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Santa Fe International Film Festival Hits Moviemaker Magazine’s “50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee in 2024″ List
First Santa Fe itself made MovieMaker Magazine’s “Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker in 2024″ list, and now the Santa Fe International (née Independent) Film Festival gets its own recognition as the kind of movie melange that’s worth paying...well, whatever you have to pay to get in there. This year’s fest runs Oct. 16-20, so there’s plenty of time to save up for an all-access pass. You can also hit one-off screenings, free things, panel convos, parties and so much more, so maybe bookmark santafe.film right now and get a plan together? Anyway, it sounds like MovieMaker has a crush on us, which I totally get, Santa Fe—we’re gorgeous.
Violet Crown Cinema Kicks Off monthly Violet underground Music Documentary Series
After a special sold-out screening of director Alexandria Bombach’s Indigo Girls documentary It’s Only Life After All last week (about which you can read more on page 25), Violet Crown Cinema’s Bill Banowsky tells SFR there’s plenty more in store on that front. In addition to numerous additional upcoming screenings of the Bombach doc (at several of which Bombach herself will hang around for some Q&A time; seriously, flip to page 25), the good ol’ VCC has at least two more music movies coming your way. First up, music lovers can check out 2003′s End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones from filmmakers Jim Fields and Michael Gramaglia (it’s about The Ramones—they’re a punk band) on Saturday, April 20. The following month on Saturday, May 25, the series continues with a screening of the 2023 Miri Navasky/Maeve O’Boyle/Karen O’Connor documentary Joan Baez: I Am a Noise about—get this—singer-songwriter Joan Baez. Fair warning? Scuttlebutt surrounding this one all points to its being a bit more intense than you might expect. Each film starts at 7 pm and runs $16.
Santa fe Film Festival—not the International Film Festival, Mind you—starts Next Week
The Santa Fe Film Festival (and again, note that it’s not the same as the International Film Festival) takes over local screens Thursday, April 25-Sunday April 28 this year, and if the bazillions of movie posters up at santafefilmfestival.com are any indication, it sure looks like a big affair. And even though it would be impossible to see every last movie at this or any fest, we can recommend at least a few, including directors Mark Shapiro and Douglas Brian Miller’s Downwind about the downwinders—people who lived near the Trinity atomic bomb test site and the terrible radioactive fate that befell them as well as their progeny and progeny’s progeny—and the short film Gomeo Bobelu: Lightning Unveiled about Zuni artist Bobelu from directors Jaima Chevalier and AJ Goldman. Of course, there are tons more from which to choose, so maybe hit IMDb ASAP to plan your lineup. If you were hoping to see the world premiere of the New Mexico documentary American Hemp Farmer at the fest, we regret to inform you that it has already sold out. Still, if you want to see director Doug Fine’s film about food security and climate change badly enough, it’ll likely hit streaming services at some point. Plus, not a day goes by online without some yahoo trying to offload tickets to some thing they can no longer attend. Have you tried Craigslist? If you’re still bummed about those times that movies sell out, perhaps director Ben Kolak’s Cat City can soften the blow. Not only does it have the best title ever, it tells the tale of the noble feral cats of Chicago and, since cats are cute, this movie will likely be super-cute. Oh, and let’s not forget the animated short Hoang the Paper Boy from writer/director/producer Ly Bolia. This is one of those fun fable type things wherein a young boy blows everyone’s minds with his paper-folding skills. Maybe he even meets a princess. #AnimationForever!
The Center For Contemporary Arts Gets Itself a Movie Squad
If you’ve been following along at home, things sure looked dire for the Center for Contemporary Arts last April. At the time, everyone thought the place was gonna fold, but it just kept right on keeping on thanks to help from the community, plus folks like new-ish volunteer artistic advisor Paul Barnes (himself an editor with eons in the biz), as well as new cinema director Justin Clifford Rhody (of local anti-profit theater No Name Cinema) and, now, cinema manager Jayson Jacobsen. If I could speak on a personal level for a moment, CCA is where I saw Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria with my dad when I was a teenager; it’s where I saw Six-String Samurai (about a Buddy Holly looking-ass dude who slays both with the guitar and the katana); it’s where I saw Hunt for the Wilderpeople and The Babadook and Parasite and 20 Days in Mariupol and way too many more to list. In other words, CCA is where many of us developed at least some of our understanding of film, and the town straight up needs it.
Filmmaker Craig Baldwin comes to No Name Cinema
Speaking of No Name Cinema, Santa Fe’s most excellent anti-profit microcinema and arts space, co-founder Rhody’s got a good one for fans of experimentalism, and it comes in the form of San Francisco’s Craig Baldwin, himself a microcinema operator. Baldwin’s forthcoming 3D and live audiovisual appearance includes screenings of 11th Dimension, ¡O No Coronado! and a slew of 16mm shorts dubbed Baldwin’s Anomolies. He’ll also launch a new book titled Craig Baldwin: Avant to Live!. 3D glasses will be provided, and Baldwin will be there to meet the indefatigable film faithful (7 pm Tuesday, April 23. $5-$15 suggested donation, 2013 Piñon St., nonamecinema.org). “We’re thrilled to be able to host this living legend of underground cinema during an extremely rare visit to New Mexico,” Rhody tells SFR.