UCSC Press Release: Margaret Mead Film Festival in Santa Cruz

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September 21, 1999
Contact: Jennifer McNulty (831) 459-2495; jmcnulty@cats.ucsc.edu
Seventeen documentary films from New York's Margaret Mead Film Festival in Santa Cruz
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SANTA CRUZ, CA--If you loved the movie Buena Vista Social Club, mark your calendar for October 15, when local audiences will have a chance to enjoy the poignant film Black Tears, a musical portrait of the octogenarian Cuban quintet La Vieja Trova Santiaguera (The Old Troubadours). The 75-minute film by Dutch director Sonia Herman Dolz captures the group performing to sellout crowds during a six-month European tour and features moving interviews with the musicians as they reminisce about the music, dance, and love that has inspired them throughout the years. Beautifully shot, the film also documents one-of-a- kind musical moments.
Black Tears will be screened as part of the first-ever Santa Cruz Margaret Mead Traveling Film & Video Festival, which will be held October 13-24 at Louden Nelson Community Center and at the Theater Arts Center at UC Santa Cruz. The festival is being presented by the UCSC Anthropology Department, the Santa Cruz City Museum of Natural History, and the American Museum of Natural History.
The festival offers 17 of the most outstanding entries from the prestigious Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, which is presented annually in New York by the American Museum of Natural History. This year's inaugural Santa Cruz festival will include films from Taiwan, Cuba, Poland, Russia, Australia, Lithuania, Congo, Belgium, Canada, and the United States. The documentary films cover topics as diverse as taxidermy, abortion, menstruation, the transformation of traditional Aborigine dreaming stories into animated films, and the razing of a rural village in Taiwan to make way for a major highway. The schedule also includes the Santa Cruz premiere of Pepino Mango Nance, a film by UCSC graduate student Gillian Goslinga that tells the story of a young Chicano composer.
The films are offered in six programs that revolve around the themes of relocation, border crossing, resistance, loneliness, women and taboo, and Australian indigenous media.
The Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival in New York is the largest showcase for international documentaries in the United States. Founded in 1977, the festival honors pioneering anthropologist Margaret Mead, who was one of the first anthropologists to recognize the significance of film for fieldwork. Screenings during the first three days of the festival, October 13-15, will take place at the Louden Nelson Community Center (LNCC) at 301 Center Street in Santa Cruz. The second half of the festival, October 22-24, will take place in the Media Theater (MT) at the Theater Arts Center at UCSC. To get to the theater, take the UCSC West Entrance off Empire Grade at Heller Drive. After the fourth stop sign, turn right onto Meyer Drive; free parking is available in the Performing Arts parking lot.
Tickets will be available in advance at the Civic Auditorium at 307 Church Street, the UCSC Ticket Office in the Performing Arts Center, and the Santa Cruz City Museum of Natural History at 1305 East Cliff Drive. Admission is $2.50. Please note: The presenters advise discretion in bringing children under age 12 to the screenings.
A detailed schedule and short descriptions of each film follows. All shows start at 7 p.m. except for the matinee show on Sunday, October 25, which starts at 2 p.m. Complete program and schedule information is also available on the web at www.meadfilmfest.org. For more information, call (831) 420-6115 or send email to meadfest@cruzio.com.
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This release is available electronically on the Web at: press.ucsc.edu
Santa Cruz Margaret Mead Traveling Film & Video Festival 1999 Film Program
WEDNESDAY OCT 13 (LNCC) Program Notes: These lyrical and often humorous works offer different perspectives on solitude and memory. Total running time: 122 min.
* The Bathhouse (Pirtis) (Lithuania) Rimantas Gruodis. 1997. 10 min.
On alternate days of the week, elderly men and women take refuge in the oldest and last active public bathhouse in Vilnius. In its timeless space, the visitors' musings about the hardships of daily life and an uncertain future are tempered with birch branches and the ritual bath.
* Skin's Sorrow (Peaux de Chagrin) (Belgium) Richard Olivier. 1997. 57 min.
Taxidermy has often been associated with traditional museum display; it is also a means to immortalize a beloved pet. This offbeat and poignant film is an exploration of loneliness, loss, and love.
* Bread Day (Russia) Sergei Dvortsevoy. 1998. 55 min.
Long takes and stunning cinematography strike a fragile balance between melancholy and humor. Outside St. Petersburg, Russia, in a forgotten, almost abandoned settlement, a dwindling community of pensioners barely manages to eke out an existence.
THURSDAY OCT 14 (LNCC) Program Notes: These three works explore the relationship between women and what is considered taboo. Total running time: 127 min.
* So It Doesn't Hurt (Poland) Marcel Lozinski. 1998. 46 min.
In rural Poland in the 1960s a journalist, photographer, and film crew visited the village outcast : a young, single, woman farmer with a penchant for literature. Twenty-three years later, the same film crew makes a return visit. The film also presents a critique of the documentary and journalistic endeavor itself.
* Mother of the Tribe (Taiwan) Chen Jung-Hsien. 1998. 25 min.
In 1995, Chi Ah Niang became the first female chieftain to be elected by the Ah-mei people. She faces the daunting task of convincing the conservative elders that the hurricane that destroyed last year's annual harvest had nothing to do with her being a woman.
* Under Wraps: A Film about Going with the Flow (Canada/U.S.) Teresa MacInnes, Penny Wheelwright. 1996. 56 min.
In an era when nothing seems off limits, the topic of menstruation remains taboo. This uncompromising look at Western attitudes towards menstruation includes a challenging critique of the marketing of toxic products, commentary from visual and literary artists who address menstruation in their work, and a visit to the novel Museum of Menstruation.
FRIDAY OCT 15 (LNCC) **This program is repeated on Saturday, Oct. 23, at UCSC.** Program notes: The vibrant musical traditions of Cuba and Central America break down social and geographical boundaries. Total running time: 85 min.
* Pepino Mango Nance (U.S.) Gillian Goslinga, Bann Roy. 1997. 10 min.
It's the music of the streets! It's the music of filmmaking! In this exuberant short by UCSC graduate student Gillian Goslinga, a young Chicano composer is inspired by the hawker calls of Central American street vendors in Los Angeles to create a composition for string quartet.
* Black Tears (Lágrimas Negras) (Cuba) Sonia Herman Dolz. 1998. 75 min.
A musical portrait of the octogenarian Cuban quintet La Vieja Trova Santiaguera (The Old Troubadours). While on a six-month tour in Western Europe they perform to adoring crowds and reminisce about what has inspired them throughout the years: song, dance, and love.
FRIDAY OCT 22 (MT) Program notes: Since martial law was lifted a decade ago, Taiwanese documentary filmmakers have been overturning cinematic conventions to present alternative visions of Taiwan's past, present, and future. These two titles offer insight into this society in transition. Total running time: 150 min.
* Passing through My Mother-in-Law's Village (Taiwan) Hu Tai-Li. 1997. 87 min.
Cinematic vignettes document tradition and change in rural Taiwan as the filmmaker revisits the village of her in-laws, also the site of her fieldwork as an anthropologist in the 1970s, before it is razed for the construction of a major highway. This was the first documentary in Taiwan to achieve commercial success.
* Moon Children (Taiwan) Wu Yii-Feng. 1990. 63 min.
Ju Seng-ho was fired because he looked like a "ghost." In Taiwan, albinoism often means being ostracized from mainstream society. This keenly sensitive film breaks down commonplace prejudices about albinos and looks at the Taiwanese albino community's efforts to improve its rights and provide a much needed support network by founding the National Albino Association. This work stands as a social and cinematic landmark in Taiwan's communal media efforts.
SATURDAY OCT 23 (MT) Program notes: The vibrant musical traditions of Cuba and Central America break down social and geographical boundaries. Total running time: 85 min.
* Pepino Mango Nance (U.S.) Gillian Goslinga, Bann Roy. 1997. 10 min.
It's the music of the streets! It's the music of filmmaking! In this exuberant short, a young Chicano composer is inspired by the hawker calls of Central American street vendors in Los Angeles to create a composition for string quartet.
* Black Tears (Lágrimas Negras) (Cuba) Sonia Herman Dolz. 1998. 75 min.
A musical portrait of the octogenarian Cuban quintet La Vieja Trova Santiaguera (The Old Troubadours). While on a six-month tour in Western Europe they perform to adoring crowds and reminisce about what has inspired them throughout the years: song, dance, and love.
SUNDAY OCT 24 AT 2PM (MT) Program notes: These works by both indigenous and non-indigenous filmmakers examine ways that contemporary Australians are confronting the past and influencing the present
* Cracks in the Mask (Torres Strait Islands) Frances Calvert. 1997. 47 min.
What is the role of ethnographic museums at the end of the 20th century? What rights do indigenous communities have to reclaim their material culture? These questions are soberly explored as a community leader from the Torres Strait Islands in northern Australia embarks on a journey to European museums to encounter the ceremonial and everyday objects that were once part of his heritage.
* Milerum: Whose Story? (Australia) Robert Crompton. 1997. 30 min.
In the 1930s, Australian anthropologist/linguist Norman Tindale conducted extensive research with indigenous community leader Milerum. The collections yielded by the project are now housed in the South Australian Museum. Six decades later Milerum's great-grandson questions who has the right to these materials, many of which are sacred and not to be seen by "whitefellas," women, or the uninitiated.
* Night Patrol (Munga Watingki Patu) (Australia) Pat Fiske, Valerie Napaljarri Martin. 1997. 30 min.
"We don't want to be crying all the time." When alcohol abuse, gasoline sniffing, and domestic violence reach crisis proportions in the Yuendemu community in Australia's Northern Territory, a group of daring indigenous women take control and found their own policing program.
* The Dreaming (Australia) Shane Russell. 1996. 39 min. Animation.
These selections are from a thirteen-part series about Australian indigenous artists who collaborate with the "owners" of traditional dreaming stories and render these tales into animation. Such stories form the backbone of Australian indigenous culture, including creation and morality tales.
SUNDAY OCT 24 (MT) Program notes: Innovative portraits chronicle individual and collective resistance. Total running time: 152 min.
* Lumumba: Death of a Prophet (Democratic Republic of Congo) Raoul Peck. 1992. 69 min.
Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister elected after Congolese independence in 1960, was assassinated only ten months after taking office. One of the legendary figures of modern African history, he has been described both as a prophet and as the "Elvis Presley of African politics." Using archival films, interviews with Belgian journalists and Lumumba's family members, and his own home movies taken during his childhood in Zaire, Peck masterfully blends the personal and the political to question the process of documentary filmmaking and the relationship between private recollection and public history.
* Spudwrench-Kahnawake Man (Canada) Alanis Obomsawin. 1997. 58 min.
The Mohawk "high steel" workers are legendary for their part in building New York City. This film celebrates these men and the loved ones they were forced to leave at home, their ties to the reservation community, and how that bond was tested during the 1990 territorial dispute between the Mohawk community and the Canadian government.
* Dear Dr. Spencer: Abortion in a Small Town (U.S.) Danielle Renfrew, Beth Seltzer. 1997. 25 min.
At a time when abortion was illegal, women from all over the country sought the services of Dr. Spencer, a small-town doctor in Ashland, Pa. Dr. Spencer performed safe and inexpensive abortions for women in need; it is estimated that he performed nearly 40,000 between 1923 and his death in 1969. Remarkably, the community "looked the other way," and didn't interfere despite his defiance of the law.
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September 21, 1999 Contact: Jennifer McNulty (831) 459-2495; jmcnulty@cats.ucsc.edu Seventeen documentary films from New York's Margaret Mead Film Festival in Santa Cruz FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE SANTA CRUZ, CA--If you loved the movie Buena Vista Social Club, mark your calendar for October 15, when local audiences will have a chance to enjoy the poignant film Black Tears, a musical portrait of the octogenarian Cuban quintet La Vieja Trova Santiaguera (The Old Troubadours). The 75-minute film by Dutch director Sonia Herman Dolz captures the group performing to sellout crowds during a six-month European tour and features moving interviews with the musicians as they reminisce about the music, dance, and love that has inspired them throughout the years. Beautifully shot, the film also documents one-of-a- kind musical moments. Black Tears will be screened as part of the first-ever Santa Cruz Margaret Mead Traveling Film & Video Festival, which will be held October 13-24 at Louden Nelson Community Center and at the Theater Arts Center at UC Santa Cruz. The festival is being presented by the UCSC Anthropology Department, the Santa Cruz City Museum of Natural History, and the American Museum of Natural History. The festival offers 17 of the most outstanding entries from the prestigious Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, which is presented annually in New York by the American Museum of Natural History. This year's inaugural Santa Cruz festival will include films from Taiwan, Cuba, Poland, Russia, Australia, Lithuania, Congo, Belgium, Canada, and the United States. The documentary films cover topics as diverse as taxidermy, abortion, menstruation, the transformation of traditional Aborigine dreaming stories into animated films, and the razing of a rural village in Taiwan to make way for a major highway. The schedule also includes the Santa Cruz premiere of Pepino Mango Nance, a film by UCSC graduate student Gillian Goslinga that tells the story of a young Chicano composer. The films are offered in six programs that revolve around the themes of relocation, border crossing, resistance, loneliness, women and taboo, and Australian indigenous media. The Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival in New York is the largest showcase for international documentaries in the United States. Founded in 1977, the festival honors pioneering anthropologist Margaret Mead, who was one of the first anthropologists to recognize the significance of film for fieldwork. Screenings during the first three days of the festival, October 13-15, will take place at the Louden Nelson Community Center (LNCC) at 301 Center Street in Santa Cruz. The second half of the festival, October 22-24, will take place in the Media Theater (MT) at the Theater Arts Center at UCSC. To get to the theater, take the UCSC West Entrance off Empire Grade at Heller Drive. After the fourth stop sign, turn right onto Meyer Drive; free parking is available in the Performing Arts parking lot. Tickets will be available in advance at the Civic Auditorium at 307 Church Street, the UCSC Ticket Office in the Performing Arts Center, and the Santa Cruz City Museum of Natural History at 1305 East Cliff Drive. Admission is $2.50. Please note: The presenters advise discretion in bringing children under age 12 to the screenings. A detailed schedule and short descriptions of each film follows. All shows start at 7 p.m. except for the matinee show on Sunday, October 25, which starts at 2 p.m. Complete program and schedule information is also available on the web at www.meadfilmfest.org. For more information, call (831) 420-6115 or send email to meadfest@cruzio.com. ##### This release is available electronically on the Web at: press.ucsc.edu Santa Cruz Margaret Mead Traveling Film & Video Festival 1999 Film Program WEDNESDAY OCT 13 (LNCC) Program Notes: These lyrical and often humorous works offer different perspectives on solitude and memory. Total running time: 122 min. * The Bathhouse (Pirtis) (Lithuania) Rimantas Gruodis. 1997. 10 min. On alternate days of the week, elderly men and women take refuge in the oldest and last active public bathhouse in Vilnius. In its timeless space, the visitors' musings about the hardships of daily life and an uncertain future are tempered with birch branches and the ritual bath. * Skin's Sorrow (Peaux de Chagrin) (Belgium) Richard Olivier. 1997. 57 min. Taxidermy has often been associated with traditional museum display; it is also a means to immortalize a beloved pet. This offbeat and poignant film is an exploration of loneliness, loss, and love. * Bread Day (Russia) Sergei Dvortsevoy. 1998. 55 min. Long takes and stunning cinematography strike a fragile balance between melancholy and humor. Outside St. Petersburg, Russia, in a forgotten, almost abandoned settlement, a dwindling community of pensioners barely manages to eke out an existence. THURSDAY OCT 14 (LNCC) Program Notes: These three works explore the relationship between women and what is considered taboo. Total running time: 127 min. * So It Doesn't Hurt (Poland) Marcel Lozinski. 1998. 46 min. In rural Poland in the 1960s a journalist, photographer, and film crew visited the village outcast : a young, single, woman farmer with a penchant for literature. Twenty-three years later, the same film crew makes a return visit. The film also presents a critique of the documentary and journalistic endeavor itself. * Mother of the Tribe (Taiwan) Chen Jung-Hsien. 1998. 25 min. In 1995, Chi Ah Niang became the first female chieftain to be elected by the Ah-mei people. She faces the daunting task of convincing the conservative elders that the hurricane that destroyed last year's annual harvest had nothing to do with her being a woman. * Under Wraps: A Film about Going with the Flow (Canada/U.S.) Teresa MacInnes, Penny Wheelwright. 1996. 56 min. In an era when nothing seems off limits, the topic of menstruation remains taboo. This uncompromising look at Western attitudes towards menstruation includes a challenging critique of the marketing of toxic products, commentary from visual and literary artists who address menstruation in their work, and a visit to the novel Museum of Menstruation. FRIDAY OCT 15 (LNCC) This program is repeated on Saturday, Oct. 23, at UCSC. Program notes: The vibrant musical traditions of Cuba and Central America break down social and geographical boundaries. Total running time: 85 min. * Pepino Mango Nance (U.S.) Gillian Goslinga, Bann Roy. 1997. 10 min. It's the music of the streets! It's the music of filmmaking! In this exuberant short by UCSC graduate student Gillian Goslinga, a young Chicano composer is inspired by the hawker calls of Central American street vendors in Los Angeles to create a composition for string quartet. * Black Tears (Lágrimas Negras) (Cuba) Sonia Herman Dolz. 1998. 75 min. A musical portrait of the octogenarian Cuban quintet La Vieja Trova Santiaguera (The Old Troubadours). While on a six-month tour in Western Europe they perform to adoring crowds and reminisce about what has inspired them throughout the years: song, dance, and love. FRIDAY OCT 22 (MT) Program notes: Since martial law was lifted a decade ago, Taiwanese documentary filmmakers have been overturning cinematic conventions to present alternative visions of Taiwan's past, present, and future. These two titles offer insight into this society in transition. Total running time: 150 min. * Passing through My Mother-in-Law's Village (Taiwan) Hu Tai-Li. 1997. 87 min. Cinematic vignettes document tradition and change in rural Taiwan as the filmmaker revisits the village of her in-laws, also the site of her fieldwork as an anthropologist in the 1970s, before it is razed for the construction of a major highway. This was the first documentary in Taiwan to achieve commercial success. * Moon Children (Taiwan) Wu Yii-Feng. 1990. 63 min. Ju Seng-ho was fired because he looked like a "ghost." In Taiwan, albinoism often means being ostracized from mainstream society. This keenly sensitive film breaks down commonplace prejudices about albinos and looks at the Taiwanese albino community's efforts to improve its rights and provide a much needed support network by founding the National Albino Association. This work stands as a social and cinematic landmark in Taiwan's communal media efforts. SATURDAY OCT 23 (MT) Program notes: The vibrant musical traditions of Cuba and Central America break down social and geographical boundaries. Total running time: 85 min. * Pepino Mango Nance (U.S.) Gillian Goslinga, Bann Roy. 1997. 10 min. It's the music of the streets! It's the music of filmmaking! In this exuberant short, a young Chicano composer is inspired by the hawker calls of Central American street vendors in Los Angeles to create a composition for string quartet. * Black Tears (Lágrimas Negras) (Cuba) Sonia Herman Dolz. 1998. 75 min. A musical portrait of the octogenarian Cuban quintet La Vieja Trova Santiaguera (The Old Troubadours). While on a six-month tour in Western Europe they perform to adoring crowds and reminisce about what has inspired them throughout the years: song, dance, and love. SUNDAY OCT 24 AT 2PM (MT) Program notes: These works by both indigenous and non-indigenous filmmakers examine ways that contemporary Australians are confronting the past and influencing the present * Cracks in the Mask (Torres Strait Islands) Frances Calvert. 1997. 47 min. What is the role of ethnographic museums at the end of the 20th century? What rights do indigenous communities have to reclaim their material culture? These questions are soberly explored as a community leader from the Torres Strait Islands in northern Australia embarks on a journey to European museums to encounter the ceremonial and everyday objects that were once part of his heritage. * Milerum: Whose Story? (Australia) Robert Crompton. 1997. 30 min. In the 1930s, Australian anthropologist/linguist Norman Tindale conducted extensive research with indigenous community leader Milerum. The collections yielded by the project are now housed in the South Australian Museum. Six decades later Milerum's great-grandson questions who has the right to these materials, many of which are sacred and not to be seen by "whitefellas," women, or the uninitiated. * Night Patrol (Munga Watingki Patu) (Australia) Pat Fiske, Valerie Napaljarri Martin. 1997. 30 min. "We don't want to be crying all the time." When alcohol abuse, gasoline sniffing, and domestic violence reach crisis proportions in the Yuendemu community in Australia's Northern Territory, a group of daring indigenous women take control and found their own policing program. * The Dreaming (Australia) Shane Russell. 1996. 39 min. Animation. These selections are from a thirteen-part series about Australian indigenous artists who collaborate with the "owners" of traditional dreaming stories and render these tales into animation. Such stories form the backbone of Australian indigenous culture, including creation and morality tales. SUNDAY OCT 24 (MT) Program notes: Innovative portraits chronicle individual and collective resistance. Total running time: 152 min. * Lumumba: Death of a Prophet (Democratic Republic of Congo) Raoul Peck. 1992. 69 min. Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister elected after Congolese independence in 1960, was assassinated only ten months after taking office. One of the legendary figures of modern African history, he has been described both as a prophet and as the "Elvis Presley of African politics." Using archival films, interviews with Belgian journalists and Lumumba's family members, and his own home movies taken during his childhood in Zaire, Peck masterfully blends the personal and the political to question the process of documentary filmmaking and the relationship between private recollection and public history. * Spudwrench-Kahnawake Man (Canada) Alanis Obomsawin. 1997. 58 min. The Mohawk "high steel" workers are legendary for their part in building New York City. This film celebrates these men and the loved ones they were forced to leave at home, their ties to the reservation community, and how that bond was tested during the 1990 territorial dispute between the Mohawk community and the Canadian government. * Dear Dr. Spencer: Abortion in a Small Town (U.S.) Danielle Renfrew, Beth Seltzer. 1997. 25 min. At a time when abortion was illegal, women from all over the country sought the services of Dr. Spencer, a small-town doctor in Ashland, Pa. Dr. Spencer performed safe and inexpensive abortions for women in need; it is estimated that he performed nearly 40,000 between 1923 and his death in 1969. Remarkably, the community "looked the other way," and didn't interfere despite his defiance of the law. ##### Press Release Home \| Search Press Releases \| Press Release Archive \| Services for Journalists
	Maintained by:pioweb@cats.ucsc.edu