Kalpna Singh-Chitnis says the hardest part of staging last year's first ever Silent River Film Festival was mounting the sequel, which is scheduled for Thursday through Sunday in Irvine.
Dealing with programming, logistics and clashing personalities in your first year is one thing, but now that the newness has worn off finding the time, energy and passion to do it all over again has been daunting, explains the poet, actress and filmmaker.
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She's discovered you not only have to pick your battles but times to interact with a media that can help promote an ambitious event that brings 80 “hand-selected” films from 30 countries to Edwards Westpark 8 theater, informative seminars to Irvine City Hall and after parties to hotels and restaurants throughout that city and adjacent Tustin.
Case in point: we chatted on the phone while she was driving to Pasadena for a radio interview, and what began as opportunity to set up a future talk about her event evolved into a full-blown interview of its own.
Her underlining goal, she says, is to bring East and West together through cinema, educate everyone from the masses to thought leaders about challenges all over the world and spotlight the independent artists who are living them and then reflecting them through their work.
As was the case last year, this year's fest has a charitable outreach, with 2012
“Cinema for Causes” films and documentaries focusing on human rights, the environment and the humane treatment of animals.
Indeed, Singh-Chtnis pleaded with me that if what you are reading now mentioned nothing else, it would be Sunday's 1 p.m. presentation of and educational seminar preceding the film How I Became an Elephant. Learning more about the documentary, it becomes clear it perfectly represents the Silent River Film Festival and what Singh-Chitnis has been striving to achieve for two years now.
How I Became an Elephant follows the amazing journey of Juliette West, a 14- going on 35-year-old teenager in Pacific Palisades who decides she wants to learn more about the majestic mammals. That takes her to Southeast Asia, where West meets “The Elephant Lady.” Exposed to the mistreatment of the beasts, West goes from inquisitive schoolgirl to tireless advocate for elephants.
The film will play a central role in the “Cinema for Causes” seminar that begins at 10 a.m. Sunday at Irvine City Hall. Panelists include West, Singh-Chitnis, How I Became an Elephant producer Debbie Pagell and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) activist Haydon Hamilton. Proceeds from the sale of tickets, which range from $5 to $22 depending on whether you are also attending the doc's screening at Westpark, will be shared with an elephant sanctuary in the Chiang Mai province of Northern
Thailand.
But Pagell will not be the only How I Became an Elephant producer in Irvine on Sunday, as fellow producer Jorja Fox of TV's CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fame is presented the festival's “River Glory Award” for her longtime animal and human-rights activism. The honor will come at an Irvine Marriott gala that begins with red carpet arrivals and cocktail partying at 6 p.m. and the main program at 8 p.m.
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By then, the festival will have opened at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Westpark with with No God No Master, a drama that was shot in Milwaukee and made its premiere there last Sunday, Oct. 9.
“No God, No Master” Trailer from Paul Sanchez on Vimeo.
David Strathairn (Good Night and Good Luck) stars as a U.S. Bureau of Investigation agent getting to the bottom of a series of brown paper mail bombings. While the film opens in the summer 1919, writer/director Terry Green draws parallels to our modern political state.
Other promising-sounding Silent River Film Festival offerings include: Unbowed, South Korean director Chung Ji-Young's dramatic interpretation of the real-life events that surrounded a
math professor arrested for shooting a crossbow at the
presiding judge of his appeal against unfair dismissal (8 p.m. Thursday); Aung San Suu Kyi: Lady of No Fear, a Danish documentary by Anne Gyrithe Bonne about the woman who has served house arrest three times since the 1990s while fighting for democracy in her homeland, Burma (12:20 p.m. Saturday); and Arjun: The Warrior Prince, an animated feature from India and the Walt Disney Co. about the titular soldier (Yuddvir Bakolia) battling his inner-self to become a great archer (3:10 p.m. Saturday).
If you missed Camilo Vila's 186 Dollars to Freedom when it played in late September at the SoCal Film Fest in Huntington Beach (and online through Oct. 7), you get another shot at Silent River. The story about a California surfer oblivious to political change in 1980 Peru
until a corrupt cop frames and jails him as a drug dealer rolls at 8:20 p.m. Friday at Westpark. The film also has the distinction of being the last of recently deceased troubled soul Johnny Lewis.
Meanwhile, the program also includes two films that played at the 2011 Newport Beach Film Festival: California State of Mind: The Legacy of Pat Brown, his granddaughter Sascha Rice's enlightening documentary on the late governor who preceded Ronald Reagan (which I reviewed here), and Greening the Revolution, first-time filmmaker Katie Curran's look at farmers around the world fighting for a sustainable future (that I previewed here). Woody Harrelson narrates.
Of course, there are not just provocative features but shorts as well, with so many programs it would take a separate post to list them all. Better for you to check out what our lady of no fear, Ms. Singh-Chtnis, has cooked up by visiting SilentRiverFilmFestival.com, which lists all titles and includes the complete schedule, ticket prices, special events and so much more.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.