MVCMA - Summer Movie Series with MV Film Society

A Special Series of Six Films

Movie Night
at the
Tabernacle

Presented in Association with
the Martha's Vineyard Film Society

MINE

Tuesday, July 14 at 8:00 PM

Winner, Audience Award, 2009
South by Soutwest Film Festival

Special guest, Director/Producer Geralyn Pezanoski

MINE is the powerful story about the essential bond between humans and animals told against the backdrop of one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.

MINE explores how tragedy intensifies that bond and is told from the perspective of original guardians, rescuers, and adoptive parents of the voiceless victims of Katrina. These individuals are all connected by two things, the tragic aftermath of Katrina and their love of animals.

When two families love the same pet, conflicts inevitably arise over who is the rightful "owner" and what is right for the animal. At the center of this tension are pets who are loved like family, but by law are considered property. This begs the question, who is looking out for the best interest of the animals? Set in a post-Katrina landscape of poverty, loss and moral uncertainty, MINE presents the complexity of an intensely emotional situation that has no simple answers.

GOODBYE SOLO

Tuesday, July 21 at 8:00 PM

Winner of the
Venice Film Festival's prestigious
FIPRESCI International Critics Prize

On the lonely roads of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, two men forge an improbable friendship that will change both of their lives forever. Solo is a Senegalese cab driver working to provide a better life for his young family. William is a tough Southern good ol' boy with a lifetime of regrets. One man's American dream is just beginning, while the other's is quickly winding down. But despite their differences, both men soon realize they need each other more than either is willing to admit. Through this unlikely but unforgettable friendship, GOODBYE SOLO deftly explores the passing of a generation as well as the rapidly changing face of America._

Goodbye Solo is the latest film from internationally- acclaimed filmmaker Ramin Bahrani ("Chop Shop", "Man Push Cart"). '"Solo" has been hailed as "A force of nature!" by Roger Ebert. And The New York Times' A.O. Scott says it has "an uncanny ability to enlarge your perception of the world."

THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS
Tuesday July 28 at 8:00 PM
2009 Cesar Award, Best Documentary

For her 80th birthday, Agnes Varda offers us a gift: this gorgeous, affecting, revealing autobiographical reflection filtered through the many beaches that, in their way, have shaped her life. Although she was born in the city, trips to the seaside with her family were an important part of her childhood. She spent part of the war in the coastal town of Sète, and, when she embarked on a career in cinema, she returned to Sète to make her first feature, the highly influential La pointe courte.

The cultural explosion that included the French New Wave; her life with her late husband, filmmaker Jacques Demy, and children, Rosalie and Mathieu; her long sojourn in the U.S., where she knew everybody from the Black Panthers to Jim Morrison-all are part of this extraordinary voyage through a most remarkable life.

Agnès Varda, whom A.O. Scott in The New York Times deemed "a treasure" when writing about her acclaimed documentary, THE GLEANERS AND I, returns with a movie that synthesizes 50 years of filmmaking, and 80 years of a life well-lived. An early member of the French New Wave, Varda has worked with Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, Jane Birkin, Michel Piccoli, Catherine Deneuve and Philippe Noiret - not to mention Harrison Ford, the Black Panthers and Viva. Stories of her childhood in Brussels and adolescence in occupied Paris, of Los Angeles in the '60s, and of life in her 14e arrondissement Paris neighborhood are melded with clips from both documentary and fiction work. Husband/filmmaker Jacques Demy, who died in 1990, is an abiding presence. Varda is an avid collector: of people and places, sensual experiences and intellectual preoccupations, personal commitments and political principles. She is a mother and wife, a feminist, nature-lover and urban-dwelling artist. Above all, she is a woman in love with the cinema whose new movie perfectly expresses her sentiment, "While I live, I remember."

HOUSE OF BONES

Tuesday, August 4, 8:00 p.m.
Island Premiere,
Q&A with island Director/Writer
Victoria Campbell

The film "House of Bones" is an honest portrait of a family coming to terms with the recent death of the matriarch and the unavoidable sale of a big, rambling Vineyard summer home by the sea. It is more of a memoir than a straightforward documentary, narrated and filmed by Victoria.

Mixing in home movies and archival photographs from the past 60 years, Victoria principally shot HOUSE OF BONES during the last summer spent in her family's generational home on Martha's Vineyard in the year 2006. A very honest portrait of what it meant to spend summers on the Vineyard, and more specifically West Chop.

HOW TO COOK YOUR LIFE

Tuesday August 11, at 8:00 PM

This documentary profiles Zen Master Edward Espe Brown and shows the art of Zen and cooking. Espe Brown first became interested in baking as an 11-year kid when he realized the startling difference between mass-produced supermarket bread and the fresh homemade stuff. When he asked his mother to teach him how to bake, however, she said "No, yeast makes me nervous."

Brown became the head cook at the Tassajara Mountain Centre in California when he was in his early 20s, and has been practicing the art of Zen Buddhism and cooking for more than 40 years. As a chef, he is typically short-tempered and exacting, but as a Buddhist master he is exactly the opposite.

Master Dogen wrote about the necessity of treating food as if it was as valuable as your eyesight. From washing rice, to preparing vegetables, every action could be a path to Zen. Or as the master said, "When you're washing the rice, wash the rice." A charming taskmaster who regularly punctures his holiness with moments of self-deprecation and humour, Espe Brown's observations on modern culture, cooking and human foibles are often as acerbic and hilarious as they are profound.

THEY CAME TO PLAY

Tuesday August 18 at 8:00 PM

Special guests
Executive Producer Ronnie Planalp
&
Producer Lori Miller

THEY CAME TO PLAY is a documentary about the International Amateur Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, hosted by the Van Cliburn Foundation. With humor and drama, it portrays several multi-talented amateur pianists as they strive to balance their work, home and musical lives. Many of them have overcome extraordinary challenges -- like drug addiction, AIDS, heartbreak, or political asylum -- and they all share an overwhelming need to express themselves, musically and otherwise. Their intense preparation comes to a climax during the week-long competition, when they perform in front of a professional jury and discerning audience, in three highly competitive elimination rounds.