Half Moon Bay’s Coastside Film Society— Wild and natural beauty
May 2012— The Coastside Film Society presents a night of films featuring stunning views of wild and natural beauty in remote (and not so remote) lands.
Friday, May 25, 7:30 p.m. at the Community United Methodist Sanctuary
777 Miramontes St., Half Moon Bay (corner of Johnston Street)
Suggested donation: $8 adults, $3 for children and students
The night starts with a few locally produced shorts that highlight the natural beauty of our own San Mateo Coastline — and then moves on to these films:
Short: Mine – Story of a Sacred Mountain (16 minutes)
Narrated by Indian-born actress Joanna Lumley, Mine tells the story of the battle between an underdog, the Dongria Kondh tribe of India, and Vedanta Resources, a huge mining corporation. As the beautiful photography in the film attests, the home territory of the Dongria Kondh is both remote and extraordinarily beautiful. The tribe members consider the land they live in holy. Unfortunately under all that beauty is a wealth of bauxite that the Indian government really wants to get at. Contracts were written that would allow Vedanta to strip mine the “holy” mountain tops to get at all that bauxite. When the filmmakers arrived to document this David and Goliath story, the assumption was that this Goliath was going to win. But that is not how this story was destined to end.
Feature: China: The Panda Adventure (48 minutes)
In 1936, a widow named Ruth Harkness arrived in China to settle the affairs of her husband Bill. Bill died while observing a mysterious animal known as the giant panda. No one was surprised at his death. After all, everyone knew pandas were ferocious and dangerous beasts. However, that’s not what Ruth read in Bill’s notes. The pandas he described were gentle herbivores, not terrible carnivores. Ruth decided to follow in the footsteps of her husband and prove to the world that her husband was right. The Panda Adventure is a retelling of Ruth’s story, shot in the remote Chinese mountain terrain that pandas call home. The footage is breathtaking and the close-ups of these gentle giants in their natural habitat is heartwarming.
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