The Green Film Festival Of San Francisco is Here!

Who says the joy of shouting “Soylent Green is people” moments before Charlton Heston opens his mouth is a lost theater-going pleasure?  Thanks to the folks at this year’s Green Film Festival Of San Francisco (hereafter “Green Film SF”), the Charlton Heston-starring science fiction tale set in the awful overpopulated and chaotic world of 2022 is getting a 50th anniversary screening at the festival on October 14, 2023.

But even if “Soylent Green” doesn’t float your proverbial boat, there are plenty of other Green Film SF films on tap worth your attention.  Running from October 12-22, 2023, this year’s Green Film SF (put on as always by the SF IndieFest folks) makes more than 50 green and environmental-themed films from around the world and the Bay Area available via in-theater screenings at the Roxie Theater (3117-16th Street, SF) or online.  However, not every screening (“Soylent Green,” cough cough) will be available online.

If the “Soylent Green” screening didn’t provide enough of a clue, Green Film SF’s Opening Night Film shows the festival offers a lot more than earnest nature documentaries.  “Stay At Conder Beach” happens to be a mystery set at the titular crumbling Gulf Coast tourist town.  Seasonal commerce and oil rigging keep people employed, but various problems such as environmental issues and a string of mysterious deaths hint that something is seriously wrong in town and it’s big.  Yet shop worker Jordan’s asking of uncomfortable questions gets very little support.  The rest of the town seems to prefer doing their best ostrich head in the sand imitation.

Emma Davie’s documentary “The Oil Machine” shows the contradictions and problems around the use of oil in our world.  Can oil companies continue their drilling practices while meeting their Net Zero obligations?  Will greed and fear of change prevent the world from addressing the problem of disastrously rising sea levels?  A wide variety of voices are brought together to discuss the complexities of slowing or even stopping the titular machine.

Annie Pancak’s documentary short “Conceiving Our Future” marries the personal with the political in the context of climate change.  Thanks to a catastrophic Oregon summer, couple Isabella and Jem have decided to abandon their earlier dream of having and raising kids.  The couple’s parents are distraught by the news.  A literal January fireside chat allows all parties to discuss what turns out to be a generational difference about what hope means in a world on fire.

Want to learn about the causes and effects of Earth’s Climate Crisis in just 3 minutes?  Check out Vanessa Sweet’s animated short “Amplifying Feedback Loop.”  It shows the domino effect of human actions on wrecking our planet’s biosphere.

Lagunaria

Showing how the intersection of wildlife and human corridors such as highways doesn’t have to end in roadkill is the subject of the documentary “Restoring The Spirit Of Place.”  This short film from Jerry van de Beek, Lara Tomov, and Nick Stone Schearer recounts how the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes pushed planned expansions of Highway 93 to account for the surrounding mountains, plains, hills, forests, valleys, and sky.

Matty Hannon originally planned a surfing trip along the west coast of the Americas.  This meant starting from the top of Alaska and going to the tip of Patagonia.  But when the trip disastrously falls to pieces, what keeps Hannon from giving up is his encounter with urban permaculture farmer Heather Hillier.  They continue the surfing trip south by motorbike until encounters with Amazonian shamans and Zapatista rebels (among others) cause them to deliberately downshift to horseback and slow down to appreciate our world.  The surfing trip wound up taking 16 years, and Hannon’s film “The Road To Patagonia” chronicles that journey.

Likely to restore your faith in human nature is Kim Lowe’s short “The Bee.”  It’s a portrait of Boston beekeeper Bill Perkins, who shares his knowledge and love of bees with willing listeners in his community.  To advance that goal, Perkins thinks nothing of riding through a busy city with a container of 10,000 bees strapped to the back of his bike. 

Reclamation is the theme of David Waldorf’s documentary short “The Freeway Greenway.”  It shows how a CalTrain dumping site in San Francisco’s Portola District gets transformed by dedicated local folks into a flourishing community space.  

Tijana Petrovic’s “A Field Guide To Coastal Fortifications” might be called an essay film about the military bunkers built on the San Francisco Bay Area’s coast.  Conceived as a defense against perceived threats, these bunkers were built and even rebuilt over time to address a threat that never arrived.  In a way, it’s also a portrait of an ever-changing conversation between the land itself and military thinking.

Dustie Carter’s short “Dumpster Archeology” winds up being both thrilling and hair-raising, particularly for fans of privacy.   It follows “dumpster archeologist” Lew Blink as he shows how trash-strewn alleyways provide a treasure trove of personal mysteries waiting for the right person to unravel them.

Soylent Green

Centerpiece honors go to Giovanni Pelligrini’s experimental documentary “Lagunaria.”  It’s set in a distant future where the city of Venice has become a mythical legend.  The film speculates on what people of the future might think life in Venice may have been like.

Catya Plate’s animated dramedy “Las Nogas” happens to be set in the year 2523,  The world’s a human-caused dry wasteland.  Can Vulkeet (a vulture-parakeet mix) Dr. Alma cure the Homeys, the bizarre creatures who’ve fallen ill thanks to a mysterious sickness?  The mission turns out to be doubly important since these creatures are somehow key to bringing back the rain.

What does it mean to be a wannabe warrior in a culture that’s slowly eroding away?  That’s the challenge facing Kolei, a shepherd boy turned prospective warrior.  For warriorhood defines not only Kolei’s masculinity and personal identity, but also his community’s social bedrock.  The trouble is, the prolonged drought hitting Kolei’s tribe has started raising in the boy doubts about his path in life.  See how Kolei resolves his dilemma (or not) in Andrew Harrison Brown and Moses Thuranira’s feature film “Between The Rains.” 

Addie Navarro’s real-life adventure “Down River Jordan” follows five friends as they take a trip down the River Jordan from its source in the Golan Mountains to its endpoint in the Dead Sea.  But they soon find the river has long stepped away from its millennial role as the area’s source of freshwater and fertile soil for humans and the foundation for a biologically diverse bird sanctuary.  Now, thanks to excessive and unregulated extraction of the river’s waters by Syria, Jordan, and Israel, the last six decades has seen the Jordan River’s size shrink down to 4% of its original water flow.

Jeff Springer’s short “The Wintering Grounds” may be called in some circles a portrait of a group of certifiable lunatics.  But to the freestyle kayakers who descend on a particular spot on the Chattahoochee River located on the Alabama-Georgia border, they’re at the best winter whitewater spot for training for next year’s world kayaking championships.

Meet Penny Logue, the founder of Colorado’s Tenacious Unicorn Ranch.  Besides raising Alpacas, this queer anarchist hero along with her fellow queer ranchers fight everything from fierce weather to far-right militias to make this ranch a success.  Ash Krels’ documentary “We Are Tenacious” tells the story of these queer pioneers.    

Finding The Money

John McDonald’s “Call Me Mule” is a portrait of 65-year-old John Sears aka Mule.  For over thirty years, he and his trio of pack animals have been roaming up and down the Western US living a life more in harmony with nature,  But the cops (surprise, surprise) regularly confront Mule over his wandering lifestyle, and wind up arresting or institutionalizing him.

What’s the appeal of rock climbing in the wilderness?  Carlos Mason’s short “Sending” provides one answer.  The film centers on a group of friends coming together for a weekend of bouldering in The Buttermilks.  Using stunning images, the film captures the accumulation of small pleasures that cumulatively capture the personal fulfillment that the sport delivers.

The National Parks Service has been dubbed by filmmaker Ken Burns “America’s Best Idea.”  In Brendan Hall’s documentary “Out There: A National Parks Story,” the filmmaker and his childhood best friend uses the centennial year of the National Park Service as the spark for undertaking a 10,000 mile road trip to visit the national parks and meet both park staff and visitors.  The result: some great footage of the parks and stories of people who find in the parks everything from tranquility to a connection to the natural world. 

Green Film SF’s Closing Night Film honors go to Maren Poitras’ still timely documentary “Finding The Money.”  “Where will you find the money” is the usual question asked to discourage American government efforts to battle the climate crisis or establish single payer health care.   But as economist Stephanie Kelton points out, the real questions in tackling these big problems involve realistic looks at resources, labor, and inflation.  Kelton advocates the economic theory known as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).  But odds are if you’ve only heard of MMT through the MSM, you might have been misinformed to various degrees.  Let this film give you the straight dope on MMT and possibly inspire you to see that the big problems people talk about are eminently solvable.

In the end, whether you’re coming to Green Film SF to take in some real-life adventure or are in search of inspiration to fix our f**ked up present, there’s likely to be something at Green Film SF that will be well worth your time.

(For further information about the films being shown at Green Film SF and to order advance tickets, go here.)