The Santa Barbara International Film Festival is the highlight of my year. I go to four to six films a day for the ten days of the festival. Every year I want to diary the best films, but I am so busy, and so exhausted at the end of the day, that I never have. This year I have decided to be willing to throw a diary together, just to get one out there, when I see important films. This is tonight's report.
Seeing these independent films and documentaries makes mainstream Hollywood films look even more shallow, if you can believe that. It is a shame more of these films don't reach a wider audience. It took me a while to discover that documentaries with daunting topics--such as, torture or environmental catastrophe--are more often inspiring than depressing. Now I try to see as many docs as I can.
[Other documentaries proving a person or small group of people can make a difference: The Whistleblower, Yes Madam, Sir, The Road to Fallujah, Someplace With a Mountain, and Nostalgia for the Light (Nostalgia de la luz).]
Slap dash report tonight, for which I apologize. I need sleep.
Tonight's film, Piché: Entre Ciel Et Terre, is a variant on the non-hero theme. Captain Robert Piché is the Air Trans pilot who miraculously landed on the Azores after losing all power at 32,000 feet, saving all 306 people on board. First hailed as a hero, the press soon enough discovered that he had been a drug smuggler in his younger days. The film centers around Piché's sobering up some 11 months after the turbulent events surrounding his incredible landing. Through flashbacks from the drug rehab center, we learn the story of a man who had been a Bush pilot, a womanizer, a binge drinker, an absent father and husband, and who had spent seven years in prison.
This film offers a twist on the notion of one person making a difference. Captain Piché landed safely only because he disregarded protocol; there is universal agreement that following protocol would have resulted in a crash and likely the death of everyone on the plane. Without spending time landing on horrible airstrips in the jungle, he would not have had the skill to do this. He also has said categorically that had he not learned in prison to stay under control in pressure situations, he would not have been able to do what he did. So, the circumstances of his life, although they look dark, made him into a person with the skills to pull off a miraculous landing and save over 300 lives.
Fortunately, the original idea of making this into an action film did not come to fruition. When acclaimed Director Jean-Marc Piché eventually got the project, he made it into the personal story of the man. As he said in the Q&A, "We don't have to be afraid to be human. To have emotions. That is what my job is about."
Piché has been sober for eight years now. He still flies, and makes appearances. He began a center for people who need help with addictions.
The film is very well done. The prison scenes are difficult in a realistic way. The director said that everything in the film is true. Piché was on the set for most of the filming. After watching it with his family, he was sobbing.
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The film festival has an ever-growing program of surfing films. Tonight I was at what seemed a big event in the surfing community, which was mostly lost on me. The beautiful Arlington Theater was filled with surfing legends, not one of whom I can name, along with a lot of hooting and hollering throughout the film, which I found annoying. Again, it was wasted on me. I wish some lover of surfing could have been there in my place.
Legendary surf film maker Jack McCoy went for more than the usual surf movie. He covers the history of surfing, including footage of the various kinds of rides. There is some beautiful footage, and some incredibly exciting footage. For fans of surf films, it seems that A Deeper Shade of Blue is destined make a huge splash. I wish I could offer a more informed review. Here's what Surfer Magazine says.