Feb 18, 2010
SFFILM
The San Francisco Film Society’s Environmental Film Series and The Believermagazine copresent Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s breathtaking and unforgettable documentary Sweetgrass (USA 2009) with special screenings Friday and Saturday, March 12-13 at Landmark Theatres in San Francisco (specific venue and showtimes to be confirmed later). Barbash will be on hand to introduce the film and answer audience questions at the evening screenings on both days. These special screenings of Sweetgrass are part of a weeklong engagement.
The tagline for the wonderful documentary Sweetgrass, the first essential movie of this young year, is “The last ride of the American cowboy.” [Perhaps] the word shepherd, with its pastoral evocations of maidens in pantaloons and lads with flutes, doesn’t have the necessary grit or mythic punch. But the quiet and cantankerous men in this movie, mostly in cowboy hats-one of which is charmingly ornamented with a sheep pin on the crown-are keeping and sometimes losing sheep as surely as Little Bo Peep did. Made by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, the movie largely involves the enormous effort, along with the unintentional humor and grim realities, involved in driving some 3,000 sensationally noisy sheep (how do they sleep?) up a mountain for summer pasture. The movie truly belongs to the sheep, which turn out to be fascinating, almost hypnotic subjects for the camera, whether they’re comically bleating at one another like rush-hour subway riders or swarming across the range like a single organism. The filmmakers make brilliant use of extreme long shots throughout, inserting breathtaking panoramas into the mix that convey the surrounding grandeur even as the images also suggest that however much man tries to dominate nature, nature prevails.-Manohla Dargis, New York Times
Photographed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor, produced by Barbash. 105 min. Distributed by Cinema Guild.
For more information visit sffs.org/sweetgrass.
For tickets visit landmarktheatres.com/tickets (available here at a later date closer to opening).
Presented as part of the Film Society’s Environmental Film Series with the generous support of the Goldman Environmental Prize. Learn more at goldmanprize.org.
Digital images and press material are available at cinemaguild.com/theatrical/sweet_press
For more information contact Steve Indig at Landmark Theatres San Francisco office, at 415-352-0832 x2 or stevei@landmarktheatres.com.
The Goldman Environmental Prize is the world’s largest prize for grassroots environmentalists. Founded in 1990 by Richard and Rhoda Goldman, the Prize currently awards $150,000 annually to each of six activists from six continental regions. Nominated confidentially by a worldwide network of environmental organizations and individuals, recipients are chosen by an international jury of experts on the basis of their sustained and important environmental achievements. The Prize offers these environmental heroes the recognition, visibility and credibility their efforts deserve.
The Believer introduces readers to the best and most interesting work in the worlds of art, culture and thought-literature, music, painting, wrestling, philosophy and cooking, contemporary and ancient-in an attractive vehicle that’s free from the bugbears of condescension, mustiness and jargony obfuscation. Features range from candid interviews with musicians, philosophers, novelists and ninjas to monthly columns by Amy Sedaris, Nick Hornby and Greil Marcus. The Believer publishes poetry, comics and reviews. A four-time finalist for the National Magazine Award and four-time nominee for the Utne Award, The Believer won the Utne design award for being “as pleasing to a designer’s eye as it is to a wordsmith’s ear.”