Green Film Festival Announcement Party

This week I attended the announcement party for the San Francisco Green Film Festival, taking place May 28th to June 3rd at the Roxie Theater. Rachel Caplan founded the festival 5 years ago to encourage discussion & activism around environmental issues. This year's theme is Changing Cities, & the festival will present 60 films, including shorts & student films, from 26 countries. Though documentaries comprise most of the offerings, the sci-fi classics Wall-E & Silent Running will also be shown. Opening night takes place at the JCCSF with a screening of Bikes vs. Cars, about activists across the world fighting to make their cities more bike-friendly.

Film trailers & shorts played in a loop in a screening room at the party venue, & I discovered a couple of films I would already like to see. The Chinese Mayor is a political documentary that looks at the mayor of Datong, who wants to turn his city into a major tourist attraction, dislocating hundreds of thousands of people in the process. Landfill Harmonic tells the story of a youth orchestra formed in the slum city of Cateura, Paraguay, whose musicians play instruments made out of garbage from the local landfill. Judging by the trailer, their recycled violins sound no worse than the mass-produced versions I played as a kid. That Sugar Film looks like a Super Size Me for the sugar industry.

At the party were festival staff, supporters, filmmakers & publicists. I was introduced to director Christopher Beaver, whose Racing to Zero documents San Francisco's efforts to reduce all waste it puts into landfills to zero by 2020. Mr. Beaver gave me a promotional button for the movie & assured me that the plant depicted on it is not cannabis.

§ Festival Web Site | Brochure (PDF) | Calender | Films | Tickets

§ 5th San Francisco Green Film Festival
May 28 - June 3, 2015
Roxie Theater
§ Program Announcement Party
Tuesday, April 28, 6pm - 8pm
Ninth Street Independent Film Center