BORG AWARD Oscar winner ‘The Lost Thing’ is a festival highlight.
Screaming Good Healdsburg gets a short film festival BY RICHARD VON BUSACK
T
om Waits, Kathleen Brennan, Ed Begley Jr., John Shapiro and Jack McGee make up the jury for the Healdsburg International Short Film Festival this weekend. But co-founders Kirk and Pamela Demorest are no strangers to film, either, with ties in Hollywood and a collaborative credit on The Daffodils Are Blooming, shot in west Sonoma County.
“We love short films and actually wanted to do an online film fest, but we decided we wanted a community involved,” Kirk says. Thought the fest was held last year in Bodega Bay, Robert Weiss of the Healdsburg Center for the Arts is now lending support, and the Raven Film Center is the fest’s new home. “The festival is going to permanently reside here,” Kirk explains. “Healdsburg has so much accessibility and infrastructure, and when people hear about the place, they think about wine, spas and B&Bs.” The Demorests aim to add film to that list. Films from Sweden, Macedonia and Australia are on tap, including Aussie Oscar winners Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann’s amazing Lost Thing, with its elements of Lovecraft, Gahan Wilson and Brazil-style dystopia. There are local filmmakers, such as Geyserville’s Richard Stilwell, whose What You Give Is What You Get details an encounter between a widow and a Spanish-speaking day laborer. Area filmmaker John Harden, of last year’s chalk-talk The Story of Sputnik, this time brings Angst, another of what Kirk calls “micro-films.” Some directors are attending from as far afield as Asia. Director Tina Pakravan arrives from Iran to present her short anti-war film It Was My City, directed in one long take. Natasha Novik (The Equator, 2007) is traveling from Russia with her short film The Cart. Some 50 short films for the audience. Prizes for the winners. Some of the best wine in the world to console the losers. It all works out. The Healdsburg International Short Film Festival runs Sept. 21–23 at the Raven Film Center in Healdsburg. For full schedule and info, see www.healdsburgfilmfest.org.
He Was Bad News From The Start. You know the type.The kind of guy you just get a bad feeling from. For this year's Jive writing contest, we're asking for a 400-words-orless piece of fiction themed around the wrong sort of man. He could be a boyfriend, a politician, a supermarket checker, a drifter. Something happens, and it isn’t even always his fault. We want to read what your sharp fictionwriting minds have to say about this guy. Just make sure that your story at some point includes the phrase "He was bad news from the start." Our favorite bad-news entries will be published in our Fall Lit issue, and we'll have a party and reading with the winners that very night, Oct. 17, at Copperfield's Books in Montgomery Village at 6pm! Send your entries to: javajive@bohemian.com. Deadline is Wednesday, Oct. 10, at 5pm.
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