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Ever the industry mavericks, this year the staff of the Sonoma Valley Film Festival present an “all walkable festival village.” The five film venues will be located within walking distance of the Plaza, creating more opportunities than ever to mingle with directors, stars and producers and simultaneously reduce your carbon footprint. Speaking of feet, this year’s festival is sponsored by MBT-The Anti-Shoe, footwear that offers concrete solution for bipeds. (MBT-The Anti Shoe invites everyone to test-stride a pair at their demo tent.) The Sonoma Valley Academy of Dance and Arts will be offering childcare at the Kid Zone so both adults and kids can participate in cinematic adventures. But wait…there’s more. Wineglasses will be just that – glass. No plastic water bottles but rather H2O filling stations. All contracted year round businesses in liege with the Film Festival are now “green certified” and festival-goers will be greeted by a Green Team ambassador at every venue. According to SVFF marketing wizard Greg Hittelman, “Going green is a transitional process.” Over the next three years the Film Festival plans to expand their green efforts becoming a model of social and environmental responsibility for local cultural events. Who said Paradise was lost?
Once the party’s started, don’t forget the raison d’être – the films. “This year we received over 1,000 submissions,” says Hittelman. “We sent our spies out all over the world, from Sundance to Cannes, scouting out these films. We have more premieres than ever before.”
And the stars?
“Sonoma is a ‘no entourage’ zone. None of the stars come with handlers and bodyguards. Everyone coming is extremely approachable. Independent films are where actors can showcase their art,” said Hittelman.
Attending a film festival is a bit like reading “The Travels of Sir John Mandeville” – strange stories of exotic lands blow in on foreign winds and, especially with all the wine and food, you aren’t quite sure where you are when you leave the darkness of the theater. With this year’s big titles – “Diminished Capacity,” “Love and Other Disasters” and “Elvis and Anabelle” – don’t let their worthy counterparts slip off your radar.
Films Not to Miss
In this list of “Not to Miss” films, viewers may find common threads – questions for a new millennium that tie recent and not-so recent histories to anxieties of uncertain futures. Refreshingly, many of these films have transcended expectations of our youth-obsessed culture and allowed accomplished and mature actors a chance to deliver the kind of performances a leading role demands. And they do not disappoint. Many of these films are surprisingly optimistic and frankly, I am grateful for that. “No Country For Old Men” gave me night terrors for a month, and anyway, there is enough pessimism and atrocity in real life to shrink-wrap the globe ten times over.
In three of these films –“Amal,” “Captain Abu Raed” and “Fugitive Pieces” — three men in the twilight of their lives ask themselves what kind of world they will leave behind to the next generation. How, they wonder, will the auto-rickshaw driver, the bright but impoverished young dreamer of Amman, or the young Czech holocaust survivor remember their elders — as impotent and fear-ridden or as wise and selfless keepers of the promise of a better world? And as usual, the docs rock — like blackANDwhite’s “Lynch,” a documentary about director David Lynch who gave us cult classics like “Eraserhead,” “Blue Velvet” and the television series “Twin Peaks.” “Riding Solo to the Top of the World” is both an old-fashioned road trip and a spiritual journey up to the highest elevations on the planet. In “Adjust Your Color,” Washington D.C. shock jock, the late, great Petey Greene, is a testament to the power of a censorship-free media. If you can’t decide between the films and the full-length documentaries, remember Hitchcock’s simple rule of thumb: “In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.”
So get off YouTube and turn off the boob tube, it’s time to lace up.
Captain Abu Raed
Directed by Amin Matalqa
An audience favorite at the Sundance Film Festival this year, “Captain Abu Raed” is the first independent film ever from the nation of Jordan. This is a timeless story about the aging, widowed airport janitor Abu Raed (Nadim Sawalha) who, having been too poor to travel in his own life, lives a life of simple pleasures through his beloved books. After salvaging a discarded pilot’s hat from the trash can at the airport, Abu Raed’s new disguise gives flight to fantasies of adventure for the local children of his poor neighborhood. Through his stories, Abu Raed develops friendships with his young listeners and in turn discovers much about the grim promises that their respective futures hold. The young airline pilot Nour, seeking to avoid an arranged marriage by her father, befriends Abu Raed whose humble wisdom and kindness are strikingly absent in her well-to-do suitors. Hussine Al-Souse gives a jaw-dropping performance as young Murad who suffers under the abusive tyranny of his father’s alcoholism. The cinematography of Captain Abu Raed is as superb as the cast.
Lynch
Directed by blackANDwhite
“Your favorite gum is coming back in style.” I still get shivers when I remember these lines from the “Man from Another Place” in David Lynch’s television series “Twin Peaks.” Both the uninitiated and the die-hard David Lynch fans will delight in this nanny-cam glimpse of one of the quirkiest and most brilliant icons of American filmmaking. It is no coincidence that Lynch, charmingly candid in his khaki pants and white button-down shirt, often resembles a chain-smoking Jimmy Stewart. Known for his surreal and often horrific visions of America’s under-belly, Lynch is a genre unto himself. From “Eraserhead” to “Blue Velvet,” from “Wild at Heart” to “Mulholland Drive,” Lynch serves you the creeps on a platter. While there isn’t much discussion of his filmmaking legacy in this documentary, audiences will, however, get a close up look at his fascinating creative process and see what he’s been up to lately: photography of abandoned factories, blazers dipped in buckets of green latex paint. (Note: Avoid looking too long at the human-size bunnies in the nightmarish “Good Night Moon” tableau Lynch created for his 2006 film “Inland Empire”).
Amal
Director by Richie Mehta
Amal, played by Rupinder Nagra, is an auto-rickshaw driver in New Delhi whose simple mission it is to drive people to and from the places they need to go. Unknowingly, Amal picks up a man whose unfounded accusation of Amal as a thief, and all other auto-rickshaw drivers, prove to be the final rantings of an eccentric billionaire. Ultimately this man’s disillusionment with the excesses of the modern world and the avarice and lethargy of his own children inspire him to will his entire fortune to Amal. As the vultures start to circle, Amal must navigate the treacherous waters of class struggle, widespread poverty and corruption, orphaned beggars and a complicated romantic interest – all of which can only trouble this humble and sometimes Saint-like man in a world of greed and immorality.
Riding Solo to the Top of the World
Directed, Written and Starring Gaurav Jani
“Motorcycle Diaries” and “Mr. Hulot’s Holiday” conspire to bring you “Riding Solo to the Top of the World.” Meet Gaurav Jani, a charming and gregarious one man-film crew plagued by altitude sickness and a medieval road map, who rides his motorcycle to the highest point in the Himalayas. In his debut documentary neither the audience nor Jani has clear idea of where this film is going at the start. Beginning in Mumbai, Jani’s journey takes him into one of the most remote regions in the world, the Changthang Plateau in Ladakh that lies in the disputed territory of Kashmir. While braving sub-zero temperatures, unforgiving terrain, thieving rodents and a diet of cheese and stale biscuits, Jani captures both the sublime beauty and the rugged isolation of the Himalayas. But the people he meets along the way – the nomadic Changpas, who live at the highest altitude of any people in the world, participants in the Hemis festival, monks at the Tashi Choling monastery – make his trip and his film worth while.
Adjust Your Color: The Truth of Petey Greene
Directed by Loren Mindell
Actor Don Cheadle narrates this documentary about legendary Washington D.C shock-jock Petey Greene. An ex-convict, Greene became something of an institutional hero during his years in the penitentiary, where he was eventually allowed to broadcast his brash brand of humor and social commentary to fellow inmates. Later Greene found a home on the public airwaves, both shocking and reaching out to listeners in the Washington D.C. area on his uncensored TV and radio shows. Eventually Greene earned two Emmy’s and an invitation to the White House where he made the famous boast, “I even stole a spoon.” During an era of civil unrest, Petey Greene not only ruffled the feathers of the establishment but pushed free speech out of the comfort zone, becoming an inspiration for up and coming personalities like Howard Stern. Greene seems to have been years ahead of his time with his trademark line, “No signifying!” Cheadle, who portrayed Greene in the 2007 film “Talk To Me,” does a superior job with the narration which helps to contextualize the impact of Petey Greene, through interviews and old newsreel footage, within his own community and the turbulent political climate of the late 1960s and 1970s.
Cinema Side Dishes
By Lisa Summers
Below are a few more selections of the Sonoma Valley Film Festival not to be missed.
“Fugitive Pieces”— Based on Anne Michael’s book, “Fugitive Pieces” is the story of a writer whose boyhood escape from Nazi-occupied Poland and subsequent rescue by a widowed Greek archaeologist paralyze him in adulthood as he searches for answers to old questions, wandering among the ghosts that haunt his memories. Internationally renowned actor Rade Sherbedgia is mesmerizing in his role as Athos. Bring Kleenex.
“Promises to the Dead” — a documentary about human rights activist and writer Ariel Dorfman. After living in exile since the 1973 Pinochet coup, Dorfman revisits Chile as a promise to both himself and the Desaparecidos never to forget the brutality and terror of the coup’s regime and to remember the friends he left behind. Dorfman himself is extremely camera-friendly.
“Village Barbershop” — If you loved last year’s Waitress, don’t miss this year’s take on the “small-town-girl-in-a-family- way” genre. John Ratzenberger (“Toy Story,” “Cheers”) stars as Art Leroldi, a grizzly barber who finds an unlikely business partner in trailer park escapee Gloria MacIntyre. “Village Barbershop” is filmed in Petaluma, Napa and Reno. Look out for Sonoma-raised actor Joshua Hutchinson. John Ratzenberger will appear in person, without his sheers.
“Elvis and Anabelle” – A Western gothic with a twist. Any film that begins with an undead beauty pageant queen, a corpse, a hunky young mortician and a tube of Superglue has huevos.
For more information, visit the official Sonoma Valley Film Festival web site, SonomaFilmfest.org.
