Event
Los Angeles Filmforum presents Views of Montana: NEXT YEAR COUNTRY
Sunday July 25, 2010, 7:30 pm
Los Angeles Filmforum presents Views of Montana:
NEXT YEAR COUNTRY
Preceded by Four Short films by Cindy Stillwell
All Los Angeles premieres!
At the Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd. at Las Palmas, Los Angeles
Montana, the state and the state of mind, the troubled farmlands and the polluted legacy of the mines, the labor strife and drought has been the source of a variety of fascinating documentaries in the past few years. We'll look at a few this week and next, starting with a set of films today on farmlands, rain, and the landscape. Cindy Stillwell's films range all over the range, a stylistically smart set of glimpses of landscape and farm & ranch routines, while Joseph Aguirre's Next Year Country is a new and lush portrait of families and the quest for rain for their drought-ridden lands. Director Joseph Aguiree of Next Year Country in person!
A Season on the Move by Cindy Stillwell (2004, 12 min, super8 to video)
A meditation on two harvests: wheat cutting and sheep shearing. The landscape plays a key role, along with the combines, shearing combs, and weather patterns. The film cycles through the seasons and presents these processes as mythological oddities and realistic modern agricultural practices in the American rural west, both pastoral and disturbing. Los Angeles Premiere!
High Plains Winter by Cindy Stillwell (2006, 10 min, super 8 and 16mm to video)
A film about the winter landscape and how it affects the human spirit on the high plains of Montana. The American/Scandinavian sport ski joring, which involves a horse & rider pulling a skier, is the centerpiece of this visual study of winter on the high plains. Alongside the sport imagery are majestic, winter landscapes and signs of domestic life: horses, dogs and people. These elements weave together to explore the nature of human life in this environment, the mythologies and the realities. Los Angeles Premiere!
O! Sprinklers by Cindy Stillwell and Bill Neff (2002, 7 min, digital video)
A visual probe of a variety of sprinklers. We were interested in how the commonality of memory and experience can transform everyday objects into cultural phenomena. Los Angeles premiere!
Community Food Coop Ad Campaign by Cindy Stillwell
McAlpine Pork, (2003, 60 sec, super 8 to video)
This campaign was designed and produced for local television broadcast and meant to highlight the local producers of organic meats that are sold at the Community Food Coop. Each ad was designed to highlight the animal raised, and the family or people who tended the animals. Los Angeles Premiere!
Next Year Country (2009, 56min, minidv)
Joseph Aguirre, Director / Producer / Cinematographer
Jennie Bedusa, Producer; Yaffa Lerea, Editor
Los Angeles Premiere!
"Visually stunning! Next Year Country takes an honest look at how far people will go to protect their livelihood." Travis Morss, Big Sky Festival
NEXT YEAR COUNTRY tells the story of three Montana families who hire a rainmaker in an attempt to bring relief to their drought-stricken farms. Montana's drought has lingered for the better part of the last two decades, and is the worst the American West has seen in over 500 years. The impact on Montana's small family farms has been profound, as many have been forced to sell out and move to town. NEXT YEAR COUNTRY profiles three families who persist in living and hoping through a punishingly dry time.
Ninety-three-year-old rancher Viola Hill was "tired of praying for rain that didn't come," so when she heard about a rainmaker working on a farm in northeastern Montana she launched a county-wide campaign to raise the money to hire him. "The response was not good," she lamented. But ignoring ridicule and cries of witchcraft, even threats of excommunication from her church, Viola and her husband Floyd personally guaranteed the $10,000 the rainmaker charged for a visit.
Set against the backdrop of a growing regional water crisis, and a changing climate that has U.N. climate scientists calling for a new understanding of what constitutes "normal weather" in the American West, Next Year Country is the heartfelt story about three families and their desperate struggle to hold on to a vanishing way of life.
Joseph Aguirre (Director / Producer / Cinematographer) is a cameraman and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. His diverse body of work in the fields of documentary, commercials and music videos has taken him all over the world, from filming Korean break-dancers on the streets of Seoul for Nike, to shooting surfing in the waters off Indonesia, to producing/shooting/editing in Palestine's occupied West Bank for the New York Times. Next Year Country--a film he directed, co-produced and shot-- is his feature film debut
This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles. Additional support generously provided by the American Cinematheque.
For the screenings at the Egyptian Theater:
Parking is now easiest at the Hollywood & Highland complex. Bring your ticket for validation. Parking is $2 for 4 hours with validation. Enter that complex on Highland or Hollywood. The theater is 1.5 blocks east.
|
|
 |
LocationSpielberg Theater at the Egyptian
6712 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: No |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: No |
| Wheelchair Accessible: No |
|
Contact
|
