I enjoyed chronicling the community’s effort to “Save the Yuba” last February, including this report that “Deal to save the Yuba River State Park open could come as early as Wednesday.” And it happened, as my son and I witnessed and reported in real-time from Sacramento.
It was a good learning experience for him and all the elementary-school children who participated.
As a result, our family was excited to see the “world premiere” of a movie about the effort called “How the Kids Saved the Parks.” It premiered Friday night at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival. (Our magazine is a sponsor).
As Roger Hicks, a SYRCL founder, observed at a film festival reception at his home afterward: “SYRCL has had a film festival for 11 years but never a movie about it.”
This was a fun “premier” at The Center for the Arts. Dai Meagher was collecting tickets as a volunteer, and SYRCL Executive Director Caleb Dardick and former SYRCL ED and a champion of the “Save the Yuba” effort Shawn Garvey spoke. Shawn was the MC.
Regular reader Michael Anderson’s son “starred” in the move, and it was good to seem him there with his children.
“You know those movies where the kids get together and do something awesome? When they unite to overcome insurmountable odds? Maybe win the championship from the favored bad guys,” the movie said.
“Maybe embark on an epic quest to stop the grown ups from doing something stupid. This is one of those movies, except this one really happened.
“This is the story of a group of great kids that worked day and night to save the California State Parks that they love – this is ‘How The Kids Saved The Parks’.
We enjoyed the movie, along with the others that we saw. We hope you get out to see a film or two. The festival also brings thousands of people to down.
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Good post Jeff–a truly inspiring movie. I think it was great that the GVC kids got to see the sausage making up close; hopefully this experience will help them grow up to be politically educated citizens, knowing that even though their gov’t has many flaws, if you put in the time and effort there’s usually some kind of positive result. Our system is the best we have at the moment: there’s nothing wrong with complaining about it, wanting to make it better, while working within it at the same time. The students at Grass Valley Charter School taught me that again.
Regarding the film festival, there was an article in The Union today claiming that the financial benefits this past weekend to Nevada County business were “mixed.” I thought the article was too narrowly focused to really provide an accurate report on the benefit of having SYRCL put on this event every year. There’s no silver bullet to solving our local economic problems, no single answer to how we grow our local economy. We need to support all kinds of initiatives that help us pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. I think the SYRC Wild & Scenic Film Festival is a great example of the type of activities we need to appreciate and encourage in Nevada County.
Michael:
I don’t subscribe to The Union, so I don’t have the benefit of breaking through the paywall to read the article, but I’m surprised that there would be any negatives stemming from a film festival that brings several hundred people to town –– many with high-limit credit cards.
Not every special event benefits every business, but they all add to the economic success of Nevada City and Nevada County. At least that’s the way it used to be.
Exactly Steve. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s appropriate for our local newspaper to always do puff pieces on things like the film festival, or be cheerleaders for every single event. I just think that this particular article was a bit off.
One of the business owners quoted as saying he didn’t see much of a bump was from the Owl Grill & Saloon. Not a big surprise since a lot of the film festival goers probably favor lighter fare, not to mention that this was the first year that only a handful of films were featured in two downtown Grass Valley venues.
and besides, the Owl looks like a dive from the sidewalk – I don’t know what it’s like on the inside, myself, though I’ve heard it’s not bad. But it looks like a dark, cavernous bar from the outside.
Sharon,
The Owl is a really good steakhouse under new ownership. Check it out.
Unless they serve organic, free-range meat, and/or wild-caught fish, it’s not for me. Which might also be true for Environmental Film Festival goers.
I would think if someone had a restaurant and was hoping for additional business via a specific event they would make some kind of special effort to make that events attendees welcome. Especially with a first time event. I agree with Sharon, I’m. not quite sure The Owl is a good match with the film festival. While I haven’t had a steak there we did try it recently for the first time. I would return for drinks and appetizers but the stroganoff was a disappointment.