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Benefiting the Stinson Beach Community Center, the First Annual Stinson Beach Doc Fest ran November 7th-9th, 2014. Here are trailers from 4 of the 5 films that were screened last year:

 

"This Ain't No Mouse Music" will be shown Friday Nov. 7 at 8 p.m.

“In This Ain't No Mouse Music!, their vivid portrait of an obsessive sonic sleuth, filmmakers Chris Simon and Maureen Gosling take a hip-shaking stroll from New Orleans to Appalachia and right into  the very DNA of rock’n’roll. In this beautifully shot film, we come face to face with the creators of indigenous music, from the great Clifton Chenier to fiddler Michael Doucet, from Flaco Jimenez to the Pine Leaf Boys, playing songs that are endemic to their place and circumstance, to dialect and class, to climate and landscape. Their music is now highly endangered by the merciless steamroller of pop culture, assimilation and commercialism, which makes Strachwitz's desperate pursuit to track down every last artist all the more urgent. But these songs aren’t meant to be locked away in a Smithsonian vault to be decoded by folklorists and musical anthropologists. This film is a living cultural history with a soundtrack that bites and kicks and screams. Even 50 years later, Arhoolie’s records remain alive, unruly and still so sharp that some songs can cut you right down to the soul."
—Jeffrey St. Clair, Author Born Under a Bad Sky

 "Alive Inside" will be shown Sat. Nov 8 at 6 p.m.

As dementia continues to affect millions of elderly Americans, Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Memory reveals a remarkable, music-based breakthrough that has already transformed lives. Spearheaded by social worker Dan Cohen and captured on camera over the course of three years by filmmaker Michael Rossato-Bennett, we learn that songs from a patient’s past can awaken memories and emotions that have been asleep for years, sometimes decades. Within a moment of hearing “I Get Around” by the Beach Boys, Alzheimer’s patient Marylou jolts back to life, dancing around the living room and expressing a euphoria her husband hasn’t witnessed since her illness took effect. Countless instances in Alive Inside provide proof that music stimulates activity in dementia-affected parts of the brain and transforms the quality of life of those often left to languish in silence. Through revealing conversations with renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks and musician Bobby McFerrin, as well as powerful firsthand experiments conducted by Cohen in nursing homes, this groundbreaking documentary demonstrates how connecting the elderly to the music they love not only combats memory loss but also supplements a broken health-care system often indifferent to interpersonal connections.

 “The Internet's Own Boy” will be shown Sat. Nov. 8 at 8 p.m.
As a teenager, Aaron Swartz was a computer-programming prodigy with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. After emerging as a pioneer of Internet activism, education, and politics, he was indicted on multiple federal charges in 2011 and 2012, setting off a complex chain of events that left the Internet community reeling. Shortly thereafter, at the age of 26, Swartz was found dead of an apparent suicide in his Brooklyn apartment. His family, friends, and supporters immediately blamed the prosecutors of the case, who aimed to put him in jail for 35 years and brand him a convicted felon for life. Swartz was persecuted for the very rights and freedoms for which he stood, and that ultimately broke him. Weaving together home video footage and anecdotal interviews from his closest confidants, Brian Knappenberger creates a dynamic portrait of a precocious boy who grew up to lead the Internet community into a new age of data sharing and free speech. - R.K.

 “Pelican Dreams” will be shown Sun. Nov. 9 at 5 p.m.

Sundance-and-Emmy-Award-winning filmmaker Judy Irving (with her first film since the widely acclaimed and loved “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill”) follows a wayward California brown pelican from her “arrest” on the Golden Gate Bridge into care at a wildlife rehabilitation facility, and from there explores pelicans’ nesting grounds, Pacific coast migration, and survival challenges of these ancient birds, sometimes referred to as the flying dinosaurs. The film is about wildness, and asks the following questions: how close can we get to a wild animal without taming or harming it? Why do we need wildness in our lives, and how can we protect it? PELICAN DREAMS, stars “Gigi” (for Golden Gate) and Morro (a backyard pelican with an injured wing).

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS

    Founding Producers
Ginny and Web Otis
Nancy Heldt
Will and Ginny Felch
Roger Kovach
John Andrews and Yoshi Fukamiya
Patricia Shimek
Susan and Kevin Stone
Bob and Joan McGrath
Charlene Harvey and Mike McCone
Ken and Jeannine Paganini

    Founding Directors
Anne Hellman
Tim Dawson
Donna Andrews and Terry Bryant
Susie and Morey Nelson
Ann and Jeff Walsh
Judy and Bob Aptekar
Lesly and Rob Robinson
Judith Shaw
Mary Ann Cobb
Angela Rubin
Chris Harrington
Gail and Bucky Mace
Marcus and Azile White
Rodger Raderman
Barbara Boucke
Annie Rand
Geraldine Green
Trudy Greenlaw
Orian London
Kristie and John Tillapaugh
Dawn and Barry Harris
Tom Silk and Marion Weber
Sterling Speirn
Elizabeth and Martin Terplan
Daniel Patrick and Erma Murphy
Chrissie Crawford
Stephen Martin and Doug Schmidt
Sharon and Steve Edelman
Katie Beacock
Roberta and Jim Hawthorne
Deborah Houlihan
Larry and Kathlynn Baskin
Nancy and Robert Bishop
Genny Chapman
Kirk and Kathy Kirkham
Guy and Marty London

     Sponsors
Stinson Beach Market
KWMR Community Radio

     Founding Committee
Jamie and Lynette Sutton
Gail Graham
Bucky and Gail Mace
Harriet Moss
Maureen Marshall and John Hutchinson


 "Anita: Speaking Truth to Power" will be shown Sun. Nov. 9 at 7 p.m.

ANITA tells the story about a young, brilliant African American Anita Hill who accuses the Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of unwanted sexual advances during explosive Senate Hearings in 1991 and ignites a political firestorm about sexual harassment, race, power and politics that resonates 20 years later today. ANITA is a dramatic look at the consequences to a private citizen acting out of a civic duty to 'speak truth to power.' For the first time on film Anita Hills speaks about her experience in the Senate Hearings, her impact on issues of sexual harassment, workplace rights for women and men, social justice and equality. The film is about the empowerment of girls and women, and men, through the extraordinary story of Anita Hill.