slideshow: filmmakers' party

The Fifth Annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival rolled into Missoula on Thursday, February 14 bringing 106 films from more than 40 countries, including the World Premiere of Missoula’s very own “The Little Red Truck” about the Missoula Children’s Theatre.

Filmmakers gathered on Friday night in the Wilma Theatre's Red Light Green Room to kick off the festival, which runs through Wednesday, February 20 with films showing on both the Wilma 1 and Wilma 2 screens.

NewWest.Net photographer Emily Haas joined Friday night’s festivities at the Filmmakers' Welcome Party. Click here or on the image to view a slideshow of the event.

For a detailed schedule of film screenings at this year's festival, visit www.bigskyfilmfest.org.

digital television

Converter boxes that allow analog television sets to receive digital television signals are reportedly becoming available in stores, with Wal-Mart, for example, listing one model as in stock in four Treasure Valley stores.

People with older television sets who don't have cable or digital satellite will need the boxes by February 17, 2009, which is when television broadcasting signals in the United States are scheduled to switch from analog to digital. This means that users who receive broadcast signals through devices such as rooftop antennas and rabbit ears will no longer be able to watch television. Instead, they must switch to cable or satellite, buy televisions with digital tuners, or buy one of these converter boxes. (Viewers who watch television through translator stations are exempt, for now.) [more]

big sky documentary film festival

A few years ago my mother gave me a photograph of my grandfather, taken in about 1953. He is sitting with several fellow miners in the rock-walled tunnel of a copper mine, their black metal lunch boxes at their feet and the ore-cart tracks curving into the darkness beyond. I keep this photograph above my desk to remind myself what hard work is really all about when I’m whining over a deadline or wondering how to cut down a word count, but I never understood what that hard work consisted of until Thursday’s screening of Butte, America, the kickoff film of this weekend’s fifth annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.

Producer and director Pam Roberts and associate producer and co-writer Edwin Dobb tell the story of Butte not only with epic historical sweep (as befits a place where mere humans have wrought such immense changes to the surface of the earth) but also at a very personal level, foregrounding and respecting the reminiscences of the men and women who lived through the booms and busts of Montana’s legendary mining town. [more]

big sky documentary film festival

Mexiphobia
Screens Sun., Feb. 17, 10 a.m.
Director: Nevie Owens

"Everything's quiet, no one plays music anymore, there's really nothing to buy and nothing to do," says Danielle Gallo of Boquillas, a small town in Northern Mexico. "Everything has a feeling of destitution and despair, and it's not a happy place anymore. It's depressing."

Boquillas and other border towns along the Rio Grande River opposite Big Bend National Park suffocated from their isolation when visitors stopped flowing across the border from the United States: in 2002, three crossings were abruptly closed in the name of Homeland Security. Their struggles are portrayed in the documentary Mexiphobia, showing this weekend at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula. [more]

Short Film Pick

City of Cranes
Friday, Feb. 15, 4:00 p.m.
Director: Eva Weber
Producer: Samantha Zarzosa

It's films like these -- films that you watch and wonder, hmm, what a great idea -- that really stick in your memory. Films about some mundane thing that people see all the time, but never really stop to think about. City of Cranes is one of those films. [more]

Missoula Children's Theatre Documentary

"Nobody likes me because I smell like feet," young, boisterous actors shout out one after the other. The director then tells them to holler like a scary monster that lives in the closet. So begins the documentary about the Missoula Children's Theatre The Little Red Truck by Missoula filmmakers Pam Voth and Rob Whitehair, set to be released at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.

MCT has taken its show on the road for more than 30 years, empowering kids in communities around the world. They pull their red trucks into towns, hold auditions, rehearse tirelessly, and after six days a cast of little actors hits the stage in front of family and friends -- and they're all a little different than they were just six days before. [more]

Film Fest Opens in Missoula Feb. 14

Editor's Note: Ninety-eight documentaries in six days is a veritable smorgasbord of reality. So, to help you navigate the best of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, which kicks off at in Missoula at the Wilma Feb. 14 and runs through the 20, we enlisted one of Missoula's famed reviewers, filmmakers and artists: Andy Smetanka. Read on for Andy's top five picks for the festival. And, to read up on others and make your own picks, check out the Festvial's site at www.bigskyfilmfest.org.

Butte, America (63 minutes)
Directed by Pam Roberts
If history were a natural resource, Butte would be sitting on a pile of it bigger than the rest of Montana put together. Though industry in Butte today is a only a trace of what it was a century ago, Montana's mining city continues to exert a powerful hold on the imagination, and now comes a documentary that manages to stuff a hundred-plus years of rough-and-tumble into a scant hour and three minutes. Rushed at times (or maybe Butte history fans like myself just can't get enough), Butte, America still conveys the tumultuous excitement of a once-upon-a-time Montana that preferred spats and tweed to boots and denim, where rival labor factions took the fight to the streets and money gushed even faster than the poisonous groundwater filling today's Berkeley Pit. Mandatory viewing for Montana history buffs.
Butte, America opens this year's festival at 10 AM on Thursday, February 14
[more]

New West Theater Review

Eric Schmiedl's excellent stage adaptation of Kent Haruf's beloved 1999 novel Plainsong premiered last week at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, opening with townspeople introducing the high school teacher Tom Guthrie against a 65-foot backdrop of the eastern Colorado plains.

"Plainsong" brings the fictional town of Holt to life, with 21 actors performing 36 roles, and the set changes seamlessly between 46 scenes, from the high school to The Chute bar to the American Legion to the kitchens and ranches where Holt's individual dramas take place. The play's elemental themes, rich humor, nuanced characters, and appeal to a wide audience should give it a long life beyond its Denver opening. [more]

Documentary Looks at Wolf Reintroduction

No wildlife species is as iconic and controversial as the wolf. Canis Lupus is a symbol of wildness and healthy ecosystems to some, but to others it is a callous killer and an economic threat.

Loathed and loved, the American Gray Wolf has gone through a tumultuous history in the West. They were hunted as vermin to virtual extinction by the early 20th Century, reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in 1995, and now are around 1,500-strong across the Northern Rockies. Biologists say wolves are officially recovered in the West and should be removed from the Endangered Species List, but – true to form – disagreements over wolf management between pro-wolf and anti-wolf groups has delisting at a standstill.

In 1999, journalist William Campbell began a documentary film to tell the story of what wolf reintroduction meant for people living in wolf territory. The result, “Wolves in Paradise,” sheds invaluable light on this story, giving a face and a voice to the many people trying to live with this species. [more]

Introducing...

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In the Spring Issue and online here:

• Montana’s Cash Cowboy
• Real Ranch Living: Not Everyone is Selling Out
• Essay: The Family Farm, Version 2.0
• Essay: Tracks Across A Landscape
• Have Your Ranch & Develop It, Too
• Design Showcase: The Big and Little of Western Building
• Stuff It: Can Wolf Hunting Help Conserve the Species?
• Traffic Perplexes New Western Communities
• Boise in Its Own Little Bubble
• Revenge of the Resource Economy
• Spotlight North Idaho: On the Agenda: Youth, Growth & Silver
• Spotlight North Idaho: Players of the Panhandle
• Spotlight North Idaho: Coeur d’Alene Tribe Rides the Idaho Boom

[more]

By Robert Struckman, 2-01-08 | comments (23) | email story | print story