March 17 through 20 brings the second annual Movies & Meaning: A Dream Space to Downtown Albuquerque’s KiMo Theatre (423 Central NW). Billed as “a new kind of festival for everyone who loves stories and light” and “a dream space laboratory for a more beautiful world,” the four-day event will include a mixture of films, seminars, workshops, poetry readings and more. Among the special guests are trauma therapist, yoga teacher and “crooked mystic” Teresa Pasquale, Franciscan friar and “globally recognized ecumenical teacher” Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation and Santa Fe-based experimental filmmaker Godfrey Reggio. Films run the gamut from the short (Robert Kondo and Dice Tsutsumi’s lovely animated film “The Dam Keeper”) to the documentary (the rural News Zealand lifestyle film This Way of Life), from the classic (Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1929 epic The Passion of Joan of Arc) to the experimental (Reggio’s 1982 environmental tone poem Koyaanisqatsi), from animated family fare (the 2015 adaptation of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet) to speculative sci-fi features (2013’s philosophical, virtual reality Hollywood head trip The Congress starring Robin Wright). For a complete schedule of films and events, go to moviesandmeaning.com. Tickets run $199 to $399 and are available now through kimotickets.com.
Reel World: Film Flashback Film Flashback
Local film historian, journalist and author of New Mexico Filmmaking, Jeff Berg will present another of his patented “Made in New Mexico” film screenings/lectures. This Saturday, March 19, starting at 10:30am, at the Special Collections Library (423 Central NE), Berg will take viewers on a trip back in time to learn the history of filmmaking in our state. This 90-minute cinematic event will feature the silent short film “The Tourists,” shot in and around Albuquerque in 1912—the first year of statehood and the very start of our local filmmaking industry. Berg will include clips from many other films lensed in the Duke City—including 1943’s Kirtland base-shot war drama Bombardier, a 1940 fashion show documentary called “Fashion Horizons” and the eye-rolling Bette Davis/Ernest Borgnine “hippie” comedy Bunny O’Hare. Berg will also discuss his research on the 1933 feature Air Hostess, which may have been filmed in part at the old Albuquerque Sunport. Admission to this event is free, but donations to the library are always encouraged. After the screening, Berg will be selling copies of his book on the history of New Mexico-made films, recently published by The History Press.
