12 January 2010

Tonight our focus is on the Wild and Scenic Film Festival, “Fresh, Local, Wild,” which will be taking place in Nevada City this coming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  We’ll chat with Kathy Dotson, Director of the Festival, and with three filmmakers whose work will be shown over the weekend.  In addition, our music tonight comes from the film “Back to the Garden,” created by one of our guests.

Our Questions for Kathy Dotson.

  • Please give us a brief history of the Festival—which is in its 8th year. (Please also tell us about the grant you’ve received from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.)
  • What are a few of the highlights of this year’s festival?
  • What’s the cost of passes to the festival?
  • Where can people buy passes and learn more about the festivbal program?

www.wildandscenicfilmfestival.org

Our Questions for Filmmaker Kevin Tomlinson

Kevin is director of Back to the Garden, which will be showing at the Wild and Scenic Festival at 9:38 am Sunday, the 16th.  And our music breaks tonight are performed by Band of Annuals from the soundtrack to that film.

  • Your film is about a bunch of aging hippies who have been searching environmental utopias since a healing gathering in Washington in 1988, and you have a lot of then-and-now footage. Please tell us about how you came to make this film.
  • How did you meet these folks in the first place?
  • How easy or difficult was it to track them down?
  • Please tell us something about their stories.  Did they find what they were looking for?  Are their Ecotopian dreams working out?
  • As a filmmaker, you presumably shoot a lot of film and then winnow it down to your final print.  Please tell us something about that process.  Why did you make the choices you did for the film?  What was left on the cutting room floor?
  • Do you try to send a message?  Or do folks have make meaning for themselves?
  • What other projects do you have in the works at Heaven Scent Films?
  • Tim Cash will be present at the film showing in Grass Velley at 9:38 am on Sunday morning.  Who is Tim and what his connection to your project?

Listeners who would like to learn more about the film can go to http://backtothegardenfilm.com/

Our Questions for Filmmaker Kevin White

One of the filmmakers in attendance at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival will be Kevin White, premiering his film A Simple Question: The Story of Straw.

  • The Story of Straw is about a watershed restoration project launched over twenty years ago by some fourth grade kids and their teacher. The project has grown over the years, and you document that in your film. Please tell us about the film and what it covers.
  • Did you talk with any of the original fourth graders who launched the project?  If so, are these people still involved with the project or, more broadly, with the environmental movement?  Who are the people continuing the project today?
  • We’re interested in how a documentary filmmaker goes about his work.  How much footage did you shoot?  Did you have a pattern or vision in mind before shooting?  Did you have some fortuitous or unplanned events?
  • How do you whittle down all your footage into a coherent package?  Do you try to deliver a specific message?  Or, perhaps do you just let the sound and images work on the viewer?
  • Did you have to leave some great stuff on the cutting room floor?
  • What project(s) are you working on now?

A Simple Question: The Story of Straw will be premiered at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival, with two showings, 1:47 pm Saturday and 1:10 pm Sunday.  Interested listeners should also check out the film’s website: www.asimplequestion.org/

Our Questions for Lisa Madison

Lisa Madison, who is the Distribution and Outreach coordinator for a film by Ana Joanescalled, simply Fresh. It is receiving a great deal of praise in the environmental movement as being in the genre of Food, Inc. (which recently showed here in Chico), but with an emphasis on the practical, the do-it-yourself.

  • Please tell us about Fresh and what we can expect when we see it.
  • You have some major names in the alternative food movement in the movie, including Michael Pollan and Joel Salatin. How did your team reach them, and why do you think they wanted to be in the film?
  • The film has also been praised for being optimistic.  What do you see as its optimistic strong points?
  • Does it provide guidance for the individual who wants to eat healthy, local, and safe?
  • Filmmaker Ana Joanes says on your web site that she’d like the film to reach one million people. As distribution and outreach coordinator, you’re probably faced with this daunting goal.  How’s it going?
  • Please tell us a little about your educational discussion guides and other resources for people who want to use the film.
  • Your website also has a petition to the Department of Justice (which we’ve signed) concerning corporate control of ag. Please tell us more about this aspect of your project.
  • Are there other points you’d like to make about FRESH, in particular, or the healthy-local-safe food movement generally?

It will be screened at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival this Friday at 8:31 pm and again Sunday at 2:18 pm.  Listeners can also check out their website, which is http://www.freshthemovie.com/

Playlist

Our music tonight comes from the soundtrack to Back to the Garden, by Kevin Tomlinson.  The musical group is Band of Annuals from their Let Me Live album.  The cuts include:

“Let Me Live” 3:24
“David’s Country” 3:32
“Don’t Let Me Die” 5:52
“Blood on My Shirt” 3:21

The closing theme, as always, is “Weave Me the Sunshine” by Peter, Paul, and Mary.

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