film
by chris carpenter
VIRTUAL BUT N W
Spotlight on San Diego Internat
e can add this month’s San Diego International Film Festival (SDIFF) to the ever-growing list of events that have had to largely go the streaming route this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Uniquely,
though, the fest will still provide opportunities for film fans to gather together in safe, socially-distanced ways at its first-ever Virtual Village. This re-imagined, COVID-appropriate film festival will take
place Thursday, October 15 through Sunday, October 18. As the region’s premier film festival and one of the leading stops on the independent film circuit, cinephiles can enjoy 114 features, documentaries and short films online in the Virtual Village and on the big screen at the Festival Drive-In Movies at Westfield UTC. Full details and the complete movie lineup may be accessed at
sdfilmfest.com. “The leadership of the San Diego International Film Festival has
embraced the challenges to create a new footprint that will not only serve for this year’s festival but also expand our capabilities for the long term,” said Tonya Mantooth, the fest’s CEO/artistic director. “This commitment to re-imagining the festival is vitally important to fulfilling our mission of presenting films that create conversation in an increasingly complex and divided world.” SDIFF is presented by the nonprofit San Diego Film Foundation, which is dedicated to creating empathy through the medium of motion pictures. The foundation leverages these important conversations via
partnerships with the San Diego County Office of Education and the San Diego Unified School District, using cinematic storytelling to help educate future leaders on key issues affecting our com- munities and world. The newest partnership is with the University
of California San Diego Extension to create a Social Impact Film Channel on the UCTV platform, which will support the “17 Sustainable Development Goals to Transform Our World” set by the United Nations. The festival will curate films from around the globe to help further understanding of these UN goals as well as inspire conversations and, most importantly, action. “This year, we are creating space in our Virtual Village for panels
around some films that examine important conversations we want to have,” Mantooth said. “We have programmed some impactful and timely documentaries about the Civil Rights Movement. We are thrilled that Leon Clark, general manager of Channel 10, will moderate a discussion on those documentaries for us, examining history and where we find ourselves as a country today.” This sounds especially important in preparation for the U.S.
presidential election. Also to be screened are films that explore the issues of developmental disabilities, homelessness, prejudice, pollution of the world’s rivers, animal and environmental extinc- tion, sustainability, sex trafficking and more. Other topics to be covered are LGBTQ lives and the military, with one standout documentary incorporating both. Surviving the Silence relates a little-known story that took place years before the U.S. armed forces’ failed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which allowed LGBTQ soldiers to serve as long as they kept their sexual orienta- tion under wraps. Col. Patsy Thompson was forced to expel Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer out of the U.S. Army for being a lesbian. However, the way that Thompson – a closeted lesbian – presided over the discharge hearing eventually led to Cammermeyer’s re-instatement via federal court and the undoing of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
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ragemonthly.com October 2020
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