MILKING THE RHINO’s southern road show continues….

On Sunday, the Peace Center in Greenville, SC was the scene of a well-attended screening followed by a panel discussion. I was joined by Kristen Austin, Southern Blue Ridge Project Director at the Nature Conservancy; and also by Dr. Rob Baldwin, who teaches in the dept of Forestry and Natural Resources at Clemson. It’s great to share the stage with conservation folk, to whom I can deflect questions more in their purview. Kristen made the point in the discussion that we in the developed world tend to think of conservation as a peripheral luxury that we attend to once our basic needs are met. Whereas the film points to how natural resource conservation is inextricably bound to the life/death economics of a society. That may be more viscerally evident in rural Africa, but it will only become truer for us as climate and population pressures exacerbate environmental issues.

Monday brought me to Columbia, SC, an unofficial stop on the tour, at the invitation of David Whiteman, principal faculty of the Green Learning Center at the University of South Carolina. He’d shown the first 15 minutes of the film to his undergraduate class in Sustainable Futures, and had them write about it. It was fascinating to read their blogs, which summarized community conservation in a simple, straightforward way– and then to see how their understanding deepened after seeing the remainder of the film during my visit.

In other MILKING THE RHINO-related communications….

I got an email this morning from John Kasaona (our main character in Namibia). He extends his appreciation for the way in which MTR is making his world visible to the rest of the world, and adds, “This is not a movie, this is real; this is what is happening on the ground.”

And… MTR originator and co-producer Jeannie Magill has brought to my attention a really exciting initiative at Penn State, inspired by the film: the inaugural MILKING THE RHINO Innovative Solutions Showcase: http://mtrsolutions.weebly.com/

http://www.engr.psu.edu/newsevents/newsdetail.aspx?NewsID=7864&NewsDate=11/3/2009#7864

We’re humbled and honored by this event. It’s so rewarding to see RHINO bearing fruit, or I should say planting seeds of new fruit, at universities.

Tomorrow I steer the car towards Auburn, AL; and I am told my arrival should coincide with that of tropical storm Ida. Shoulda packed that raincoat…

Til later….

Peace Center in Greenville

I had my first taste of the Southern Circuit Tour last night. Pants On Fire screened at the Peace Center for the Performing Arts in Greenville, SC. It was a fantastic screening! And what a beautiful venue. It's an old converted Huguenot mill and they tricked it out into an amazing state-of-the-art theater but still managed to maintain some of the look and feel of the old brick buildings. We had a great, enthusiastic crowd that stayed for a long Q&A afterwards. They had fantastic questions about all aspects of the film. It was really gratifying. Greenville rocks. I had some delicious Sushi and gelato - their downtown is really beautiful. I am going to hit a toy store for my kids, then hit the road to Alabama! I've got a screening tonight at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University for anyone in the area. I'm also enjoying the fall weather - something we don't really have in LA.

DNWA in the villes…

The Customs House Museum in Clarksville, TN is yet another great community venue. The museum is partly housed in the original custom house that served as a location to levy taxes on the great amount of tobacco that was grown in the region before it headed out to all parts of the world. Now the Museum holds works of art, a theater and the most amazing interactive children’s exhibit. I must admit I had a good time playing with the huge bubble making toys in the basement.

We had another great screening with a lively Q&A. Joining the discussion was a guest panel that included a history professor and the local head of the NAACP. Both men enlightened the conversation with wit, humor and heart.

Greenville, SC…

As I approached the Peace center I could see a large crowd lining up outside and as I made my way into the theatre I was delighted to see that most of the 400 seats were already taken. The Peace Center’s Nancy Halverson introduced me to the panel that would participate in the post screening discussion. I settled into my seat and watched the whole movie and was glad that I did (most of the time I sneak out for a bit because I have seen it a bazillion times). It was great to hear and see the audience react to the film, but I was totally unprepared for the response when we took the stage as the credits rolled. Through the glare of the spotlight I could see that the entire sold out audience was on their feet, giving the film a standing ovation. It was a huge honor and rather emotional.

Needless to say that the film was well received with the crowd and panel engaged in yet another great discussion.

I can’t see how the experience of showing a film could be any better than it has been on this tour. Every venue and audience has been amazing!

Now on to Auburn, AL

These Furman University students seem happy--but
have they fulfilled their CLP credit for the semester?

GREENVILLE, SC -- Tonight’s screening at Furman was a qualified success. On the one hand, it was a room full of laughers, and that’s the most immediately gratifying response available to a filmmaker or performer. Pin-drop silence is a finer gratification, but I’m happy to make do with guffaws, which proliferated throughout the Burgiss Theater almost the whole way through (Elizabeth Povinelli's remark that "There's a whole creepy side to Catholicism--which I experience in the south, actually--" got an especially nice laugh). And the auditorium, which seats 150, was perhaps 2/3 full. Furman has a handy program called CLP--the Cultural Life Program--handy for visiting filmmakers, that is, because students get credit for attending gallery exhibits and oddball experimental documentaries about how coastal homosexuals, Jewish intellectuals, and drag queens respond to French-Catholic organ music. After the show, in the lobby, there were two tables set up, one with Apparition-related merchandise and the other where the audience got its CLP ticket validated, like a parking chit. One of these tables was mobbed by cinephiles.

My only real disappointment was that the 30-inch extravaganza in the Sunday Arts section of the Greenville News didn’t appear to have convinced many people to brave the balmy evening to see the show. Were there even ten people there who weren’t Furman students or faculty? I really am being such a whiner for pointing this out, because it was a very good and good-sized audience, but there’s just this feeling of—exactly what kind of press do you need to fill a theater? Thirty inches above the fold on the front page of the sports section? The crime blotter? If thirty inches doesn't cut it in this town, exactly what kind of organ--but now I sound bitter.

The day was good. Lunch with long-lost Liz Lopez, Lowell '88, now Liz Lopez Anderson with a 3-year-old and a 3-month-old and a husband who teaches religious studies at nearby Wofford College. Perhaps Apparition has a future in Greenville. Shouldn't the film that introduced the word "blow-job" to church screen at BJU? With a Google News alert that the Mobile Register had posted their story, I felt justified in taking an hour to finally design a press page for apparitionfilm.com. It has three—count them!--features, and zero reviews. I’m looking forward to seeing what became of my interview with the Beaufort Island Packet, which I enjoyed doing, and with any luck I’ll pick up some more ink over the next ten days. Meanwhile, I have to thank Thomas Harrison at the Register for this line in particular:

"Festa, based in San Francisco, has put together 31 colorful interview subjects that likely would chase Ken Burns off the premises."

And if this film achieves nothing else...