Film
“An elegant, ironic fable with literary origins that belongs to a distinctive middle-European artistic tradition with a puckish spirit that sometimes seems sweet and at other times ruthless.”
So says Andrew O’Hehir of salon.com about I Served The King of England, a documentary film that screens Saturday, May 2 at 7:30 p.m. at the historic Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven.
Thomas Edison captured the first Hawaiian surfing footage in 1906, but surfing films became part of surfing culture in the the 1960s and ’70s, when classic surfing films used to tour the country. Now California filmmaker Thomas Campbell (The Seedling, Sprout) carries on the tradition, eschewing video to shoot his features in beautifully rich 16 mm film. His latest, The Present, will screen on Martha’s Vineyard for one night only, on Sunday, April 26, at 7 p.m. at the Capawock Theatre in Vineyard Haven.
Filmmaker Janis Vogel really felt like a filmmaker — a real filmmaker, not just an Island girl done good — when her debut short, Drop, was selected for the international short film program that screened last Saturday as part of the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival.
Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival Children’s Film Festival is at the Chilmark library. Free popcorn and free admission to all these shows.
Saturday 1:30 p.m.
Different Drummers Short Film Program (70 minutes) For ages 5 to 8: Get in step with these wonderful characters and you’ll start to see the rules a little differently. Just when you think you’ve got things all figured out, life gives you the chance to change.
The Vineyard may yet be the scene of another big fish film under the eye of Steven Spielberg: the Jaws director’s studio, DreamWorks, has just bought the film rights for a soon to be released book about the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.
The book, The Big One: An Island, an Obsession and the Furious Pursuit of a Great Fish, by David Kinney, published by Atlantic Monthly, will be released on April 8.
Abigail McGrath, of Oak Bluffs, is researching and interviewing for a film on the artists of the Harlem Renaissance, a documentary called Chick Nor Child.