We drove from Hot Springs back to Austin on Friday. Chose Hwy 79 instead of the awful interstate route through Dallas. For dinner we stopped in the town of Palestine. My favourite place to stop there, which as far as I know was called "Restaurant", had been taken over by Best Western. So in search of something edible, we drove just outside of town and found a great replacement for fave place to eat there - also called Restaurant. Actually it has another name too: Lafitte's Cajun Cafe. Here are a few pictures taken there. The first is graffiti in the women's bathroom (photo by Sharon)...


This is a quicktime video capturing the range of selections available on the radio near Palestine, TX on an autumn friday night. ie, Jesus & High School football.



  posted by John : 8:24 AM

 
From Two Men and a War
Last night we saw this film, a self produced creation of the war experience of Robert Drew. Drew was pivotal in shaping the US 'cinema verite' movement in the 1960s (here's an Austin Chronicle story and interview with him from 2001), where the invention of smaller cameras was done to help make films like his Primary, where the story told itself. An important man at a festival like this which should be proud to have him here with his film. So I was very surprised to see the theater seats less than one third full. The movie had a home-made feel, which it was - assembled with Final Cut Pro over a four year span, utilizing many still photos and narration to tell the story. Drew was a 20 year old air force pilot flying in southern Italy in 1944. He went down in German territory but managed to eject himself from the plane - along with his seat still strapped tightly to his body - low enough so as to not be a target for their guns. He escaped into the hills where he spent the next 3-1/2 months dodging the Germans with the aid of several Italian families who helped get him through. Part of the return back to the allied front, an attempt to swim an eight mile stretch of coastline failed and his two companions on that swim died. Eventually he met up with some French soldiers near Cassino, and found that the Germans had now been pushed back further south. Because it was told first person, and because Drew was in the audience, we knew he made it through okay, but we were still on the edge of our seats.

The technology is only a tool -- its the story that counts, every time.

The other man indicated in the "Two Men" title is Ernie Pyle, a pulitzer-prize-winning war correspondent who Drew met while in Italy. Drew was later inspired by Pyle him to go into writing and journalism, first for Life magazine, and later to take the in-the-trenches approach he did with his films. Here is a collection of Pyle's articles, from an archive at the Indiana University School of Journalism.

  posted by John : 6:49 AM

 
Heifer Educational Farm
Today we made a field trip away from the film festival, out to this farm. Had a nice tour via golfcart with David - one of the many volunteers who live here part time. A busload of schoolkids from San Antonio had just arrived so we didn't get to see the "Global Village" - which is where they'll be staying, in shanty shacks with meager provisions just like most of the people in the world will be doing tonight. Its supposed to hit near freezing, so either they'll bail them out of there or they'll experience a rough night.

The Heifer organization has 1,100 acres in these rolling hills. This part of Arkansas really reminds me a lot of Ontario, which I was happy to find when we first came to this area with our friends Storm and Debbie years ago. Lots of exposed granite, big mixed forests and lots of lakes and rivers. In a few weeks the colors will be in here like there were in Algonquin a couple of weeks back.

A few photos by Sharon -- water buffalo...





longhorn...


  posted by John : 3:47 PM

 
Funny eBay item.

  posted by John : 1:53 PM

 
Hot Springs - Day 3
Today we attended technical workshops on cameras and sound gear. All pretty much review for me, but we did have some interesting discussions with people there and did learn some about about the new HDV (high-def digital video) cameras that are on the market. The only films we've seen so far today were a set of shorts, from 7 to 12 mins in length. All but the last one were complete crap. Which serves as a reminder that this is a great festival to submit a short documentary to - it should surely get in, if it isn't crap. The last of the shorts was cute - The Ride of the Mergansers. About six cameras were placed in and around a man-made nesting box used by merganser ducks. Inside, a hen and her newly born chicks. Kind of a sterile tutorial on the ducks to start with, but with a bit of kitschy music (Flight of the Valkyries of course), the escape of these little guys 24hrs after being hatched, climbing out from their box-nest to take dive many feet into the water below to join their family, was fun to watch. The only film of the set that had any semblence of a story, and that didn't rely heavily on computer-aided special effects.

The good side of seeing crappy docs, especially shorts, is that we still come out of there rejuvinated in a way, thinking I could do better than that!!!.

Off now to see Twist of Faith, a feature-length academy award nominee from 2004, which should redeem the day.

  posted by John : 5:35 PM

 
Hot Springs - Day 2
Today was all about short documentaries - ones under an hour. Including several of the nominees from the academy awards this past year. Autism Is A World, was incredible. The subject, Sue Rubin wrote all the narration herself. In her teens, once she learned to use a keyboard to communicate, her family found that she didn't have the intelligence of a 2-1/2 year old as they though, but that she is highly intelligent. She's now in college and has big career plans. In many ways I saw her as quite similar to my nephew Sean, who is now nine years old. They both share the same fascination with water. Sue talks about how going to the sink to play with water pouring from the tap is her way of zoning out, going back into her own world. Kind of like watching TV is for me. We'll be getting my sister Linda the DVD of this. Maybe she can then get a sense of whether Sean would be ready yet to learn keyboarding, or some similar means of communicating.

The next film shown was The Children of Leningradsky. Very powerful, sad and moving story of some of the thousands of streetkids in Russia, these living in the Leningradsky subway station. We had a nice conversation with the director, Hanna Polak, who flew in from Moscow yesterday to attend the festival this week. As a result of this film she formed the organization Active Child Aid to take on the job of getting some help for these kids.

  posted by John : 5:47 PM

 
Heifer
The film Heifer is somewhat of an informercial, though of a kind you would want to watch all the way through. But that is by design, as it was made to advertise the work of the organization of the same name (heifer.org). Based on the idea by its founder that rather than giving cups of milk to impoverished people it would be better to give them a cow, this organization has a worldwide presence. One I never knew about until today. Their main source of funding is via a catalogue whereby you can give the gift of a goat, cow, pig, rabbit, etc to a person or village in need somewhere. But what they do is much more than that - teaching sustainable farming methods, and generally helping communities in places everywhere to improve conditions (not just in Guatemala, Tanzania, China and Albania as featured in this film, but in the U.S. and Canada too). In Guatemala they focused on a remote community in the Ixil Triangle, Paraiso, which is what drew me to want to see this film. And it was gorgeously done. No doubt they chose the locations they did in part because of the striking visual beauty of the people and the landscapes.

And significant perhaps to why the film was screened here is that Heifer is building a new head office, with loads of green-building features, in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Saw a couple of other short films today, but I'll only write about ones that I liked -- so nothing more to say right now. I came back to the motel to feed Victor, who spent the afternoon on the balcony, and take him for a walk. Sitting out here on a warm night drinking a cold beer and blogging. This is nice.

  posted by John : 4:39 PM

 


Just woke up in our little motel room in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Famed for its bathhouse row, and for being the childhood home of Bill Clinton, this was a booming resort town back in the era of spas. The bath-houses are impressive buildings, lining one side of Central Ave. Behind them is the mountain from which where the thermal waters spring. There are fountains around the downtown where people come to fill up water jugs with spring water. A weekly ritual for many, who arrive with cars and pickup trucks to carry all their containers. At one end of Central Ave is an old movie theatre called the Malco, where for the next week the films of the Hot Springs International Documentary Film Festival will be shown on two screens. Sharon and I have made this a regular stop on our trip home, and are staying in what has become our favorite place - the Happy Hollow Motel. We get a studio-apartment sized space with a kitchen and a balcony where we can leave Victor during the day, for a total of $231 for a full week. Oh, plus $10 for the dog (per week!). I find that to be a great bargain. Especially because directly across the street are the trails of the national park, which we haven't even come close to fully exploring over the years. A great place for long walks. And this year they've added wireless high speed internet, which actually works. A few film-people stay here at the Happy Hollow, but most are at the big hotel: the Arlington. Which has a great bar.

There is a wide brick promenade that leads through the park above the bathhouses from here at the Happy Hollow to near the Malco, making corridor straight to the theatre. Here are photos I found of the view from the promenade, and from Central Ave. Everything here is retro - but in a dormant kind of way rather than a fake tribute to the past. The whole downtown is still awaiting full restoration, which may never come, because its just not a very prosperous place. We've noticed that quite a few Russian and Eastern European people like to come down from up north (Chicago area) to take in the couple of spas that are still in operation. They've also discovered this wonderful place and its great prices, but don't seem to be too interested in the film festival.

As for the festival, in its smallness it is a real contrast to bigger one's like Toronto, or even Austin's SXSW film festival. But it is devoted to documentary and has some excellent stuff, and draws in filmmakers from all over. The selection committee get 1,000 submissions or so to choose from to pick something like 100 films (rough numbers, but they do the same work preparing for this festival as do the bigger guys). And the hassle of lining up and getting tickets doesn't exist. Show up a bit early and you're in, probably with your choice of seat. And the many free workshops offerred are excellent - other festivals have nothing like this. And we've come to know a few people that we see here each year, who also come to stay for the week. The festival has a very small, community feel.

Yesterday on the drive down we stopped in Paducah to see Sandra, a friend we met here at this festival, who is busy working on her own film now and can't attend this year. We saw her earlier film "Kathryn and Her Daughters" (a great tribute to her mother in law), at a small women's film festival called Moondance in Boulder, CO five or six years ago. Then we met her here at Hot Springs two years ago, and have stayed in contact since. She lives on a beautiful piece of land in the southeast tip of Illinois. Her hound-dog Red and Victor had a great time running around there.

What's different about being here this year is that I don't have to work at my job during the week. My next job should start afterwards, when we're finally back home. The timing of projects this year has been immaculate. I had alot of free time while in Canada, when other years I'm often working night and day there. And here, rather than sneaking off to a film or two with calls forwarded to my cell phone on vibrate, I'll be able to enjoy the scene, attend the workshops and do some of those walks. Much time to ponder my latent desire to make a film someday, which gets rejuvinated every year at this time but has yet to spur me into full production on anything. I think I'm still looking for what it is that I have to say.

Photos and film reviews to follow.

  posted by John : 6:12 AM

 
Guatemalan mudslide tragedy
I read the news of the mudslide in the town of Panabaj, burying alive some 1,400 people in 2 metres of mud just over a week ago. But the maps I saw drew it vaguely in the highland area, so I assumed it was nearer to Quetzaltenango. Now I've found that it is a village, an "aldea" of the town of Santiago Atitlan. The owner of the hotel where we stayed there last year is quoted in this BBC article. My heart slipped when I read that the staff at the hotel have lost many family members in the disaster. This account tells of what they experienced just one day after the mudslide. I've also read that the local people there have refused assistance from their country's military, a testament to the lasting revulsion over the massacres in this town in 1990.

I took this picture of the beautiful view from their hotel - approx 500metres from the edge of the 1km wide mudslide: . There's a similar volcano right behind them - the source of the mudslide. When we were there we saw many people, from very young to very old, walking with firewood and other provisions on the backs and heads, in that general direction. But we never wandered down that way on the road, to visit the village that has now disappeared.

Sharon and I will be going back to Guatemala in about a month, to visit over Thanksgiving together with a couple of friends from Austin. But our flight takes us into the northern lowlands, to visit the Tikal ruins, and the surrounding area.

I wrote to David at the Posada de Santiago asking for an idea where donations could be sent for best use. He sent this update on the situation there.

Also, news articles continued to show images of Santiago Atitlan (the base for rescue and relief efforts) , and call it Panabaj - a village by all accounts now completely buried, and may be left that way and be declared a cemetery.

Got PayPal? From the open letter from Chris Rose, COO Transitions Foundation of Guatemala:

Thank you for all the support you sent!! Please let others know. There is much work left to be done, in supporting the homeless, and soon, rebuilding.

http://www.transitionsfoundation.com/Transitions_English/contact_info.html

  posted by John : 10:39 AM

 
As seen on Engadget.com ...

The PEZ MP3 player is taking orders!

  posted by John : 6:29 AM

 
Listening Room : Fall Mix
Hey kids - join the fun and share a tune on the new Listening Room playlist.

  posted by John : 11:55 AM

 
Sandy Hill Homes
While in Ottawa, and not at the pub down the street or off touring the city, we all walked with the dogs around James' new home turf. Sharon was working on taking pictures on different themes for a project, one being second floor windows. Looking at the photos I noticed how much these houses blend right in with the fall colours. So its not only James that feels at home there in the autumn - the homes do too.
.

  posted by John : 10:39 AM

 
Autumn in Ontario
We're back from a great fall tour. Two days in Ottawa with James seeing the sights. Four days in Algonquin Park together with my bro Knud, then the long weekend for Canadian Thanksgiving at the cottage in Parry Sound. The weather was most incredible. It got up to 28c in the park, and it was warm enough to wade out into Rock Lake. Fully aware that having both the time to travel and the warm weather at this time of year were unlikely to happen again, we made the most of it and stayed as long as we could. Our campsite was one to remember (#73). At the end of the campground but at the start of the beach, it was as if we had the place to ourselves. Here's a few pictures...


A few more...


  posted by John : 11:50 AM