I attended the Albany FilmFest Thursday evening. It’s happening at the Cerrito, since there are no longer 
any movie theaters in Albany. The Cerrito is close enough – just blocks away. It wasn’t a full house, but many were in the theater.
Albany Greenland: The FilmFest started with four longish shorts. All were about the environment.
The first of the four films, The Long Game: How Robert Doyle Shaped the East Bay,
was close to home. If you like the wilderness of the East Bay, thank Robert Doyle. Without his work, we wouldn’t have the open spaces and beautiful bike and hiking paths we have today.
The second short was Spear, Spatula, Submarine: Floridians Fight to Take Back Their Waters (the longest title and the shortest film of the evening). Lionfish, an extremely new and ravenous predator, have come into Florida waters, upsetting the balance of marine underwater life. What’s the solution? Fishing for lionfish and selling the catch to local restaurants. Interesting, but I couldn’t help feeling that the movie felt like a commercial for a new seafood.
Iron Sharpens Iron shows you the people of Ironton, Louisiana. This is a local parish in the United States where there’s no running water. How did that happen? It’s obvious. Most of the people are poor and black. With frequent hurricanes, people have trouble finding where a loved one’s casket may be.
The last film provided some hope. Climate Blueprint tells how we can survive climate change. The small island country Dominica has ways to manage the weather. While I watched the film, I thought that if Hawaii acted more like Dominica, things would have been better.
At the end, the filmmakers came up to answer questions.
Seeing/Believing Saturday, 10:00am – another collection of shorts
Connections: Sunday, the films will start screening again at 10:00am
Bayflicks 