Nevada City Advocate - A free news & entertainment Newspaper Serving Nevada City & Greater Nevada County: 16 film reviews for the 2010 Wild & Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City 16 film reviews for the 2010 Wild & Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City ================================================================================ Chuck Jaffee on Jan 14 08:44am ‘Why Don't We Ride Zebras’ looks at the wild side When: 10:15 a.m. Saturday When: 9:58 a.m. Sunday, Jan. 17 Venue: Nevada Theatre When: 9:26 a.m. Sunday Venue: Masons Length: 11 minutes Director: Hannah Smith Walker “Why Don’t We Ride Zebras” is not a perfect example of an educational film, but it’s pretty close. It’s fun. It’s clever. It’s short (11 minutes). It’s focused. It’s sound in structure and pace. It does a fine job of photographing an array of animals and mixes in a little cartoon silliness. It teaches its topic well. In its title and at its heart, the film asks an interesting question: Why don’t we ride zebras? On its way to answering this question, you learn new things. You receive a neat bundle of characteristics and context about animals we’ve domesticated and animals we have not. Domesticated animals share seven characteristics. If they haven’t exhibited all seven over man’s long history of bending other species to their bidding, they don’t belong in the domesticated animals Hall of Fame. I won’t spill the educational beans. See this film. You’ll enjoy learning the seven characteristics and the one that zebras don’t have, which is “Why Don’t We Ride Zebras.” ‘i drive 55’ shows the value of knowing your limits When: 7:16 p.m. Saturday Venue: Veterans Hall When: 9:10 Sunday Venue: Miners Foundry Great Hall Length: 15 minutes Director: Ryan Little Would you like to put a 20 percent dent in consumption and spending on gas? Granted there’s a substantial “No, I don’t want to do it that way” factor. Nonetheless, you can start building toward that 20 percent today without investing any money, without any technical know-how, and without a complicated commitment. The concept behind the film “i drive 55” is simple, although it boosts itself on some background and explanation. While driving, slow down and ease up. To a certain extent, the amount of time lost is insubstantial and you may even benefit from reduced anxiety. The easiest aspect is to ease up on the accelerator. That applies to anticipated stops and slow downs as well as starting and speeding up. Next easiest is lowering your speed on shorter trips and during those periods when a little extra speed is significantly undone by traffic congestion. Quite a bit tougher – but mostly a matter of attitude – is to keep to the speed limit on long, open highway stretches. Driving 55 is something of a milestone speed for improving gas mileage. Pushing against the air at higher speeds gets to be a major drag, gas mileage-wise. There are a growing number of “i drive 55” people who toodle along at that speed even in higher speed zones. Can’t fathom that? Certainly, you can stick to the legal speed limit for a good cause, can’t you? Yes, it’s a good idea, even if you tend toward dismissing it scoffingly. Watch “i drive 55.” It’s a nicely presented little film that deserves 15 minutes of your time. ‘Pirate for the Sea’ profiles ex-Greenpeace activist When: 8:01 p.m. Friday Venue: Veterans Hall When: 3:13 p.m. Sunday Venue: Oddfellows Hall Length: 101 minutes Director: Ron Colby Paul Watson is an incomparable activist personality. He is the “Pirate for the Sea,” a revolutionary. Long lastingly so, he exhibits an undeniable package of confidence, courage, tenacity, responsibility, leadership, intelligence and outspokenness. He is intentionally visible and seems readily accessible. Who is Paul Watson and what is his cause? He was a significant part of the early days (1971) of Greenpeace, saving whales in international waters from governments and industries that defied global sentiment and law. In 1977, he was voted off the Greenpeace board. Watson, skipper of the Sea Shepherd among other things, has been branded by some a terrorist, since he commands tactics that surpass harassment. He readily uses violence against property. He makes a big distinction about not being violent against life, as he protects the world’s largest animals from unlawful exploitation, brutality and extinction. Nonetheless, perceptions churn that he is violent on a terrorist scale. He seems to obstruct the ultimate goal espoused by Greenpeace-style pressure. Some might fairly claim that he is constructive as a disaster-slowing counterpoint to more civil and profound commitments (and results), but Watson would likely never cop to such a back-seat role. “Pirate for the Sea” is a focused film that galvanizes the save-the-whales tradition. It gets up close and personal enough with Paul Watson that you can probably decide whether you're for him, against him, or be compelled to digest him as the amalgam that he is. ‘The Age of Stupid’ looks at where we’re going When: 9:58 a.m. Sunday Venue: Miners Foundry Great Hall Length: 90 minutes Director: Fanny Armstrong We live in “The Age of Stupid.” This is a great title for a film and you need see it without even knowing anything about it. I’ll get back to this impressive movie after I tell you about a friend who used to go to the race track a lot. My friend explained that every time he bet on a race, he had a 50-50 chance of winning: either the horse would win or it would lose. 50-50. My friend was right in an it’s-only-money human sort of way. Fifteen hundred friends of mine explained to me (in Pew Research polls) that 77 percent of the people believed in 2006 that global warming is really happening. In 2009, only 57 percent believed it. Wait a minute. How did this article end up being about global warming? After an unprecedented century of multiplying modern marvels, we are now living in the age of stupid. Whether the odds are 50-50 or 20-to-1, we’re at the race track, betting in an it’s-only-money, can’t-we-talk-about-something-else sort of way. The film “The Age of Stupid” is cleverly packaged as a science fiction drama. In the year 2055, a man rummaging through high-tech archives ruminates about the acts of denial and the facts of destruction that led him to living under lonely siege above the risen oceans. The film entertains and engages, albeit heavily, and is well worth seeing. We opened a window on “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006. It is well worth seeing 90 minutes of creatively organized snippets to open a window on “The Age of Stupid.” Regardless of the odds, one thing is 100 percent certain about betting at the race track: the owners of the gambling house skim some of everybody’s money before they give any money back to us and they don’t give any back to most of us. ‘Alchemy’ lets you to relax and watch it grow When: 9:15 a.m. Sunday Venue: Miners Foundry Stone Hall Length: 20 minutes Directors: Eva Bakkeslett and Clive Ardagh People immerse themselves in issues at the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival. Sometimes, even at an environmental film festival, you need to put the issues on hold. You need to meditate. You need a film like “Alchemy.” “Alchemy,” subtitled “The Poetics of Bread Making,” is a 20-minute video summary of making bread from scratch. Not a word is spoken. No music plays. Only a pair of hands appears on screen. You watch those hands being washed, grain being ground, ingredients being mixed in, and a hand mooshing it all together. Most entrancing in this time-lapsed video is the dough-rising. The dough is kneaded and kneaded again. It’s placed in oiled pans and slid into the oven. It doesn’t ruin the end of the film to say that the bread gets eaten. Meditating on making bread from scratch. I guess “Alchemy” is an environmental issue picture. ‘A Simple Question’ leads to a substantial change When: 1:47 p.m. Saturday Venue: Veterans Hall When: 1:10 p.m. Sunday Venue: Nevada Theatre Length: 35 minutes Directors: Kevin White and David Donnenfield In a fourth-grade classroom, a child asks “A Simple Question” during a science lesson. He wants to know what he and his classmates can do to save endangered species. With a relentless commitment to expanding her students’ motivation and learning environment, Laurette Rogers put all hands onto ranchland at Stemple Creek. Over many years, they improved the health of that watershed, including a flourishing of the trees they planted. Vegetation, birds and other animals thrived, as did a sense of a win-win community with landowners. It seems the endangered California freshwater shrimp has been brought back from the brink of extinction. They upgraded a lot of people’s education. Through what grew to be the “Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed (STRAW),” a simple question became something of an unassuming movement. This is a profoundly ordinary film. Without the zazz and weight that other issue-pictures leverage, it is, nonetheless, heartening and effective storytelling. It’s an example that deserves attention. Another film, “Missouri Stream Team,” engages in an analogous way. Curiously, it’s about waterways, too. This movement, a pretty big one, still has a down-home, ordinary feel. Thousand of teams – something like 80,000 children, family members and community members throughout the state – help make streams in Missouri cleaner and healthier. It’s a hands-on, enduring affair. The film celebrates 20 years of practical accomplishments through these teams. There are many simple questions out there, perhaps best heard and implemented when we keep the children in the loop. Festival’s short films get to the point and quickly About 30 of the 135 films in the 8th Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival range from a couple of minutes to about six minutes. It’s an advantage in many ways, if they do it right. Pop, your awareness is raised. Pop, your appreciation attaches to someone making a difference. Pop, you're tickled by a few minutes of creativity. How about I pop through short, short summaries of some short, short films to open your eyes to some of the individual and aggregate gems at this festival: (The number in parenthesis is the approximate length in minutes.) “Bay vs. Bag” (2): A clever, satiric animation makes a telling point about the perverse number of plastic bags we let reach the San Francisco Bay. “Change the World in Five Minutes at School” (4): Bing, bing, bing. It’s a bunch of ideas students are actually implementing. They’re learning. They’re accomplishing. They and the filmmaker are having fun. “Drying for Freedom” (5): It’s just a trailer for a film being made about the right and reasons to dry laundry on a clothesline, as if they haven’t made enough films on this topic already. “Get Up, Stand Up” (4): Part of the festival’s extreme outdoor adventure tradition, there’s a good chance you’ll be seeing river surfing for the first time. You can ride a natural river wave for minutes at a time. Cool. “Global Focus” (each of 5, 5): The sixth year of Goldman prizes showcases the commitment and effectiveness of individuals in Africa (stopping destructive, exploitative mining); in Europe (partnering to reign in toxic industrial practices); in Indonesia (managing the garbage produced by growing tourism and population); in North America (thwarting mountaintop removal – coal mining – in West Virginia); in South America (saving the river and lands of native people from the usurpations of corporate behavior). “Hot Bread Kitchen” (5): Watch a woman show you an idea she made into a reality. Teach under-employed immigrant women a trade and provide a socialized leg up, making organic bread. “Lady Bug Swarm” (3): This video snapshot is just plain oh-how-cute as a toddler expands his world with one, two, 10,000 lady bugs. “Secret Life of Cell Phones” (5): There are soooooo many old cell phones waiting to be recycled to good use, needing to be recycled away from space-eating, polluting, hazardous disposal. “Secret Life of Paper” (6): Using recycled paper in the United States of Amazing Consumption saves soooooo many trees, avoids soooooo much wastewater and greenhouse gases. “Underwater Opera” (3): This is nothing special except fine photography of exotic sea creatures set to playful music, plus a few funny accents. “What Is That?” (5): An aging father sits outside next to his adult son. A tension arises too easily – about a bird, of all things. The scene curls into a sigh-provoking, loving circle.