Quick Take
The Santa Cruz Film Festival runs Wednesday through Sunday and features documentaries exploring AIDS activism, Holocaust history and cultural resistance, alongside comedies, thrillers and films celebrating local winemaking and cidermaking.
“How would Santa Cruz be different if the people who died of AIDS had lived?”
It’s a question Nic Laflin, the lead program specialist at The Diversity Center, asked AIDS epidemic survivors while creating “Never the Last Love Letter,” a documentary chronicling activism in Santa Cruz during the crisis. The film screens Friday at the Colligan Theater at the Tannery Arts Center as part of the Santa Cruz Film Festival.
“Overwhelmingly the answer was that Santa Cruz would be a more vibrant, more creative place,” they said.
Laflin and The Diversity Center’s team wanted the film to document the people who “changed the trajectory of AIDS, public health and queer history.” Laflin said creativity and art has always been central to LGBTQ+ resistance.
“There’s such a creativity required to think bigger than just yourself. Art is such an important aspect of expression,” Laflin said. “Organizing is bigger than making art and it’s more than making art, but I don’t think you can do organizing liberation without art.”
Alix Wall and Marc Smolowitz produced “The Lonely Child,” a documentary about a lullaby written for Wall’s mother in a Polish ghetto during the Holocaust, which will be shown Thursday at the Del Mar Theatre downtown.
Wall and Smolowitz first connected at UC Santa Cruz as undergrads when they discovered they were “both the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, and both of our mothers were hidden by a gentile woman,” Wall said.
“If you would have told us when we were still at Santa Cruz that 35 years later we would make a film together, I don’t think either of us could’ve imagined it,” Wall said. “That’s one of the reasons why it’s so exciting: In many ways, the story begins with us meeting each other in college.”
The film also highlights the Paper Brigade, a Jewish group that saved documents and artifacts from destruction by the Nazis.
“[The Paper Brigade] is really a chapter of cultural resistance that a lot of people don’t know about,” Wall said. “A lot of people who have seen the film talk to me about how much they related that to the current book bannings and people trying to keep certain books out of libraries because they’re seen as too woke.”
More to see and do at the Santa Cruz Film Festival
The festival will open Wednesday with “Lunar Sway,” directed by Nick Butler and starring Liza Weil (“Gilmore Girls,” “How to Get Away with Murder”). Festival president Bella Babot described it as a “quirky, dark comedy.”
Wednesday through Sunday will see a host of films, ranging from animated shorts to romcoms to psychological thrillers.
More local offerings include “The Terroirist,” which tells the story of Randall Grahm, founder of Bonny Doon Vineyard. “Welcome to Maggia” follows the journey of the Martinelli’s cider company from Switzerland to Watsonville. The two screenings will be followed by tastings of wine and apple cider, respectively.
The Museum of Art & History and Woodhouse Blending & Brewing are hosting parties to cap off Wednesday and Friday. Sunday will start with a brunch and discussion at Hotel Paradox, where attendees can debate artificial intelligence in the film industry and sip bloody marys.
Babot hopes Santa Cruz can act as a hub to draw in artistic communities from the Bay Area and the Central Valley.
“The ethos of the film festival is not just about us. It’s really about creating this collective community,” Babot said. “My belief in film festivals is there is this beautiful thread where you’re not only supporting the arts, but you’re also supporting businesses downtown, whether that’s the local theaters or helping people see a museum that maybe they didn’t know about.”
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