rio, festival films will also screen at the Riverfront Twin, Watsonville Center, Cabrillo College, and the Crocker Theater at Cabrillo College. As always, all films are screened free of charge to the public, with the exception of the closing night benefit.

The biggest crowd-pleaser of the Festival may be the opening night offering, THE TOPP TWINS: UNTOUCHABLE GIRLS (New Zealand, 2009, 100 minutes) Leanne Pooley's delightful documentary introduces us to two of New Zealand's most beloved cultural icons: Jools and Lynda Topp. Farm-bred twin sisters who started out as street-corner buskers, singing, yodeling, and playing guitar, they are also cheerfully upbeat lesbians, and tireless anti-nuke, pro-civil rights activists.

As comediennes, the twins are like a two-woman Monty Python troupe with a rotating cast of comic characters of all ages, genders, and classes. As musicians, their songs are infectious, witty, and heartfelt, and as personalities, they are irresistible. So is the film. I guarantee you'll come out humming the tunes. (Plays at the Del Mar, Friday, 8:30 p.m., and at the Rio, Monday, 12 noon.)

Speaking of tunes, one of the most democratizing things about the humble ukulele is that everyone can play it. But not everyone can play the uke like Jake Shimabukuro. Takashi Nakamura's terrific documentary, JAKE SHIMABUKURO: LIFE ON FOUR STRINGS (USA, 2012, 60 minutes), explores the life and sudden, meteoric career of the awesomely gifted young Hawaiian-born uke virtuoso, who's carved out an international career as a solo concert artist playing everything from The Beatles, to classical, to jazz. If you can't even imagine Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the uke, wait till you hear Jake's full-blooded rendition! (Plays at the Del Mar, Saturday only, 8 p.m. O&A to follow with director Nakamura.) (Read more)

For more details, check out the PRFF website or visit their Facebook page.

WHAT'S UP, DOC?

Real-life stories take center stage in 23rd Annual Pacific Rim Film Festival

Truth may not be stranger than fiction, but reality is every bit as compelling in this year's edition of the Pacific Rim Film Festival. Now in its 23rd year, Santa Cruz's favorite free film festival unspools October 14-19, at three locations: The Del Mar Theatre, the Rio Theatre, and Cabrillo College Watsonville Center. As usual, the festival presents films from all around the Pacific Rim, from China, Japan, the Philippines, India, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia to Mexico, Hawaii and the U. S. mainland.

And of the 19 films served up in this year's festival, nine are documentaries, including the opening night kickoff event and the closing night benefit. Three other films in the lineup are fact-based stories, lightly fictionalized accounts of real people and real-life events.

What sort of real-life stories are we talking about here? Hot doc topics include music, in many variations, Japanese-American soldiers in WWII, a Korean mother reuniting with her American son, murder in the Himalayas, and circumnavigating the entire Hawaiian Islands via outrigger canoe. In particular, the opening night film (Last Paradise) and closing night film (Patagonia Rising) concern extreme sports, eco-activism (and exteme eco-activism). (Read more)

And speaking off offbeat movies, here are two words you might not expect to see in the same sentence: Norwegian comedy. But that's Happy, Happy, a tart, acerbic domestic satire about two modern couples who don't know what they want and don't want what they have. A big winner at Sundance, and Norway's official entry to the 2012 Academy Awards, it's not exactly a laff riot, but rookie director Anne Sewitsky trades in a laugh-to-keep-from-crying sort of worldview.

City couple Elisabeth (Maibritt Saerens), a lawyer, and Sigve (Henrik Rafaelsen), along with their adopted young African son, rent a small guest house from warm, ebullient schoolteacher Katja (Agnes Kittelsen) and her sullen hubby, Erik (Joachim Rafaelsen) for a winter vacation. The cool Elisabeth thinks "Katja is desperate to be my friend," but it's Sigve and Katja who bond; both are lonely in the same way. Elisabeth was cheating on Sigve back in the city, and Katja is emotionally battered by Erik—who has demons of his own.

Director Sewitsky punches up these dark themes with ironic appearances by a quartet of white, Nordic males, singing a capella American gospel. (After a montage of illicit sex, the chorus comes back with a deadpan, yet somehow salacious "Good Religion.") In this way, Sewitsky develops her larger themes. When Erik and Katja's son, Theodor, starts playing "slave" games with the African child (including faux flogging with a towel), Sewitsky and screenwriter Ragnhild Tronvoll introduce the idea iof a bad marriage as a kind of enslavement for couples unhappily shackled together. This is alluded to again in a concert scene by the community chorus that the characters all join, where the oppressed Katja is chosen as a soloist on "Amazing Grace"—a hymn originally penned to support the anti-slavery movement in 19th Century Britain.

The narrative strays into some weird, off-putting moments as these characters attempt to find "tenderness and joy." And they can be alarmingly clueless. (Katja yearns to have more children, but if the results are more demon spawn like Theodor, we're glad she's been thwarted.) But Kittelsen delivers a mostly endearing performance as Katja; the viewer becomes invested in her emotional journey. And Sewitsky displays a droll sensibility (ironic, if not strictly comic) that keeps her feature debut interesting, however strange it may get. Catch up with it at the Nick before it disappears.

THE FUNNIEST MOVIE EVER

The hits just keep coming at the Aptos Weekend Classics movie series. Run, do not walk this weekend to see the inimitable Marx Brothers in Duck Soup. It's ranked #5 on the AFI's list of all-time comedies, but #1 on the far more exclusive and reliable Jensen-ometer of funniest movies ever made! (Narrowly edging out The Producers—the original version, with Zero Mostel—Annie Hall, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.) Freedonia's going to war, and who better to lead the country straight to Hell than Groucho Marx as shyster politico Rufus T, Firefly, batting his eyelashes at Margaret Dumont whilst pondering how best to plunder the treasury. "If you think the country's bad off now, just wait 'til I get through with it!" he sings jauntily at his inauguration to the office of High Chancellor.

Although the film was made in 1933, with Hitler on the rise in Germany, allusions to American politicians of more recent vintage are, sadly, as timely as ever. But expect laughs, not polemics, in this hilarious satire of war, politics, jingoistic patriotism, and military machismo. 68 minutes of pure comedy bliss, and I better not find out you missed it! (Plays Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m., at Aptos Cinema, on a comedy double-feature with Mae West in She Done Him Wrong.)


Speaking of four-star movies, the cool thing about the very excellent new John Lennon drama, Nowhere Boy, is that it's not about The Beatles. That hallowed name is never even mentioned. At the end of the film, John (played with sass, heart, and deadpan bravado by Aaron Johnson, above) is about to go off to Hamburg with his band, and his Aunt Mimi dismissively remarks that she's forgotten their new name. (Up to this point, they've called themselves The Quarrymen.) John replies only with a teasing, "Do you really care?"

No, she does not; it's all the same to her what his band is called and who the current members are. But it wouldn't have been the same to us, or to history. Nowhere Boy got me to thinking that despite the conventional wisdom of the day (or this day), it wasn't just a blithe, random conjunction of timing and luck that made The Beatles what they were. In the film, we see John recruit his first band through a haze of ciggie smoke in the boys' loo: anyone who owns an instrument is in, no proficiency required. As the band acquires its sea legs at neighborhood fairs and school dances, personnel come and go, like the rotating icons on a slot machine. It's hardly ever the same lineup twice as the band self-prunes and re-invents itself.

But when John meets Paul McCartney in the film, something clicks, like a pair of oranges (or should I say Apples) synching up. After the initial sarcasm from John, the would-be Teddy-boy with the smart mouth, he drops his pose to soak up everything he can learn from the younger boy about guitar chords and musicianship. When Paul's mate, George Harrison, makes a late-inning appearance toward the end of the movie, another apple clicks into place; a few more peripheral band members will rotate in and out, but the three of them remain the core of the band, all the way to Hamburg and the destiny that awaits them there.

So, no, The Beatles were not just any garage/skiffle/rock band. There was alchemy at work when these boys first clicked and sparked. John had the drive, the dream, and the showmanship, Paul the innate musicality, the looks, and the voice, George the technical chops. They honed their style, substance, and subversive wit in the tough, steamy clubs of Hamburg, grew up together as musicians and men, and emerged two years later as The Beatles. And it couldn't have happened any other way, or with any other guys.


Btw, at the press screening for Nowhere Boy last week, I was shocked, shocked, to learn that two of my esteemed fellow scribes were completely unfamiliar with the backstory of John Lennon and The Beatles. For those of us who grew up in the '60s, Beatle bios were Chapter and Verse; we devoured them in 16 Magazine and other fan mags, and in the plethora of biographical books, authorized and otherwise, that flooded the market to cash in on their fame. That's why I was so impressed with Nowhere Boy; it gets the tone of that postwar, working-class setting and era just right.

(Above: George, John and Paul, ca 1958, as seen on www.beatlesebooks.com/)


Just a reminder, Santa Cruz's favorite free film event, the Pacific Rim Film Festival, kicks off tomorrow night at the Del Mar with a gala premiere of The Chef of South Polar. (Scroll down for my mini-review, a couple of posts back.) Music, food, dance, traditional folkways and eco-politics are spotlighted at this year's fest. Now in its 22nd year, this popular event once again offers viewers a cinematic voyage of discovery around the Pacific Rim of Asia and the Americas. In a program of 18 drama and documentary films, transporting viewers to such diverse locations as Nepal, Bolivia, Korea, New Orleans, and the Marianas Islands, this cinematic sushi bar invites us to sample the exotica of other cultures, while reminding us how much we have in common, despite our cultural differences.

This year's six-day event unspools Friday, October 15, through Wednesday, October 20, at three countywide venues: the Del Mar, the Rio, and the Cabrillo College Watsonville Center. All films are presented free to the public, except for the closing-night benefit, and many screenings will be followed by a Q&A session with the filmmaker.

Insider tip: Don't miss Old Partners, an incredibly moving Korean docu-drama about an 80-year-old farmer, his 76-year-old wife, a treasured ox, and vanishing traditional folkways. You will weep like a baby. Also, check out A Village Called Versailles, an inspiring short doc about a Vietnamese settlement in New Orleans that celebrates how a community can band together for positive political action.

Read my GT PRFF preview for a complete schedule of films and showtimes.

OPEN STUDIOS TO-DO LIST

Sadly, Marc Chagall will not be participating in Open Studios in Santa Cruz this year. But a record 320 artists are opening their studios to the public, and there are still two weekends left to see them in their natural habitat.

I know what you're thinking: so much to see in so little time. That's why I'm providing art lovers with a handy, sanity-saving to-do list to help you get the most out of your customized art tour.

First, get with the program. The OS Calendar/Guide is a 15-month calendar with a color photo of the work of every OS artist, along with their addresses, websites, phone numbers, shoe sizes, mothers' maiden names—well, you get the idea. Supplemental indexes list artists alphabetically, and according to medium, while the map is indispensable for finding that tiny mountain retreat, or converted off-road garage that the artist calls home. Map and calendar listings also tell you which artists' studios will be open which weekend. (South County, from Watsonville to the Yacht Harbor was last weekend; North County, from the Yacht Harbor to Davenport is this weekend, October 9-10. Anything goes on the third "Encore" weekend, October 16-17, where participating artists anywhere can open for one last hurrah.) A great tool for contacting local artists year-round, the calendar costs $20 and is still available throughout the county.

Next, hie thee off to the Open Studios Preview Exhibit at the Art League (526 Broadway in Santa Cruz), to view OS artists' work up close and personal, and get a more accurate idea of proportion, color, and material. Believe me, seeing the work in the flesh will save you hours of driving time later, as you zero in on who you really want to visit. Most artists also provide color postcards of their work free to the public in the Art League lobby. Exhibit hours are 11am to 5pm Wednesday through Friday and 10am to 5pm on Saturday and Sunday, through October 17. The OS Calendar/Guide can also be purchased at the Art League.

Finally, make a plan. This is a self-guided tour; it's up to you to decide who you want to see and when and where you want to go. One word of advice—even the most intrepid Open Studio art tourist can't be expected to absorb more than about eight to ten studios in a day, before the eyes glaze over and the brain cells gear down to zombie mode. So pace yourself. Choose your artists carefully and try not to visit more studios than you can actually appreciate.

Artists studios are open from 10am to 5pm each weekend of the event. Do your homework, grab a friend, hit the road and enjoy!



MORTON MARCUS MEMORIAL POETRY READING UPDATE

Just a reminder that tickets are available starting tomorrow for the 1st Annual Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Reading, November 6, at the Cabrillo Recital Hall. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robet Hass will read his work. Selections from Mort's final book, "The Dark Figure In the Doorway: Last Poems" will be read by Gary Young, Joseph Stroud, and Stephen Kessler. It's a free event, but seating is limited and Mort had a legion of fans, so tix will be required for admission. Get your free tickets at Cabrillo Bookstore, UCSC McHenry Library, Bookshop Santa Cruz and Bookworks; they won't last long!


FOODIE ALERT: If you love to ogle exotic food in exotic settings, look out for The Chef of South Polar, the opening night premiere in the upcoming Pacific Rim Film Festival, Santa Cruz's favorite free film event. It's a wry and delicious fiction film based on the true story of Jun Nishimura, a young Japanese Coast Guard cook on a year-long assignment to a remote outpost in Antarctica, cooking for an 8-man research team. In an environment so hostile, not even a virus can survive, mealtimes are the highlight (and the most important bonding ritual) of the day, and these guys aren't about to settle for energy bars and Tang. Bringing a whole new meaning to the concept of frozen food, the ever-resourceful Chef Jun lovingly handcrafts elaborate gourmet meals that see the team through every possibly adversity: homesickness, cabin fever, broken long-distance romances, suicidal depression, and the greatest calamity of all—running out of ramen noodles! Suichi Okita directs with a light, but resonant touch, and Masato Sakai is wonderful as Chef Jun. The Chef Of South Polar kicks off the PRFF on Friday, October 15, at the Del Mar, 7 p.m. (It screens again Saturday, October 16, at 1 p.m.) Admission is free on a first-come, first-served basis, so start planning now. (And whatever you do, don't go to this movie hungry!)