Community Screening: Land of Gold
Description
California history unfolds along with the making of an opera in Jon Else‘s (Festival POV award 2004) entrancing documentary. Returning to the work of composer John Adams and librettist/director Peter Sellars, the subjects of his film Wonders Are Many (Festival 2007), Else peeks behind the curtain as the pair prepare their collaboration Girls of the Golden West for its 2017 San Francisco Opera premiere. Ostensibly a look at the nuts-and-bolts of production from informal rehearsals to glittering opening night, the documentary also investigates the Gold Rush era that inspired the show. Soprano Julia Bullock is mesmerizing, as the opera’s star and the film’s narrator, employing passages from a real-life diary to make vivid the boom-and-bust of a rapacious time.
Free admission with RSVP
Biographies
A cinematographer, producer, and writer as well as director, Jon Else counts among his films Arthur and Lily (Festival GGA 1976), The Day After Trinity (Festival 1980/2004), Yosemite: The Fate of Heaven (1989), Sing Faster: The Stangehands’ Ring Cycle (1999), and Wonders Are Many (Festival 2007). Among his honors are four Emmy awards, two Oscar® nominations, and, in 2004, the Festival’s Persistence of Vision Award. From 1997-2014, he was director of the documentary program at the Graduate School Of Journalism at UC Berkeley.