Twenty-three years ago, Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy” was at the top of the charts and George Herbert Walker Bush was about to sweep the presidential election on the strength of Willie Horton ads, a thousand points of light and America’s willingness to read his lips and find no new taxes there.
But it wasn’t all Reagan era madness. Here in Santa Cruz, the first Pacific Rim Film Festival kicked off with a mission to bring selected films from Asia and the West Coast of the Americas to town for a free festival, and it’s been gaining strength ever since, providing glimpses of wildly divergent cultures each year through the rapidly evolving medium of cinema.
This year’s festival includes features and documentaries from the Himalayas, Mexico, New Zealand, Japan, California and more. It covers surfing, crime, international politics, arts, the environment and the trials of the human spirit. It also includes works by two Santa Cruz filmmakers, Eric Thiermann and Geoffrey Dunn, the latter of whose tribute to the late writer James Houston’s love affair with the Hawaiian Islands will no doubt resonate for those who knew Houston best, including his wife Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and his daughter Cori Houston, both PRFF board members.
The festival kicks off this Friday, Oct. 14 and runs through Wednesday, Oct. 19. Pick up a program this week at the Del Mar or the Rio and visit www.pacrimfilmfestival.org to learn more.
