Win Tickets To The Ocean Film Festival World Tour in Santa Cruz
The Ocean Film Festival World Tour splashes down at the Rio Theatre on September 4th, kicking off a season of big screen adventure at the Rio that continues with Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival in October and Mountainfilm on Tour in November.
There is a particular quiet that settles over a room full of people who love the sea, right before the lights go down. You feel it at the Rio Theatre every year this festival comes through, and this year, the festival's ninth season in Santa Cruz since it first arrived in 2018, that quiet will settle in again on September 4th. The Ocean Film Festival World Tour has never been interested in the ocean as backdrop. It wants the ocean as subject, as character, as the thing that organizes a life, and this year's lineup, culled from six countries and every register from science to spectacle, delivers exactly that.
Jemima Robinson, the festival's founder and CEO, put it simply: the mission has always been to find ocean stories that move people, and then let those stories do the connecting. You feel that ambition across the whole program. There is "The Raftsmen," fifty years old now, its original 16mm footage remastered into 4K, following twelve men from seven countries who spent six months adrift on handmade wooden rafts because someone dreamed it was possible. There is the gentler register of "The Kelp Collector," a five minute portrait of a retired scientist pressing seaweed into art near her home in Port Phillip Bay. There is "Stone Biter," which follows an Italian photographer into Norway's Arctic waters chasing wolffish, only to find kelp forests stripped bare, and the quiet coalition of scientists and volunteers trying to bring them back.
Kelly Slater narrates "Antarctica: Domain One," two Argentine brothers sailing and surfing to the bottom of the world. "A Dragon's Dance" spends five hypnotic minutes with a leafy sea dragon off the Great Southern Reef. And "Tainá" traces the life of Brazilian surfer Tainá Hinckel, from a small town childhood to Teahupo'o, one of the most dangerous waves anywhere, and an Olympic dream built on top of it.
Doors open at 6 pm, with a pint of Sante Adairius waiting for you, and a portion of ticket and beer sales going to Save Our Shores, which feels right for an evening built entirely around the water. Tickets and details at riotheatre.com.
And the water is only the start of it. On October 10th, the Rio trades tide pools for tree lines when the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival World Tour arrives for Adventure Night, benefiting Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship. The lineup is entirely new this year and headlined by "Best Day Ever," winner of the People's Choice Award and Best Film on Mountain Sports, a film that earns its title the hard way. Then on November 14th, Mountainfilm on Tour rolls in straight from Telluride, Colorado, supporting Second Harvest Food Bank. Details on that one are still coming, so keep an eye on riotheatre.com and consider the Rio's fall calendar officially claimed.
Before you buy, though, there's a shortcut worth knowing about. Santa Cruz Works and the Rio Theater are giving away two free tickets to one reader who takes a few minutes to fill out a short survey, the kind of quiet trade that keeps an operation like this running: your thoughts on ocean stories in exchange for a chance at a free night at the movies. Fair warning, and the honest kind: your details go straight to the Ocean Film Festival World Tour, not into some drawer never opened again, so enter knowing exactly where that information lands.
ENTER GIVEAWAY HERE
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