First off, congratulations to two Humboldt County filmmaking crews:
‘Great White Encounter’
Great White Encounter: The Scott Stephens Story has been accepted into the San Francisco International Ocean Film Festival, a delicious visual blend of beauty, information and advocacy conveyed through both short- and feature-length films. Inclusion in this prestigious festival is no small feat, but neither was the making of Great White Encounter. Filmmakers Michael McClimon, Ted Okell, Jennifer Bell and Robert Stoneman spent months recreating the attack and life-saving response of surfers on shore.
The badly injured Stephens had managed to get himself to shore, but would likely not have survived if not for the quick thinking of his rescuers, complete with first aid and a bone-rattling race to meet the ambulance. Stephens retained not only his life, but his sense of humor and gratitude. “This started with Scott wanting someone to record a five-minute segment about what happened,” Bell recalls. That segment expanded into a 40-minute documentary.
With the help of local surfers and a donated GoPro camera, Bell and company were able to provide a water’s-eye view. “You really have the point of view of the surfer – you can imagine what it must be like to be in the jaws of a shark,” Bell says. If you’d like to experience that feeling – and you missed it at Ocean Night – you can trek down to SF on Friday, March 7 and see Great White Encounter on the big screen.
‘Salmon Deadly Sins’
Meanwhile, local auteur Stephen Vander Meer is premiering his latest animated film, Salmon Deadly Sins, at the Slamdance Film Festival this weekend and next week. The project started when he stumbled upon an online auction for 59 packs of salmon colored index cards. “Because 5,900 cards seemed like a good amount for a short film,” Vander Meer explains, “and because I was able to obtain them at a very low price, I decided then that my next film would have something to do with salmon.”
A year later, while traveling to Nebraska with his wife Carol and some friends to witness the Sandhill Crane migration, Vander Meer visited the art studio of Kent Bellows. At the time of Bellows’ passing, he had been working on a series of paintings based on the seven deadly sins. Only two of the works were completed, Vander Meer says, but that was inspiration enough. “I don’t know how long it took for the deadly sins idea to bump into the salmon idea that was swimming around in my head, but when it did, Salmon Deadly Sins was conceived.”
Coastal Currents – Steelhead Days
Today at noon on Coastal Currents, Mike Dronkers and I talk to Mad River Alliance‘s Dave Feral about the upcoming Steelhead Days.
The ICYMI file
Still no evidence that Fukushima radiation is troubling the U.S. West Coast
Healdsburg restricting water due to drought
Japan still allowing dolphin kill
The buying and selling of killing whales
Jennifer Savage chairs Surfrider Foundation’s Humboldt Chapter and is the Northcoast Environmental Center‘s Coastal Programs Director.
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