Film
Art in Film
Tonight at the Grange Theatre in West Tisbury, the Island Theatre Workshop is presenting a program entitled Art Immersion in Film. The event includes Valerie Sonnenthal’s Visual Diary Project with original music by Sergio Cervetti and a program of short films including a premiere of Richard Skidmore’s latest work. Following the presentation there will be a question and answer session with the artists.
Mr. Skidmore has worked in film, video and television for forty years.
The event beings at 8 p.m.
For more than a century on Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod, the words of the Wampanoag were not their own.
“It was prophesied that language would go away from here for a time,” Jessie Little Doe Baird intones at the opening of filmmaker Anne Makepeace’s documentary We Still Live Here. “When the appointed time came, if the people here decided that they wanted to welcome language home then there would be a way made for that to happen.”
You could summarize the plot of Laura Israel’s movie Windfall to make it sound like a David-beats-Goliath, feel-good enviroflick.
A nasty power company intent on a big, new development has the leaders of a picturesque small town in its thrall. Local activists organize the good citizens and pull off an electoral coup, voting out the acquiescent town government and driving the corporate bad guys out of town.
The story of the building of the schooner Charlotte is a true Vineyard tale. Tonight at 7 p.m. the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival will open the weekend’s festivities with a documentary about the building of this wooden boat.
The film is called Charlotte. But the title feels too narrow for it is far more than a story about one big sailboat or one beloved boatyard. It is the story of a people and a community with a love of the sea.
On Saturday, Feb. 26 at 7:30 p.m. the Martha’s Vineyard Film Society will screen A Somewhat Gentle Man at the Katharine Cornell Theatre at 54 Spring street in Vineyard Haven.
The movie stars Stellan Skarsgård in a comedy, of sorts, about a convict named Ulrik who has served the last 12 years in prison for murder. As the movie opens Ulrik is released from prison and if that doesn’t immediately strike you as something to laugh about, consider that Ulrik soon discovers his life was far easier on the inside than as a free man.
Documenting Deception
As a lead-in to their festival during the weekend of March 18, the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival is holding a screening of the documentary Inside Job on Saturday, Feb. 26 at 7 p.m. at the Capawock Theatre in Vineyard Haven.