Film Society and Library team up to host a FREE screening of "The Band's Visit" in Half Moon Bay.

More info at: www.HMBFilm.org

Friday, Aug. 30, 8:00 p.m.
Community United Methodist Sanctuary
777 Miramontes St., Half Moon Bay (corner of Johnston Street)
Suggested donation: $8 adults, $3 for those 18 years and under

Feature:  VARIETY (1925, 72 minutes)

“A little-seen yet engaging tale of betrayal and jealousy, set within the seamy-by-default world of carnivals and circuses.” — Film Fanatic.org

German director E.A. Dupont’s silent masterpiece features the lighting and camera work of cinematographer D.P. Karl Freund, lending the work an expressionist flair and a dark neo-realistic undertone. The basic plot is simple and perhaps a bit tawdry: A man abandons his wife and child to join the circus and to run away with a beautiful trapeze artist. His new girlfriend is tempted by another handsome circus performer. There’s lots of conflict under the big top! The film has superlative cinematography — and we’re adding music to make it extra exciting.

The music in question is provided by Montara's own Shauna Pickett-Gordon. This is the fifth time that the Film Society has hired Pickett-Gordon to write a score for one of its silent film night features and to play that score live, on her grand piano, during the screening. Why go this effort when canned music is much cheaper? Check out the short video of Pickett-Gordon at work during the February Coastside Silent Film Night to see just how great she can be.  bit.ly/SilentHMB

Critics agreed that Variety was a great groundbreaking film when it was released in 1925 — and it’s a film that still delivers. “Flashbacks from a prison straight out of a Van Gogh painting … impressionistic lighting, lingering expressionist imagery, and giddily mobile camerawork are all pushed to unprecedented extremes,” says Time Out London.

On the Web: www.HMBFilm.org

The Desert of Forbidden Art(80 mins)

Coastside Film Society Film Night
Friday, March 15, 7:30 p.m.
Community United Methodist Sanctuary 777 Miramontes St., Half Moon Bay
Suggested donation: $8 adults, $3 for children and students

Nukus is a remote capital deep inside Uzbekistan, a Central Asian country where water is scarce and 120-degree weather is common. It's an unlikely location for one of the world's greatest avant-garde art collections. It took filmmakers Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev six years to get access to the collection, to shoot all the film needed to illustrate this remarkable collection, and to capture all the interviews needed to tell the story of the remarkable man who was able to create this artistic oasis in the remote Uzbek outback.

It all began when Uzbekistan was still part of the Soviet Union, and modern art and artists were being harshly persecuted by Stalin. Wannabe artist Igor Savitsky came to Uzbekistan as part of an archeological expedition, and found himself surrounded by talented Soviet artists hiding out in the Uzbek outback. Realizing he could never produce work as beautiful as what he was seeing, he redirected his passion to collecting the forbidden art he loved. In time his collection grew to over 40,000 pieces housed in the folk art museum he talked the state into founding.

"The Desert of Forbidden Art provides a dramatic examination of the power of art against forces of repressive tyranny. It is a fascinating work that will ennoble art lovers, students of Russian history, and anyone who believes in the power of culture." Phil Hall, FilmThreat.com

For more info: www.hmbfilm.org

Preview of the film at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=FBRi97BoWAM

The Coastside Film Society will screen "Sunrise" - a silent film masterpiece with live grand piano accompaniment on Friday Feb 22nd.

1927 was the year the silent film achieved artistic perfection and then died. In that year, F.W. Murnau's tense psychological drama Sunrise was released. Critics were quick to acclaim that Sunrise was the finest film ever made. It won three academy awards including the coveted best and most artistic picture of the year. The public could care less. You see, 1927 was also the year in which the first talkies arrived. Talkies are what people clamored to see and Sunrise was a  box office flop. As a result few people alive today have heard of it. Thats a shame because this is a film that still sits on many critics top ten lists of the best movies of all times.

Friday, Feb. 22, 7:30 p.m.

Community United Methodist Sanctuary

777 Miramontes St., Half Moon Bay (corner of Johnston Street)

Suggested Donation $8 adults, $3 for children and students

This is the fourth year that the Coastside Film Society has staged a silent film night featuring live musical accompaniment by Montara's own Shauna Pickett-Gordon on the grand piano. If you have not seen Shauna perform at a silent film night before, check out this video that features Shauna's work.

More info at: www.HMBFilm.org

The Coastside Film Society proudly presents Red Sorghum.

“Beautiful, visually but with that extra edge of human darkness; lust, greed, violence, death, murderous invaders, all set within or close to the wavering seas of sorghum grasses, grown for making a blood-red wine … A story that starts simply but builds into a brazen attack on the senses, the superb use of colour mixing with excellent dramatic acting, slow-moving and evocative long takes and occasional bursts of action - and some comedy, good natural comedy that's actually a joy and which breaks down any boundaries concerned with race, or time.”     Tim Kinder, IMDB.com

Fri, Nov. 30, 7:30 p.m.
Community United Methodist Sanctuary
777 Miramontes St., Half Moon Bay (corner of Johnston Street)
Suggested donation: $8 adults,

The film opens with a scene of a young woman nestled deep within a sedan chair as it winds its way through the arid landscape of Northeastern China in the 1920s.  She is dreading her first encounter with the old wine merchant that her father has arranged as her new husband.  When she gets there she finds a life that is even more complicated than she could ever imagine.  Then the Japanese invade, and her life changes radically once again.

“Red Sorghum has no desire to be subtle, or muted; it wants to splash its passionate colors all over the screen with abandon, and the sheer visual impact of the film is voluptuous… Hollywood doesn't make films like this anymore, because we have forgotten how to be impressionable enough to believe them.”  Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

The film was brought to the Film Society by Jenny Lau of the Cinema Department at San Francisco State.   Professor Lau, a well-known scholar of Asian cinematography will introduce the film and lead the after screening discussion.

The dialog is in Mandarin and Japanese with English subtitles.   This film includes violence and adult themes and is not appropriate for young children.

More info at www.HMBFilm.org

I have been filming the Pumpkin Fest for many years now. The local TV station has been airing those videos on freqent rotation. That station is gone, and the new station no longer airs the full videos. People have been asking me to post my coverage online. I broke up the video in to a series of short, easilty digestible clips, all of which I have posted on YouTube.  Enjoy, and please email the links to friends and family who might be interested.

There are two easy ways to find the clips you are most interested in.    

1.) START WITH MY PUMPKIN FEST OPENING CLIP:
http://tinyurl.com/2012Pumpkin

Links to a dozen clips from Pumpkin Fest are embedded into this clip.

Or:

2.) START WITH A MENU OF AVAILABLE CLIPS:. 
http://tinyurl.com/PumpkinClips

Pick a clip to play or choose “Play all” to play all the clips in order.

I will be adding more clips of music and of events like the pie eating contest soon.  Enjoy. 

Under African Skies(108 mins)

“A cultural lightning bolt that soars on its music and an unshakable belief in the transcendence of art.” — Peter Travers, Rolling Stone Magazine

  Friday, Oct. 26, 7:30 p.m.                                                            

  Community United Methodist Sanctuary                                      
  777 Miramontes St., Half Moon Bay, (corner of Johnston Street)
  A free event -- donations will be gladly accepted                       

The Coastside Film Society proudly presents a documentary about Paul Simon’s return to South Africa for the 25th anniversary tour celebrating the birth of his Grammy-winning 1986 album of the year, Graceland. The album was both a hit and a controversial cultural phenomenon. It teamed Simon, a white American musical legend, with a wonderful group of South African musicians to create an exciting work of fusion.

Some felt that the album exploited the work of his African colleagues; others argued it paid homage to the unique African song styles it borrowed from, and in doing so, opened up African music to a much wider world audience. More controversial yet was the fact that Simon had openly defied a U.N. cultural boycott by travelling and recording music in a South Africa that was still in the grips of apartheid oppression.

The documentary celebrates the roots of the music, showing countless clips of Simon jamming with his African collaborators, including Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Okeyerama Asante and Ray Phiri — both in 1986 and during the 2011 tour. It also features recent interviews with Dali Tambo of Artists Against Apartheid, Paul McCartney, David Byrne and Peter Gabriel, who ruminate on the influence that Graceland had on their lives and their work.

“Doubly satisfying: We get not only a trenchant political drama but a bang-up concert film as well.” — Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

More info at http://www.HMBFilm.org

Can’t make it to Pumpkin Festival?  Don’t want to face the crowds?  Wanna see how your kids looked in the parade?   This year PCT, our cable access station on the coast,  is going to broadcast events from the festival  live – on tape delay – sorta.

For those of you who don’t know, our Coastside Cable access station MCTV recently merged with the Pacifica cable access station to form PCT  (Pacific Coast TV.)   PCT likes to broadcast events like Pacifica’s Fogfest live using a large crew of volunteers as camera people, directors, producers and engineers. 

Although PCT has a dedicated line going from the Ted Adcock Community Senior Center in Half Moon Bay to the PCT studio in Pacifica we were not able to run a line from the parade grounds to the Senior Center this year.  So the plan is to have PCT volunteers roving through Pumpkin Fest events both Saturday and Sunday filming the action as it happens. Those tapes will be quickly mixed and then carried to the Senior Center for transmission to Pacifica for immediate broadcast

PCT broadcasts live on Comcast cable TV channels 26 or 27 from Pescadero to Pacifica.   Or you can log onto the PCT website at www.PacificCoast.TV to watch a live stream of programming off the Internet. 

How much of delay will there be in this programming? Hard to say. This will be the first time we have tried it.  Some footage will probably show up within a hour after it is shot. My plan is to edit my Saturday footage for Sunday broadcast.   Here is a piece of my footage from last year's fest to give you an idea about what I am talking about.  http://tinyurl.com/2011ZombiesDance

Want more information?  Stop by the PCT booth at Pumpkin Fest in front of Zaballa House on main  street in Half Moon Bay during the fest or check out the website.  PCT is always looking for a few more volunteers to run cameras, and produce new programming.

See you at the Fest.