Local movies bring in huge crowds Friday night
Published in the November 13, 2013 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Marty Cheek
Morgan Hill’s Poppy Jasper International Short Film Festival celebrated its 10th year in style last weekend, showing three-days worth of films in the downtown Granada Theater and providing movie fans with a venue in local restaurants and cafes to hobnob with filmmakers.
The festival, held Nov. 8 to 10, had its biggest crowd Friday night when film fans nearly filled all the seats of the Granada theater showing two documentaries made my local filmmakers. The film “The Pirates of Morgans Cove” by Gilroy director Robert Krueger highlighted Morgan Hill’s well-known pirate-themed home owned by Rich and Julie Firato. And filmmaker Rale Sidebottom’s film brought in many hardcore punk rock fans to view the lives of musicians performing in the band Sad Boy Sinister.
“People enjoyed themselves and had a great time,” said Bob Snow, chair of this year’s festival. “There were at least 180 people who watched the films. It was local people and so that’s something we’ll consider in the future, bringing in local filmmakers.”
Other local films shown included a look at the annual Christmas display at the home of Morgan Hill residents Michael and Claudia Bonfante, the founders of Gilroy Gardens, and a short film on Henry W. Coe State Park made as an Eagle Scout project by 2013 Live Oak High School graduate Mark Holmstrom.
Of the 23 short films shown, nine were from outside the United States. The winning films were the romantic “Broken Up” for Best Comedy, “Do-Si-Do” (about U.S. Army helicopters “square dancing” in the sky) for Best Documentary, the Australian film “Goldfield” for Best Drama, the English film “Rose, Mary and Time” for Best Science Fiction, and the animated short “Light Me Up” for Best Overall Film.
Festival organizer Kim Bush called this year’s Poppy Jasper “a huge success” because of the high quality of the films and filmmaker workshops as well as the enjoyment of the people who attended the event.
“It’s great to have 10 years of the film festival behind us,” she said. “We’ve had great support from our sponsors and from the community and, of course, our wonderful body of volunteers. Without any of those we wouldn’t be here.”
The filmmakers panel discussion and the film-craft workshops were held at the GVA Cafe and were well attended by the public, Bush said. Guest filmmakers on the panels and workshops included Vance Piper, a cinematographer who worked on “Forrest Gump” and “Avatar,” Victor Miller, the screenwriter who created the first “Friday the 13th” movie, and Rupert Hitzig, an award-winning director.
“Rupert is a wonderful storyteller,” Bush said. “It’s not amazing that he’s in the position that he’s in. He knows everything and everybody. But he also has a great perspective about what it takes to be in film, what it takes to produce…. We learned all the components of filmmaking from Rupert. He was great in sharing his perspective.”
In recognition of this week’s Veterans Day holiday, the festival Sunday afternoon showed the heartwarming documentary film “Honor Flight,” which highlighted the journeys of thousands of World War II veterans traveling to Washington, D.C., in 2004 to see the national monument dedicated to that global conflict. Veterans were invited to view “Honor Flight” for free, and they were recognized for their military service after the screening. Among them was Morgan Hill resident William C. Goehner who served in the U.S. Navy Underwater Demolitions Team in World War II and was the inspiration for the 1951 film “The Frogmen” starring Richard Widmark.
John Fletcher, a Morgan Hill resident, said his first visit to the Poppy Jasper Film Festival allowed him to see independent short films he would not get a chance to see.
“I’ve been hearing a lot about the festival for the past few years but I didn’t know what it really was about,” he said. “I enjoyed it immensely, especially the science fiction part of it. I love science fiction and they had some really great science fiction films I saw today.”
Also his first time to the Poppy Jasper, Morgan Hill resident David Nellis was impressed with the quality of the festival films. “They were very imaginative,” he said. “I thought that the creativity was fantastic, that the fact that someone could think up an idea and conceptualize it and make a story out of it, I thought that was incredible.”
The workshops and panel discussions also gave him a greater appreciation of the cinematic art, he said.
Patty Curtis, film fan and owner of the Carta Luna clothing store in downtown Morgan Hill, said that holding an international film festival at the Granada Theater has a positive impact on Morgan Hill’s art scene. It also helps visitors get acquainted with the restaurants and shops in the downtown, she said.
“I think it lets people know that we have some culture here, too,” she said. “That’s what we want. It puts us on the map.”
The filmmakers who attended this year’s festival seemed pleased with the quality of the event, Bush said. “We’ve known within the organizing committee that filmmakers really like the Poppy Jasper,” she said.
