Friday, January 27th
Opening Night Reception 5pm
Screenings 6pm to 11pm
Doors Open at 5pm
6:00pm ... Worst in Show
2010 / 59 minutes
Every summer, proud dog owners bring their canine companions to Petaluma, California, to compete for a highly coveted title. No, this isn’t your standard ‘Best in Show’ championship, this is the contest for the World’s Ugliest Dog. This fascinating documentary takes viewers behind the scenes at a contest where the competitors never fail to impress. Equally impressive is the devotion of their human counterparts, all of whom prove that love goes beyond skin deep.
7:00pm ... Intermission, 15 min
7:15pm ... Tabloid
2010 / 87 minutes
A former beauty queen obsessed with a Mormon missionary became ferocious tabloid fodder in England in the mid-1970s—a perfect storm of sex, religion, and sheer craziness. Director Errol Morris—creator of such nonfiction films as The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War—crafts a kind of poetry from his portraits of people whose lives have bent in one obsessive direction. Former Miss Wyoming Joyce McKinney fell in love with aspiring missionary Kirk Anderson, but the Mormon Church decided she wasn’t fit material and whisked Anderson away to London. McKinney and an accomplice followed and then either kidnapped or liberated Anderson, depending on who you believe—and therein lies the crux, as competing stories are told by McKinney, Anderson, and rival tabloids. Morris combines lively interviews with archival footage to prove, again and again, that the truth can be both elusive and deeply, deeply weird.
8:45pm ... Intermission, 30 min
9:15pm ... Troubadours: The Rise of the Singer-Songwriter
2011 / 101 minutes
In the wake of the turbulent 1960’s, as a new style of song and songwriter came to the fore, Troubadours tells the story of when rock ‘n’ roll grew up. The time was the early ‘70s, the place was an old beatnik folk club called The Troubadour in Los Angeles, CA, and the players were young musicians emboldened to share their most intimate thoughts backed by little more than a lone acoustic guitar or simple piano. Exploring the early careers of Carole King and James Taylor, as well as the entire California singer/songwriter scene, Troubadours includes interviews with many of the other singer/songwriters from that historical once-in-a-lifetime period —Jackson Browne, David Crosby, Kris Kristofferson, Elton John, Bonnie Raitt, and more.
11pm ... End of Program