Zócalo Magazine - November 2019

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Zรณcalo TUCSON ARTS, CULTURE, AND DESERT LIVING / NOVEMBER 2019 / ISSUE NO. 112

Loft Film Fest Guide Inside!



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The newest addition to the Metal Arts Village is part gallery, part studio and part work space. See works from all the Village artists as well as from other local, regional, national and international artists. Participate in one of our workshops or rent out space and host a class of your own.

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inside November 2019 07. Events 12. All Souls Procession Special Section 18. Writers 24. Loft Film Fest Special Section 51. Downtown 53. Southwest 55. Galleries & Exhibits 59. Neighborhoods 65. Food 67. Tunes 70. Scene in Tucson ON THE COVER: Artwork by Jessica Gonzales, who was “inspired by the film experience from the viewer’s perspective.” Created for the Loft Film Fest, happening Nov. 7-14. Learn more and peruse the film fest schedule on page 25.

Zócalo Magazine is an independent, locally owned and locally printed publication that reflects the heart and soul of Tucson.

PUBLISHER & CREATIVE DIRECTOR David Olsen EDITOR Gregory McNamee CONTRIBUTORS Jessica Gonzales, Carl Hanni, Jim Lipson, Jamie Manser, Gregory McNamee, Janelle Montenegro, Amanda Reed, Hilary Stunda. LISTINGS Amanda Reed, amanda@z´óocalomagazine.com PRODUCTION ARTISTS Troy Martin, David Olsen

CONTACT US: frontdesk@zocalotucson.com P.O. Box 1171, Tucson, AZ 85702-1171

SUBSCRIBE to Zocalo at www.zocalomagazine.com/subscriptions. Zocalo is available free of charge at newsstands in Tucson, limited to one copy per reader. Zocalo may only be distributed by the magazine’s authorized independent contractors. No person may, without prior written permission of the publisher, take more than one copy of each issue. The entire contents of Zocalo Magazine are copyright © 2009-2019 by Media Zoócalo, LLC. Reproduction of any material in this or any other issue is prohibited without written permission from the publisher. Zocalo is published 11 times per year.

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Historic & Unusual Homes TIM HAGYARD (520) 241-3123 • tim@timhagyard.com • timhagyard.com


events Z

photo: © A.T. Willett 2015

The Tour de Tucson Celebrates Its 37th Run by Gregory McNamee THE FIRST THING that Charlene Grabowski, the new CEO of the organization behind the famed Tour de Tucson bicycle event, wants you to know about the Tour is this: “It’s not a race—it’s a ride.” Grabowski came to Perimeter Bicycling after a career in information technology and health care, taking the role held from Richard DeBernardis, who founded the Tour and its governing organization in 1982. Her brief, as she describes it, is to help “grow the business,” in part by helping define its mission and identifying partners to enlist and resources to acquire. “We’re a 37-yearold startup,” she says. The turnaround will see changes not just in the organization but also in the Tour itself. Whereas previous events involved long registration lines inside the Community Center, Grabowski says that this year’s will take place entirely outdoors, in Armory Park. Early iterations of the event focused on the elite racers, classified as “pro and platinum,” but these are just a tenth of the 6,000 riders who are expected to participate in the Tour. “We want to be sure there’s something for everybody,” Grabowski says, “and to be sure that we’re as inclusive as possible.” To that end, the 2019 edition of the Tour de Tucson will include several events. As in years past, the most prominent will be the 100-mile course, which will commence from Armory Park, head down Aviation Parkway and along the northern and eastern boundaries of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, then head down the steep arroyos outside Vail before turning north on Old Spanish Trail. The northern stretch will follow Sunrise, Skyline, and Ina Roads all the way up to Dove Mountain, then go down Silverbell and the I–10 frontage road back to the course’s terminus downtown, back at Armory Park. Grabowski stresses

that these busy roads will be blocked to automobile traffic during the ride, so motorists who use them regularly will want to plan alternate routes. Thirteen aid stations will also line the route. A second event cuts the first in half, picking it up at Morris K. Udall Park on the corner of Sabino Canyon and Tanque Verde Roads. A third, the 25mile event, commences at the Marana Heritage Park and joins the western segment of the 100-mile course to downtown Tucson, while ten-, five-, and one-mile “family fun rides” will take place on the Chuck Huckelberry Loop, a route well known to regular Tucson cyclists. Young riders under the age of 14 are encouraged to take part in the “Kids Riding for Those Who Can’t” event, dedicating their ride to a person of their choice. From November 21 to the run day on November 23, Armory Park will also host a festival open to all visitors that celebrates the sport and art of bicycling. The Tucson Children’s Museum will be the site of events for youngsters, while food trucks and other vendors will ring the Armory Park square. All cycling events will end at 4:00 pm. Along with the fact that the Tour de Tucson isn’t a race, Grabowski emphasizes that it’s done for a good cause: 39 charities will be the recipients of pledges from the riders. Over the 37-year history of the Tour de Tucson, she notes, the event has raised more than $90 million for such charitable organizations, a record she aims to improve on in the coming years—and good reason to pledge support for the ride and its beneficiaries. n For more information and a copy of the route map, visit www.perimeterbicycling.com. November 2019|ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com 7


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events Z

november THROUGH JANUARY 5 LIGHTS OF THE WORLD The largest light and lantern festival in North America features an array of culture and international landmarks in over 6 million LED lights. Carnival rides and games and a Sea Lion show are included with general admission. Thurs to Sun, 5pm to 10pm. Tickets: $14.99 to $99. $6 parking. Kino Sports Complex, 2500 E. Ajo Way. Tucson.LightsoftheWorldUS.com

FRI 1 TO SUN 3 COMIC CON Explore a pop culture filled weekend for all ages with celebrity guests, a costume contest, authors, shopping, autographs, workshops, and more. Tickets: $5 - $45. Kids 8 and under are free. Tucson Convention Center, 260 S. Church Ave. 1-800-745-3000. TucsonComic-Con.com

TUBAC FALL ARTS & CRAFTS FESTIVAL Local artisans offering handmade goods just in time for holiday shopping. Enjoy a selfie with Santa, food trucks, live music, a kid zone, and more! Free entry. Festival hours: 10am - 5pm. Tubac Village off of I-19. TubacFestivals.com

SAT 2 & SUN 3 OPEN STUDIO TOURS Visit with artists and learn more behind their creative process on one of the largest self-guided tours of artist studios and creative workspaces in the region. Taking place over 2 weekends in November. ArtsFoundTucson.org

THURS 28 THANKSGIVING CROSS-COUNTY CLASSIC

SAT 9 & SUN 10 DUSK FESTIVAL

Returning to Armory Park, this year’s lineup inclues national and international recognized acts such as Kaskade, Rezz, Two Door Cinema Club and more. Tickets: $59 - $399. Armory Park, 19 South 5th Ave. DuskMusicFestival.com

OPEN STUDIO TOURS

Visit with artists and learn more behind their creative process on one of the largest self-guided tours of artist studios and creative work-spaces in the region. Taking place over 2 weekends in November. View maps on website. OST.ArtsFoundTucson.org

SUN 10 HATS OFF TO HEROS

Tucson’s tribute to America’s Veterans with military displays, live music, food trucks and fireworks. Noon to 6:30pm. Free. DeMeester Band Shell, Reid Park, 900 S. Randolph Way. HatsOffToHeros.org

MON 11 NATIONAL PARKS FREE DAY

Enjoy free admission to all national parks on Veterans Day! NPS.gov

THE 100TH VETERANS DAY PARADE & CEREMONY Celebrate 100 years of the annual Veteran’s Day Parade by honoring current members of our military and veterans. Parade begins at 11am at the corner of Alameda St. and Granada Ave. TucsonVeteransDayParade.org

THURS 7 TO THURS 14

SUN 17

LOFT FILM FEST Hand selected favorites from top

CHICK MAGNET: ART, POETRY & MUSIC FEST Celebrating the creative work of women, non-

film festivals and special guests. Opening with a screening of Fernando Meirelles’s The Two Popes. Tickets: $8-$10; $125-$150 festival passes. See website for showtimes and more information. Loft Cinema, 3233 E Speedway Blvd. 520-795-0844. LoftCinema.org

SAT 9 DRAGONFLY

DAY

Celebrate the colorful dragonflies living along the Santa Cruz River with family friendly activities from 9am to 11am and guided tours through three parks from 11am to 2pm. Free. Crossroads at Silverbell Park - 7548 N Silverbell Rd (Ramada #2 near the baseball diamonds). www.sonoraninstitute.org/ events/dragonfly

2ND SATURDAYS DOWNTOWN

A free, family friendly urban block party! Winter Hours: 2pm to 9pm. Performances, vendors, food trucks, and more. Art After Dark at the Children’s Museum from 5:30-8pm. Free family friendly movie at the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum. Downtown Tucson. 2ndSaturdaysDowntown.com

binary, and femme artists with 9 bands, 4 poets, 1 dance performance and 15+ artists along with vendors. All ages. $10 admission. 4pm to 11pm. 191 Toole, 191 E Toole Ave.

FRI 22 - SUN 24 HOLIDAY ARTISANS MARKET

Bringing together more than 100 artisans selling handmade and one of a kind items, while enjoying perfect autumn weather, and museum exhibitions. 10am - 5pm each day. Tucson Museum of Art, 140 N. Main Ave. 520-624-2333. TucsonMuseumofArt.org

SAT 23 EL TOUR DE TUCSON

Arizona’s largest and longest running bicycling event for cyclists of all ages and abilities with event distances of 100, 50 or 25 miles to choose from along with Fun Rides of 10, 4, 1 or ¼ mile. Join in as a cyclist or spectator. 520-745-2033. PerimeterBicycling.com

Work up an appetite with a European style 5K around Reid Park. Separate men’s and women’s events and fun opportunities to cheer on friends and family as they hurdle hay bales and water jumps. Fun prizes include turkeys and pumpkin pies. 8am: 5k women’s event; 8:45am: 5k men’s event; 9:30am: co-ed 1.5 mile fun run/ walk. 520-326-9383. AZRoadRunners.org

FRI 29 & SAT 30 BISBEE HOME TOUR Tour the Warren District of Bisbee, the first planned community in Arizona intended as a home for the mine management and affluent citizens of the town, with 11 Arts and Crafts style bungalow houses. 9:30am to 4pm both days. Tickets available at the Greenway Elementary School, 98 Cole Ave. Bisbee, AZ. BisbeeWomansClub.com

MONDAYS MEET ME AT MAYNARDS Southern Arizona Roadrunners’ Monday evening, non-competitive, social 3-mile run/walk, that begins and ends downtown at Hotel Congress, rain/shine/holidays included! Free. Check in suggested from 5:15pm to 6:00pm. Closing ceremony at 7:00pm. Maynards Market, 400 N. Toole. 520-991-0733. MeetMeAtMaynards.com

TUESDAYS ROOFTOP YOGAHOUR

Stretch and sweat under the stars every Tuesday night on the rooftop of Playground. All levels welcome. Drink and food specials offered to attendees. $6. Bring your own mat. 7pm. Playground Bar & Lounge Rooftop, 278 E. Congress St. YogaOasis.com/Rooftop-Yoga

THURSDAYS SANTA CRUZ RIVER FARMERS MARKET Locally grown foods and goods with live music. 4-7pm. Mercado San Agustin, 100 S. Avenida Del Convento. MercadoSanAgustin.com

FREE FIRST THURSDAYS On the first Thursday of every month the museum is open late with free admission from 5-8pm, featuring special performances, live music, lectures, cash bar, and food trucks. For more information see website. Tucson Museum of Art, 140 N. Main Avenue. 520-624-2333. TucsonMuseumofArt.org

SUNDAYS 5 POINTS FARMERS MARKET Every Sunday at Cesar Chavez Park. 10am to 2pm. 756 S. Stone Ave. RILLITO PARK FARMERS MARKET

Find veggies, citrus, fresh eggs, pasta, coffee, locally made soaps and a variety of goods at this open-air market. Open every Sunday from 9am to 1pm (Oct. – Mar.) and 8am to Noon (Apr. – Sep.) at the Rillito Park Race Track, 4502 N. 1st Ave. HeirloomFM.org

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TUCSON HELICOPTER TOURS Experience breathtaking views of Gates Pass, Downtown Tucson, The Catalina Foothills, Mt. Lemmon, or The Boneyard at Davis-Monthan. Call 520.917.0337 to book! volarehelicopters.com @volarehelicopters #flyvolareheli November 2019|ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com 11



events Z

30th Annual All Souls Procession Weekend FRI 1 TO SUN 3 NIGHT OF THE LIVING FEST A three day festival featuring the Melvins, Steve Roach, Vox Urbana, Mute Swan, Kikagaku Moyo, and more. Tickets: $20-$50. Locations: MSA Annex and Hotel Congress. All proceeds go to the All Souls Procession. See website for performance times. www.NightoftheLivingFest..com

APPLE STORE

SAT 2 PROCESSION OF LITTLE ANGELS Children and families gather to honor and celebrate loved ones. Art making activities with paper flower making and wing painting, face painting, sugar skull decorating, story telling and theater. Stories that Soar!, Tucson Circus Arts students, and the Tucson Girls Chorus team up to perform local children’s stories about death and grief followed by a procession around the park as the sun sets. 3pm to 7pm. Armory Park, 222 S. 5th Ave. www.AllSoulsProcession.org

SUN 3 ALL SOULS PROCESSION & FINALE CEREMONY

Thousands will gather to remember deceased loved ones and be a part of this beloved community event with a procession along the Santa Cruz River and finale at the MSA Annex. Community created, non-commercial event open to all cultures, traditions and people. Free to participate, donations accepted. Gathering begins at 4pm, Procession at 6pm, Finale from approximately 8:30pm to 10 pm. Volunteers gather to clean up the finale site Monday at 10am. See website for locations and more information. www.AllSoulsProcession.org

Google Play Store

MORE DETAILS ON THE FOLLOWING PAGES... November 2019|ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com 13


Sat. Nov 2

FRI. NOV I Night of The Living Fest VII @ HOTEL CONGRESS & MSA ANNEX! NOLF is The only ticketed event of the All Souls Weekend Multiple ticket options & more information Friday, Saturday & Sunday nniigght ht oft li ving m of thheeli vin g fest .co .c om M ELV I NS , K IKA GAK U MOY O ST EVE R OACH, RE DD KR OSS, BA SI C B IO LOGY & MOR E!

Sun. Nov 3

The Procession and Grand Finale

Workshops, performances by Stories That Soar! Tucson Girls Chorus, Childrens’ altar, Wing making workshop, Altar vigil and much more 3pm till dusk at Armory Park Free to aend!

Gather @ 4 pm Grande & Speedway Ave. Festivities at 4 pm w/ Casa De Los Muertos at the Gateway Stage Procession departs at 6 pm - Grand Finale at The Mercado San Agustin & MSA ANNEX W. Congress St featuring art installations, performances all types of memento mori. Calpulli Tonantzin Danza Azteca with Blessing from Chairman Nunez of the Tohono O'odham Nation. Burn the URN with Flam Chen, STEVE ROACH & the community spirit groups. Free to aend! After parties at MSA ANNEX, Mercado San Agustin & Hotel Congress

Support this event! Donate Today or at the event! allsoulsprocession.org/donate m a n y m o u t h s . o r g


2019 Procession Route

Gather at 4 pm

Enjoy one of Tucsons’ oldest neighborhoodsBarrio Hollywood-unique, local establishments food trucks, music by Casa De Los Muertos DJ’s facepainting, Ghost Buskers performance crew, contribute an offering to burn in the Urn... Parking is limited-Plan accordingly.

Depart at 6 pm

We depart at 6pm for the 1 hr march to the Mercado District traveling thru Menlo Park Neighborhood. Bring Water, wear comfortable footwear. Check out the Procession Guide

hps://allsoulsprocession.org/

Embibe the Walk Together

It is a rare moment that we get to walk together with this much compassion, understanding and creativity. There is no rush-there is no thing that you are missing this evening. The Urn Burns no sooner then 8:30 pm... Those on foot may take the Santa Cruz River Path... Look for installations along the route.

ENJOY the Grand Finale Aztec Dancers, Grand Pageantry, Art, vendors, installations, food trucks, Burning of the Urn, and much ,much more! All Souls is about sharing, remembering and witnessing together...

After Party Responsibly

Dance Party at Mercado San Agustin Lots of happenings post Procession! with Casa De Los Muertos DJ’s! LIVE Cumbia with VOX URBANA at MSA ANNEX!

$5 suggested donation goes directly to help fund the whole event

Hotel Congress after party with PPL MVR, and Making Movies!

Support this event! Donate Today or at the event! allsoulsprocession.org/donate m a n y m o u t h s . o r g


Wing workshops, Childrens’ Altar & Altar Vigil Procession at dusk with Finale by Stories That Soar! and Tucson Girls Chorus



Chuck Bowden in a previously unpublished photo by Laura Greenberg.


writers Z

Of Rock ’n’ Roll and Corn Laws A Few Words on Charles Bowden by Gregory McNamee

C

huck Bowden once brought me a beguiling, befuddling manuscript. It was thick, knotty, printed in one of those horrific fonts that the early generations of Mac computers offered back in the middish ’80s. I could make neither hide nor hair of the thing at first glance, but I carted it off to my office from our conference room—two lawn chairs, that is, in the middle of his poured-concrete-floored living room, surrounded by a pile of beer cans as the afternoon wore on, our talk punctuated by repeated spins of the latest records by Bob Dylan and Townes Van Zandt, back in those days when records were records and Apples were new. A couple of weeks later I went back to Chuck with the manuscript. “I think I get it,” I said. “But I think you need to reorganize it chronologically. The narrative would make more sense that way.” Chuck looked at me balefully, taking a long pull on one of his endless cigarettes, and said, “Ah, fuck, McNamee. Chapter organization. That’s just marketing.” I went away, and he went back to his Apple. Silence. Then, a few weeks later, Chuck was back with a manuscript that made eminent sense, if sense in a kind of loopy, deranged, Hunter Thompsonesque way. Mezcal, it was called, and it aimed to erect a concrete mausoleum over a culture that refused to acknowledge that its corpse overlay a place of aridity and austerity: “For my entire life I have hungered for the smell of earth and lived on carpets of cement and asphalt,” Chuck wrote. He added that whatever gods there were in this overheated, underwatered place were dead and gone, and although he no longer quite believed in them, neither did he disavow them. I think he was being merely rhetorical on that score, for Chuck well knew that I’itoi, the Tohono O’odham creator, reigns in this place still. The traditional desert people believe that anywhere I’itoi’s rocky home atop the mountain called Baboquivari can be seen is part of their world, and from Chuck’s roof, Baboquivari lies in plain view—which means, of course, that I’itoi could see him, too. Chuck preceded Mezcal with two more or less straightforward books that I edited for the University of Arizona Press, Blue Desert and Frog Mountain Blues, both books in which I’itoi plays his part. I have to confess, with due bias, that the first is my favorite of all his books, one that best captures the essence of a bleary-eyed cynic who secretly embodied everything that some wise person once remarked of the kind: that a cynic is really nothing more than a disappointed romantic. That romanticism countered the one of old, the near-cliché of the desert of the John Van Dyke school that exalted in the pretty pink colors and far distances, that took the fact of distance and isolation as an affirmation of some sort of moral cleanliness that would have pleased T. E. Lawrence. No, for Chuck Bowden, the desert was a place that tested souls, to be sure, but always found them wanting: The desert, he insisted, was a place of which we were eminently unworthy, as every bit of our bad behavior ever since arriving here proved beyond question. In that insistence, Chuck was himself of a very old kind: a desert prophet who, having wandered as a stranger into a strange land, wondered why everyone was busy digging into the ground instead of digging the sky.

Chuck often wore a baseball cap, by way of Earth First!, with the legend “rednecks for social responsibility,” but he had to go to grad school in order to attain that redneck status. In one of our earliest conversations, he asked me what I could tell him about the Corn Laws. I must have paused for a second too long, wondering if he was adverting to something to do with the Whiskey Rebellion, and my pause gave him the expanse he needed to embark on a disquisition that, inside of a few beers apiece, took in the class struggle in nineteenth-century agrarian England, Wat Tyler’s rebellion, the resistance of Dunkards and Lollards, and various other emanations of medieval and early modern Europe, all of which was odd enough considering that his academic hero, back when, yes, he was really and truly in grad school was the radical Americanist historian William Appleman Williams, whose sense of resistance to things as they were was fueled by a fair dose of countryside rebellion of his own, out in the populist farm communities of southwestern Iowa where rednecks and intellectuals alike were socially responsible, mistrustful of anyone who hadn’t done an honest day’s work in his or her life. Chuck Bowden professed scorn for academics, that is to say, but he lectured as much as talked, and he would have made a fine addition to any campus as the kind of curmudgeonly prof who would have put the fear in an undergraduate but inspired the best term paper he or she ever wrote. Chuck, who did his share of the dirty jobs, was fueled by many things. One was a kind of simmering anger that put me to mind of something the Scottish Marxist poet Hugh MacDiarmid wrote of in his memoir Lucky Poet, the necessity of cultivating a Viking-worthy riastral, a beserker-like rage to face the world around him. The other was a soundtrack that would sound like a classic rock station today, except with the deep cuts and as interpreted by a blend of MacDiarmid and Diogenes, using music as a tool in his ongoing critique of the world. It did not surprise me in the least when Chuck came into my office one day and announced that he was working on a book that was nothing but quotes from Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix in dialogue with each another. Fascinating, I told him, but getting permission to use the lyrics would bankrupt anyone short of Steve Jobs. The project did not go far, but it had its allure. He could have run with some of their ideas about lonely watchtowers and voodoo curses and woven them into a narrative featuring A-10 fighters, tainted water supplies, collapsed desert empires, civilizations vanishing before our eyes. The other fuel was a damaging one, in the end, and that was the alcohol, and the cigarettes, and maybe a few other substances from time to time. I say this not moralizingly, for I did my best to keep up with Chuck, as a good editor was thought to have to do with a good writer back in those hazy days. I mean, Reagan was president, after all. One of my favorite inscriptions in my whole collection is one Chuck wrote in my copy of his book Killing the Hidden Waters: “To Greg, who would never kill water as long as there was a beer available.” I couldn’t do it, just as I could never keep up with Jim Harrison or, in his headiest moments, Ed Abbey. I count that a failure of a kind but a victory of another, for I—at least at the moment—still walk the Earth. Moderation in all things, including moderation, as my doctor says.

continues... November 2019|ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com 19


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writers Z Julian Hayden, a grand old man of the desert who gave Chuck and me and Chuck Bowden was an original, and that is no cliché: He found a new way many another desert rat guidance and inspiration, once pointed to a corner of to write about the borderlands, and then the whole heart of the American his yard littered with gallon jugs of Gallo wine, back in the day when Gallo made empire, with a pure burning spirit that no one had captured before. He found nothing short of rotgut, and said, “Chuck stayed here for a couple of nights a nonromantic way of writing about the desert, its literature full of purple last week.” A bartender at a Vietnamese restaurant at which we held, ahem, emanations about alpenglow and pronghorn, while infusing it with a brand of editorial conferences from time to time marveled, “I’ve never seen anyone who romanticism all its own: Lying in a sleeping bag on a gunnery range and counting can drink so much.” satellites floating by in the sky, after all, is not so different from crossing nearAll that was means to an end, and very much of a time. Our model was virgin ground and happening on a long-abandoned pithouse or a discarded suit not Raymond Chandler, a man of mild ways, but Humphrey Bogart, who made of conquistador armor. Our mutual friend Ed Abbey had gotten off a nice ding cynicism and resisting authority and smoking unfiltered cigarettes with a rock or two about cops and tanks and the freedom that comes from walking naked and rye in the other hand seem very cool indeed. Bogart, of course, died a in the screaming hot desert, but Chuck turned those offhand comments into a terrible death, but as for the rest of us, well, we were immortal. cri de coeur that was sometimes a college seminar and sometimes a coyote’s Chuck was not just immortal but single-minded. No one could drink so howl. The academics have retreated into the aridity of post-postmodernism, much and work so hard—not even Hunter S. Thompson, whose work faltered the desert rats into a kind of quiet gnawing-at-the-edges activism, all of which long before he died. When Chuck had had a good night of it, he slept a few makes his absence all the much more noticeable. But even absent, Chuck hours and then got to work, banging away at his computer for hours on hours, speaks more than most, and he still has much to say. printing and marking up draft after draft, guzzling good coffee (and this back Thirty years after his death, Ed Abbey is getting attention from a new in the day when good coffee was not a given or a God-given birthright in generation, which may, pray the gods, bring that activism, environmental America), and sucking down a pack or two of squares—and then, six weeks and literary and humanistic, to the fore again. Those gods know, we need it: later, six weeks later just about every We need a purifying fire to scorch the six weeks the calendar could record, greedheads off this land, which indeed producing another book. Yep, that’d we do not deserve. It may take another be riastral rage: 15,000 words a week, thirty years before a new generation of not counting discards, all to the end of literary journalists discovers what you setting the wobbly historical record of can do given the formidable steel of our life and times straight at last. a Charles Bowden. It’s not that hard: I edited four of Chuck’s books in All it takes is a command of the whole the 1980s, as I say, books that were sweep of human history, a gimlet eye, lightning-hot and fierce cries of love and and knowing every verse of Townes pain, each a great leap forward from Van Zandt’s “Pancho and Lefty.” You the one before it, a startling evolution of don’t even have to smoke cigarettes form whose central message remained or drink bad red wine in order to pull constant up until the end: The world is it off, although there are days that I a catastrophic mess, Chuck told us, and think the recipe, adjusted for modern we are all complicit in its destruction— abstemiousness, might be just the Chuck Bowden and Dick Vonier at City Magazine. Photo by Laura Greenberg. some more than others, some more thing that a skilled practitioner of thoughtfully than others, but all of us righteous indignation and unauthorized guilty. At the same time, he continued, the world is a fine place, and though maintenance on big yellow machines might want to put to work. none of us is worthy of its heartbreaking beauty and though we will probably Chuck had revenge of a kind, by the way, when he asked me to write for lose in the end, it is our job to do whatever we can to save it from the monstrous City Magazine, which he founded with longtime partner in crime Dick Vonier machines that are devouring it. With which we, beg pardon, are devouring it. in 1986. One of my fond hopes is that the magazine, which lasted about three We parted ways as editor and author when, after the three epochal books years and was the sort of thing that Manhattan or London would be proud of, is published in Tucson, he got the attention of the New York trade world and digitized and made widely available, for it’s the kind of incitement that ought to took the fourth manuscript we worked on together off to the land of fame and set a hundred schools of thought contending and a thousand flowers blooming; fortune. That book spoke of danger—of, for instance, the cocaine trade in the young radicals and desert rats of today ought to get something like it going Tucson, which he and I and friends like Arturo Carrillo Strong had investigated again, filled with smart writing and scornful rage and other such things to in our own ways, and it forged links that Iran-Contra would prove in time. It épater the bourgeoisie. Bowden edited telegraphically, but he sure could make spoke of bars full of people with mirrored sunglasses and mirrored teeth who a magazine sing. would sooner see you—see anyone—dead than be bothered with a question. I wrote the piece he asked for—I no longer recall on exactly what, but Chuck Bowden asked questions. one that probably tried to intellectualize something that didn’t need it, like a A few books down the line, having dealt with the likes of the saint-cum-con punk rock band. He read it, then handed back to me and said, “It needs more man Charles Keating and other assorted episodes of mayhem on the Sonoran spin.” Spin? I thought. Spin? Then I replied, “Ah, fuck, Bowden. Spin. That’s just Desert side of things, Chuck crossed watersheds and began to work the territory marketing.”n that would be an obsession forevermore, the binational killing field that was the Rio Grande in the more dangerous corners of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. He Reprinted from America’s Most Alarming Writer: Essays on the Life and Work of would write of dead prostitutes and dead innocents and dead assassins and Charles Bowden, edited by Bill Broyles and Bruce Dinges, © 2019, published dead places: He would become the poet laureate of the dead and of all of those with permission from the University of Texas Press. The book will be available of us in the desert who are limping, ineluctably, into death’s domain, whether on release in mid-November at Antigone Books (411 N. 4th Avenue, 792-3715). having committed horrific crimes or just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. November 2019|ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com 21




Z film

Highway Patrolman (El Patrullero)

Parasite

Selena

Nomad: In the Footprints of Bruce Chatwin

The Loft Film Fest Turns 10 IT’S A TOUGH JOB, but someone has to do it: visit film festivals around the world, from Cannes to Sundance and beyond, find films that will have some resonance with Tucson audiences, and pull them all together to fit into the span of a week. That someone is Jeff Yanc (rhymes with “dance”), the longtime program director for the Loft Cinema. Asked what criteria go into selecting films for the annual Loft Film Fest, Yanc replies, “There are several things that come into consideration. We scour the globe looking for the best films shown at international film festivals, pick what’ll be available at the end of the year, when we stage our film festival, and then look at a few other issues. For one, we want to be sure that at least 50 percent of the films we show are made by women, and we want to be intentionally inclusive in other ways as well, with a broad representation of countries and identities. We also want to be sure that the films are reflective of our community.” To look at the roster of films that Yanc and his colleagues have assembled for this, the tenth edition of the Loft Film Festival, it’s clear that those criteria have been met. A highlight of films with local resonance, for example, is Alex Cox’s Highway Patrolman (El Patrullero), newly restored, a 1991 crime drama set in Mexico that has much to say about what’s happening now along the border. Cox will be on hand for the screening, as will Edward James Olmos for 24 ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com|November 2019

a showing of the beloved film Selena, about the late singer Selena Quintanilla (Jennifer Lopez), with Olmos playing her father. Olmos will receive a Lofty lifetime achievement award, while Don Coscarelli will be honored with the Lee Marvin Maverick Award—fitting for a filmmaker who was only 19 when his watch-between-the-fingers horror flick Phantasm hit theaters back in 1979, and who has since worked inside and outside of the studio system, as he chronicles in his memoir Truly Indie. Asked whether he has any personal favorites among the nearly four dozen documentaries and feature films in the current lineup, Yanc says, “Well, that’s a Sophie’s Choice sort of situation, but I really like Give Me Liberty.” That film, directed and cowritten by Russian émigré Kirill Mikhanovsky, recounts the misadventures in the day of a medical transport driver, also Russian American, who motors back and forth across Milwaukee with characters who range from a young woman who has ALS in real life to a fanatical Elvis worshipper, yielding a decidedly askew view of American life. “I think of it as a faster-paced Jim Jarmusch film,” Yanc says. Farther afield, he also singles out Errol Morris’s dark documentary about Sith lord Steve Bannon, American Dharma; Werner Herzog’s Nomad: In the Footprints of Bruce Chatwin; and the film that will close the festival, South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho’s eat-the-rich black comedy Parasite. —Gregory McNamee n



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The Loft Film Fest was proud to receive a $20,000 Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for our 2019 edition – the only film festival in Arizona to receive NEA funding. The NEA describes the purpose of Art Works grants to honor the “works of art, the ways art works on audiences and the fact that art is work for artists and arts professionals…enhancing the value of individuals and communities, by connecting us to each other and to something greater than ourselves, and by empowering creativity and innovation in our society and economy. The arts exist for beauty itself, but they also are an inexhaustible source of meaning and inspiration.” The NEA grant funds the Loft Film Fest and also Loft Film Fest on the Road, a tour of free screenings of festivalquality films to underserved rural and urban areas in Southern Arizona with Loft Solar Cinema, a van outfitted with solar panels and batteries (donated by Technicians for Sustainability) that allows the power of the sun to provide the power to project films under the stars. The Loft Solar Cinema is the only American member of the Solar World Cinema network representing more than a dozen countries. The Loft Film Fest, and the organization behind it, The Loft Cinema, are grateful for the support and the validation of the NEA Art Works grant.

CICAE Award

The Loft Film Fest is the only American festival member of the International Confederation of Art Cinemas (CICAE). The CICAE was founded in 1955 and represents a network of more than 4,000 screens and 22 international film festivals that have a shared mission of building audiences for excellent independent international films. The CICAE award will be determined by a 3-member jury. This year’s jury includes:

Boglárka Nagy Boglárka studied film, educational and cultural project management and the management of art house cinemas. In the last 15 years she has selected films for festivals, wrote film criticism and interviews, taught at trainings and organized workshops. Currently she is based in Berlin as the Managing Director of the International Confederation of Arthouse Cinemas - CICAE. Lucie Morvan Lucie is Head of Operations at YorckKino GmbH in Berlin, Germany. She started her career as an assistant in the organization of several film and theatre festivals in France. Lucie has also been collaborating with the CICAE in the past years as part of the organization team of the CICAE training program in Venice. Alison Kozberg

Alison is Managing Director of Art House Convergence, a North American association that provides resources and networking opportunities for art house cinemas. Alison is President of the Board of Los Angeles Filmforum, Southern California’s oldest continuously operating exhibitor of experimental film, since 2012. A specialist in the history of art house and alternative film exhibition, Alison holds a Master’s Degree from the University of Southern California.

Films in Competition: (23) Ága, (31) Condor and Eagle, (34) Advocate, (36) Temblores, (37) The Heart, (40) Falls Around Her, (42) Always in Season, (46) I Was at Home, But

THE LOFTY ACHIEVEMENT AWARD The Loft Film Fest is awarding two Lofty Awards this year. The Lofty is presented each year at the Loft Film Fest to an individual whose career and body of work have significantly contributed to the world of cinema, and who continues to inspire, entertain and enlighten audiences. The 2019 Loft Achievement Award will be presented to: Edward James Olmos is an

internationally-renowned actor, director, producer and activist, widely-known for such films as Zoot Suit, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, Blade Runner, Stand and Deliver, American Me, Mi Familia, and Selena, as well as iconic television series including Miami Vice and Battlestar Galactica. Over his 50+ year career, his work has garnered him an Oscar nomination and a Tony nomination, as well as numerous acting award wins, including two Golden Globes and an Emmy.

Illeana Douglas is an award-winning,

Emmy-nominated actress, comedienne, writer, producer, and director. Her many film and television credits include Goodfellas, Cape Fear, To Die For, Picture Perfect, Ghost World, Grace of My Heart, Six Feet Under, and Welcome to Sweden. She is a host, writer and interviewer for Turner Classic Movies, and the author of the acclaimed memoir, I Blame Dennis Hopper: Stories of a Life Inside and Outside the Movies.

THE LEE MARVIN MAVERICK AWARD named after the Oscar-winning actor and Tucsonan, is presented to those film artists whose work embodies a bold spirit of daring, originality and independence. This year’s Lee Mavin Maverick Award will be presented to: Don Coscarelli is a celebrated director,

producer and screenwriter, who, at the age of 19, became the youngest director to have a feature film distributed by a major studio (the independently produced drama, Jim, the World’s Greatest, released by Universal Pictures). He is perhaps best known for his iconic indie horror hit, Phantasm, and its sequels, along with such acclaimed genre films as The Beastmaster, Bubba HoTep and John Dies at the End.

SOCIAL JUSTICE AWARD presented by Oscarnominated filmmaker Kirby Dick, recognizes those filmmakers whose work displays a galvanizing passion for social change through cinema. This year’s Social Justice Award will be presented to: Julia Reichert & Steven Bognar

are Ohio-based, Oscar-nominated documentary filmmakers whose work has screened at top film festivals, on HBO, PBS and Netflix. Bognar & Reichert’s work includes the films American Factory, A Lion in the House, The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant, Sparkle and No Guns for Christmas (a New York Times OpDoc). American Factory premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Best Director: U.S. Documentary prize, and where it was acquired by Netflix and Higher Ground Productions.

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Loft Film Fest 1

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THE TWO POPES

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7 AT 7:00PM DIRECTED BY Fernando Meirelles, 2019, UK/Italy/Argentina/USA, in English/Latin/Spanish/ Italian/French/Portuguese/German with English subtitles, 125 mins., Rated PG-13

TUCSON PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Toronto; Telluride SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR FILM SPONSOR,

Patricia & John Whitehill

“Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce turn delicious banter into high art in The Two Popes.” – Gregory Ellwood, The Playlist

From Oscar-nominated filmmaker Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardener) comes this highly-acclaimed new drama starring Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce. Frustrated with the direction of the church, Cardinal Bergoglio (Pryce) requests permission to retire in 2012 from Pope Benedict (Hopkins). Instead, facing scandal and self-doubt, the introspective Pope Benedict summons his harshest critic and future successor to Rome to reveal a secret that would shake the foundations of the Catholic Church. Behind Vatican walls, a struggle commences between both tradition and progress, guilt and forgiveness, as these two very different men confront their pasts in order to find common ground and forge a future for a billion followers around the world.

OPENING NIGHT OF THE 10TH ANNUAL LOFT FILM FEST! THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 6:00PM – 7:00PM, ON THE LOFT PATIO Join us under the stars for the Loft Film Fest opening night party, featuring free champagne, delicious light hors d’oeuvres and live music!

2

PARASITE

PREVIEW SCREENING!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14 AT 7:30PM DIRECTED BY

TUCSON PREMIERE WINNER!

Palme d’Or, Cannes Film Festival OTHER FESTIVALS:

Cannes; Toronto; New York

“Brilliantly unpredictable in ways that feel revelatory … unquestionably one of the best films of the year.” – Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com

Bong Joon-ho, 2019, South Korea, in Korean with English subtitles, 132 mins., Rated R

Bong Joon-Ho (Snowpiercer, The Host) brings his singular mastery home to Korea in this pitch-black modern fairytale. Meet the Park Family: the picture of aspirational wealth. And the Kim Family, rich in street smarts but not much else. Be it chance or fate, these two houses are brought together and the Kims sense a golden opportunity. Masterminded by college-aged Ki-woo, the Kim children expediently install themselves as tutor and art therapist to the Parks. Soon, a symbiotic relationship forms between the two families. The Kims provide “indispensable” luxury services while the Parks obliviously bankroll their entire household. When a parasitic interloper threatens the Kims’ newfound comfort, a savage, underhanded battle for dominance breaks out, threatening to destroy the fragile ecosystem between the Kims and the Parks. By turns darkly hilarious and heart-wrenching, Parasite showcases a modern master at the top of his game.

CLOSING NIGHT OF THE 10TH ANNUAL LOFT FILM FEST! THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, APPROXIMATELY 9:45PM, ON THE LOFT PATIO Celebrate closing night of the 10th annual Loft Film Fest with an outdoor party featuring free snacks and entertainment!

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Loft Film Fest 3

WINDOWS ON THE WORLD

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9 AT 1:30PM THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14 AT 2:30PM FEATURING STAR EDWARD JAMES OLMOS AND DIRECTOR MICHAEL D. OLMOS IN PERSON ON NOV. 9! DIRECTED BY

Michael D. Olmos, 2019, USA, 107 mins., Not Rated

An immigrant’s son takes an epic journey from Mexico to New York City as he searches for his father (Edward James Olmos), who was an undocumented worker in the World Trade Center, and has disappeared after 9/11.

OTHER FESTIVALS:

Los Angeles; Boston; Sedona Edward James Olmos will receive this year’s Lofty Achievement Award, presented each year at the Loft Film Fest to an individual whose career and body of work have significantly contributed to the world of cinema, and who continues to inspire, entertain and enlighten audiences.

3

SELENA

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9 AT 4:30PM FEATURING A SPECIAL LIVE INTRODUCTION BY EDWARD JAMES OLMOS! DIRECTED BY

Gregory Nava, 1997, USA, in English/Spanish w/ English subtitles, 127 mins., Rated PG

The vibrant, music-filled drama Selena tells the story of the Grammy Award-winning Mexican-American star from South Texas whose life tragically ended just as she was taking Tejano where it had never gone – into mainstream America.

4

GRACE OF MY HEART

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10 AT 2:30PM FEATURING STAR ILLEANA DOUGLAS AND WRITER/DIRECTOR ALLISON ANDERS IN PERSON! DIRECTED BY

DCP PREMIERE, COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL PICTURES! Illeana Douglas will receive this year’s Lofty Achievement Award, presented each year at the Loft Film Fest to an individual whose career and body of work have significantly contributed to the world of cinema, and who continues to inspire, entertain and enlighten audiences.

Allison Anders, 1996, USA, 116 mins, Rated R

Grace of My Heart is acclaimed writer/director Allison Anders’s unabashed love letter to three decades of popular music, from the doo-wop era of the late 1950s, to the rise of the girl groups in the 1960s to the psychedelic era of the 1970s, all seen through the eyes of an aspiring singer who sacrifices her own singing career to write hit songs that launch the careers of other artists as she searches for her own voice. Illeana Douglas plays Edna Buxton (with a career name change to Denise Waverly), a talented young woman (loosely based on Carole King) with dreams of stardom and a passion for music who turns to writing songs for other artists when she’s told there’s no place for her own songs in the early ‘60s musical landscape. As she travels through two decades of personal and professional challenges, from her first big break, through the pain of rejection from the recording industry and dealing with rocky marriages – one to a Gerry Goffin-like songwriter (Eric Stoltz), the other to a Brian Wilson-type musical genius (Matt Dillon), to her struggle to realize her dream of recording her own album, the film captures all the glamour, excitement and heartbreak of an industry that can both make and break even the most talented artists. Also starring John Turturro, Peter Fonda, Chris Isaak and Patsy Kensit. “Allison Anders’ gloriously lyrical tale of two decades in the life of a fictional singersongwriter works better than most actual biopics … Illeana Douglas delivers a tour de force.” – Caroline Westbrook, Empire

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Loft Film Fest 5

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PHANTASM: REMASTERED

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9 AT 7:30PM 40TH ANNIVERSARY SCREENING WITH DIRECTOR DON COSCARELLI IN PERSON! DIRECTED BY

Don Coscarelli, 1979, USA, 88 mins., Rated R

Copies of Coscarelli’s new memoir, True Indie: Life and Death in Filmmaking, will be available for sale and signing at this event. Don Coscarelli is the recipient of the Loft Film Fest’s 2019 Lee Marvin Maverick Award, named after the Oscar-winning actor and former Tucsonan, presented to those film artists whose work embodies a bold spirit of daring, originality and independence.

In the nightmarishly surreal Phantasm, the residents of a small Oregon town have begun dying under mysterious circumstances. Two orphaned brothers (Michael Baldwin and Bill Thornbury) and the world’s coolest Ice Cream Man (Reggie Bannister) decide to investigate the strange activities at the local funeral parlor. Soon, the trio uncovers the deadly truth about its creepy undertaker, a sinister character they nickname “The Tall Man” (the terrific Angus Scrimm), and they must stop his evil plans for world domination while also trying to avoid his misshapen minions and his wicked flying chrome killing device, the dreaded Silver Sphere! Written, produced, directed, shot and edited by Don Coscarelli at only 23 years old, Phantasm deftly mixes gothic horror, sci-fi, surrealism and a killer prog rock score into an adolescent fever dream that horror fans have never stopped worshipping. “Don Coscarelli’s horror masterpiece isn’t just creepy, funny and wildly entertaining – it’s weird. Deeply weird. Endearingly weird. Weird on the kind of wavelength that you don’t really see very often.” – Jacob Hall, Slash Film

6

AMERICAN FACTORY

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10 AT 11:30AM Featuring a post-film Q&A with Oscar-nominated director Kirby Dick (Twist of Faith; The Invisible War) in person and American Factory codirectors, Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, recipients of this year’s Social Justice Award, via Skype! DIRECTED BY

WINNER!

Best Director U.S. Documentary, Sundance Film Festival OTHER FESTIVALS:

Sundance; Tribeca, Full Frame The Social Justice Award presented by Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Kirby Dick, recognizes those filmmakers whose work displays a galvanizing passion for social change through cinema. This year’s Social Justice Award will be presented to filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert.

Steven Bognar & Julia Reichert, 2019, USA, 115 mins., TV-14

From Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winners Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar (The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant; A Lion in the House; Seeing Red) comes American Factory, a Netflix Original Documentary presented by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions and Participant Media. The acclaimed film takes a deep dive into a post-industrial Ohio, where a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant and hires two thousand blue-collar Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America. Julia Reichert & Steven Bognar are Ohio-based, Oscar-nominated documentary filmmakers whose work has screened at top film festivals, on HBO, PBS and Netflix. Bognar & Reichert’s work includes the films American Factory, A Lion in the House, The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant, Sparkle and No Guns for Christmas (a New York Times OpDoc). American Factory premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Best Director: U.S. Documentary prize, and where it was acquired by Netflix and Higher Ground Productions.

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Loft Film Fest

7

TRAVELING WHILE BLACK

Screenings will take place on Oculus headsets, in a bus generously provided by Old Pueblo Trolley, located east of Screen 3. Due to the nature of the experience, showtimes will not be set in advance and admittance will be on a first-come firstserve basis. Thanks to our VR Consultant, Eric Carr. Roger Ross Williams, Felix Lajeunesse, Paul Raphael, Ayesha Nadarajah, 2019, USA, 20 mins., Not Rated

DIRECTED BY

Traveling While Black is a cinematic VR experience that immerses the viewer in the long history of restriction of movement for black Americans and the creation of safe spaces in our communities.

TUCSON PREMIERE

Academy Award winner Roger Ross Williams and Emmy Award-winning Felix & Paul Studios’ film transports you to historic Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington, DC. The viewer shares an intimate series of moments with several of the patrons of Ben’s as they reflect on their experiences of restricted movement and race relations in the U.S.

8

THE MUPPET MOVIE

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8 AT 6:30PM DIRECTED BY

James Frawley, 1979, USA, 95 mins., Rated G

This FREE screening will take place outdoors on “Hippie Hill” at Himmel Park, 1000 N. Tucson Boulevard. Please bring your own seating. You’ll find the Rainbow Connection at Himmel Park as The Loft Film Fest celebrates the 40th anniversary of Jim Henson’s beloved family classic with a free outdoor Solar Cinema screening of The Muppet Movie!

FREE ADMISSION!

In The Muppet Movie, the first of the Muppets’ big screen adventures, Kermit dreams of leaving behind his humble life as a banjo-pickin’ swamp frog to find fame and fortune in glorious Tinseltown! Featuring an all-star cast of supporting humans including Mel Brooks, Madeline Kahn, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor and Orson Wells, The Muppet Movie is pure movie magic for kids (and adults) of all ages!

9

POINT BLANK

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8 AT 7:00PM Special CRITIC’S CHOICE screening! See the classic 1967 thriller, Point Blank, starring Lee Marvin, on the big screen in 35mm, selected by noted film critic and political commentator, John Powers, critic at large for NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Mr. Powers will participate in a post-film discussion with Loft Cinema Program Director, Jeff Yanc. DIRECTED BY

35MM PRINT SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR FILM SPONSOR,

University of Arizona School of Theatre, Film & Television

John Boorman, 1967, USA, 92 mins., Not Rated

John Boorman’s fabulous, fractured 1967 thriller Point Blank is a key link between vintage noir and the great paranoid conspiracy films of the 1970s. Tough guy Lee Marvin gives a slam-bang performance as Walker, a hard-nosed hoodlum doublecrossed by his confederates after a daring heist: he’s shot point-blank and left for dead.

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Loft Film Fest

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9

HIGHWAY PATROLMAN

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13 AT 7:30PM WITH CELEBRATED DIRECTOR ALEX COX (REPO MAN; SID AND NANCY) IN PERSON! DIRECTED BY

Rated

NEW 4K RESTORATION Preceded by the short film, DEXTROSE-8 A shadowy past and a mysterious substance lead Rogelio down the road to nowhere. DIRECTED BY Merritt Crocker, 2019, USA, 15 mins., Not Rated

Alex Cox, 1991, Mexico/USA/Japan, in Spanish with English subtitles, 104 mins., Not

“I used to think Highway Patrolman was about the impossibility of doing good,” notes director Alex Cox of one of his favorite films. “But now I think it’s really about the impossibility of imposing goodness on others.” Inspired by the experiences of former Mexican lawman Poncho Granados – who served as a driver for Cox while the director was scouting locations for his 1987 film Walker – this south of the border crime drama follows a rookie member (Roberto Sosa) of Mexico’s national highway patrol, who struggles to keep on the straight and narrow in a department rife with corruption.

11

ATLANTICS

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10 AT 5:30PM DIRECTED BY Mati Diop, 2019, France/Senegal/Belgium, in Wolof/French/English with English subtitles, 104 mins., Not Rated

ARIZONA PREMIERE WINNER!

Jury Grand Prize, Cannes Film Festival SENEGAL’S OSCAR SUBMISSION

Acclaimed French actress Mati Diop (35 Shots of Rum) catapults onto the international stage as a filmmaker with her haunting, award-winning feature debut, Atlantics. Set in Senegal’s seaside capital of Dakar, Atlantics follows the blossoming love between young construction worker Souleiman (first-time actor Ibrahima Traoré), who’s being exploited by his rich boss, and Ada (newcomer Mama Sané), about to enter into an unwanted arranged marriage with a wealthy, arrogant businessman. Souleiman and his fed-up coworkers soon make plans to travel to Spain to find work, leading to a dramatic separation between Souleiman and Ada. But when the men mysteriously disappear on their ocean voyage, a strange illness begins to seep into the community and troubling messages from the presumed-dead Souleiman send Ada on a hunt for the truth.

12

VARDA BY AGNÈS

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10 AT 7:45PM THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14 AT 5:15PM DIRECTED BY

SOUTHWEST PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Berlin, New York

Agnès Varda, 2019, France, in French w/ English subtitles, 115 mins., Not Rated

When 2017 Honorary Academy Award-winner Agnès Varda died earlier this year at age 90, the world lost one of its most inspirational cinematic radicals. From her neorealist-tinged 1954 feature debut La Pointe Courte to her New Wave treasures Cléo from 5 to 7 and Le Bonheur to her inquiries into those on society’s outskirts like Vagabond, The Gleaners and I, and the 2017 Oscar nominee Faces Places, she made enduring films that were both forthrightly political and gratifyingly mercurial, and which toggled between fiction and documentary decades before it was more commonplace in art cinema. In what would be her final work, Varda guides us through her career, from her movies to her remarkable still photography to the delightful and creative installation work. It’s a fitting farewell to a filmmaker, told in her own words.

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Loft Film Fest

13

PARADISE HILLS

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9 AT 10:00PM THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14 AT NOON DIRECTED BY

Alice Waddington, 2019, Spain, in English, 95 mins., Not Rated

In this futuristic fairy tale, Uma (Emma Roberts, Scream Queens) wakes to find herself at Paradise Hills, a mysterious facility located on an idyllic island where high-class families send their daughters to become unnaturally perfect versions of themselves — run by the mysterious Duchess (Mia Jovovich, The Fifth Element). The outspoken Uma finds solace in friendship with other Paradise Hills residents: Chloe (Danielle McDonald, Pattycakes), Yu (Awkwafina, The Farewell), and Mexican popstar Amarna (Eiza González, Baby Driver). As she begins to explore the reality of Paradise Hills, Uma soon realizes that a sinister secret lurks behind all this beauty. With exquisitely lush futuristic sets, dreamy art deco-inspired costumes and a bounty of strong actresses, Paradise Hills is a totally unique vision of femininity and oppression – a beguiling fantasy confection with a dark horror center.

TUCSON PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Sundance; Fantasia

14

ERNIE & JOE

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 AT 7:15PM POST FILM DISCUSSION WITH JUDY KOWALICK, SABRINA TAYLOR AND JASON WINSKY DIRECTED BY

Jenifer McShane, 2019, USA, 96 mins., Not Rated

A graceful and empathetic look at a new kind of police force, Ernie & Joe is a moving portrait of two Texas police officers who are helping change the way police respond to mental health calls. The film takes audiences on a personal journey, braiding together experiences during Ernie and Joe’s daily encounters with people in crisis. These are not your everyday cops; dressed in polos and jeans, brandishing no weapons, they sit down with distraught and potentially violent people to talk. They listen. They take their time. Ernie and Joe are doing the work and walking the walk. Amid heightened scrutiny of police-community relations, and deepening understanding of mental health issues, Jenifer McShane’s documentary offers proof of an enlightened way forward and is testament to the profound impact of this unique approach.

ARIZONA PREMIERE WINNER!

Special Jury Award, SXSW OTHER FESTIVALS:

SXSW; AFI Docs, Doc NYC

15

THE CHAMBERMAID

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7 AT 5:15PM MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11 AT 11:45AM DIRECTED BY

WINNER!

Best First Feature Ariel Award (Mexico’s Academy Award) OTHER FESTIVALS:

Toronto; AFI Fest; San Sebastian MEXICO’S OSCAR SUBMISSION

Lila Avilés, 2019, Mexico, 102 mins., Not Rated

Set entirely inside an opulent, one-percenter Mexico City high-rise hotel, Lila Avilés’ stunning debut follows Eve (Gabriela Cartol), a young maid working the day shift as she navigates the various challenges that come with her job. Oscillating between cleaning bathrooms, changing linens, and impromptu childcare sessions for pampered guests, Eve’s days are packed—all done far away from her own fouryear-old son Ruben. On the side, she studies for her GED and clearly longs to get ahead, striking tentative friendships with her fellow workers. An immersive and utterly thrilling film boasting one of the year’s most unforgettable central roles, The Chambermaid pulls back the curtain on an area of labor routinely taken for granted, and offers an empathetic look into one woman’s place within a world increasingly defined by haves and have-nots.

THIS GUIDE PROVIDED BY THE LOFT CINEMA AND ZOCALO MAGAZINE


Loft Film Fest

16

11

THE CAVE

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9 AT 7:15PM MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11 AT 2:30PM Feras Fayyad, 2019, Syria/Denmark/Germany/USA/Qatar, in Arabic/English with English subtitles, 95 mins., Rated PG-13

DIRECTED BY

TUCSON PREMIERE WINNER! People’s Choice Award for

Documentary, Toronto Film Festival

SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR FILM SPONSOR,

From National Geographic Documentary Films (Free Solo; Jane), Oscar-nominated filmmaker Feras Fayyad (Last Men in Aleppo) delivers an unflinching story of the Syrian war with the powerful new documentary, The Cave. For besieged civilians, hope and safety lie underground inside the subterranean hospital known as The Cave, where 30 year-old pediatrician and managing physician Dr. Amani Ballor and her female colleagues have claimed their right to work as equals alongside their male counterparts, doing their jobs in a way that would be unthinkable in what’s left of the oppressively patriarchal culture that exists above. The Cave paints a stirring portrait of courage, resilience and female solidarity.

Hal Melfi

17

AND THEN WE DANCED

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8 AT 1:45PM TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 AT 2:45PM DIRECTED BY Levan Akin, 2019, Sweden/Georgia/France, in Georgian with English subtitles, 105 mins., Not Rated

Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani), a Georgian teenager descending from a line of dancers, has trained his entire life toward one goal: to dance in the Georgian National Ballet. In the meantime, he is a National Ensemble dancer, challenged by a demanding teacher and rigorous rehearsals. However, the most significant obstacle he faces are the romantic feelings he develops for Irakli (Bachi Valishvili), a new dancer who becomes Merab’s rival and threatens to overshadow him.

ARIZONA PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Cannes; Zurich; BFI London SWEDEN’S OSCAR SUBMISSION

Preceded by the short film, THE POINTLESS SISTERS A documentary portrait of The Pointless Sisters, a drag group formed 34 years ago by mainly Latino men. DIRECTED BY Dave Sims, 2018, USA, 8 mins., Not Rated

18

NOMAD: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF BRUCE CHATWIN

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8 AT 5:30PM WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13 AT 1:00PM DIRECTED BY

ARIZONA PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Tribeca; Telluride; Sheffield Doc

Werner Herzog, 2019, USA, 85 mins., Not Rated

When British writer and adventurer Bruce Chatwin was dying of AIDS, he gave his friend Werner Herzog the rucksack that he carried on all of his adventures around the world. Now, three decades later, carrying the rucksack, Herzog sets out on his own journey inspired by Chatwin’s passion for the nomadic life. Along the way, Herzog discovers stories of dinosaurs, lost tribes, Aboriginal traditions, wanderers and dreamers. From Patagonia, to the gorgeous landscape of Wales, to the Australian outback, Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin offers a fitting and thought-provoking tribute to a man whose work explores human restlessness and wandering, borders and exile, and art and objects. Preceded by the short film, THE TOUGH A discovery arouses a man’s imagination and propels him forward in an uncouth and obsessive way. DIRECTED BY Marcin Polar, 2019, Poland, 14 mins., Not Rated

THIS GUIDE PROVIDED BY THE LOFT CINEMA AND ZOCALO MAGAZINE


THURSDAY, NOV. 7 SCREEN 3

12PM

11AM

SCREEN 1

FRIDAY, NOV. 8

32 What She Said 28 Words from a Bear 12:00pm 85mins

36 Temblores (Tremors) CICAE

11:30am 95mins

12:15pm 107mins

1PM 2PM 3PM

SCREEN 1

25 Britt-Marie Was Here 2:15pm 94mins

46 I Was at Home, But CICAE

17 And then We Danced w/ Pointless Sisters 1:45pm 113mins

2:45pm 105mins

21 Sundance Indigenous Shorts 5:00pm 74mins

15 The Chambermaid

1 The Two Popes 7:00pm 125mins

26 Cunningham 7:30pm 93mins

9 Point Blank w/ John Powers

10PM 11PM

SCREEN 1 27 International Shorts

11:00am 96mins

11:00am 120mins

41 Always in Season CICAE

3 Windows on the World w/ Edward James Olmos & Michael D. Olmos

1:15pm 89mins

37 The Heart CICAE

INTRO

18 Nomad w/ The Tough

3 Selena w/ Edward James Olmos

5:30pm 99mins

4:30pm 127mins

8 The Muppet Movie 6:30pm 95mins

7:00pm 92mins +30min Q&A

7:45pm 88mins

FREE ADMISSION!

5 Phantasm w/ Don Coscarelli 7:30pm 88mins

30 Deerskin 10:00pm 77mins

9:45pm 101mins

22 Knives and Skin 9:45pm 111mins

45 Son of the White Mare 10:00pm 81mins

13 Paradise Hills 10:00pm 95mins

THIS GUIDE PROVIDED BY THE LOFT CINEMA AND ZOCALO MAGAZINE

SCREEN 1

6 American Factory w/ Kirby Dick

11:30am 100mins

11:30am 115mins

34 Advocate CICAE 1:45pm 108mins

33 Saint Frances w/ How to Drink 4:15pm 122mins

+30min Q&A

4 Grace of My Heart with Allison Anders and Illeana Douglas 2:30pm 116mins +30min Q&A

11 Atlantics 5:30pm 104mins

16 The Cave 7:15pm 95mins

12 Varda by Agnès 7:45pm 115mins

+30min Q&A

19 Extra Ordinary w/ Under Covers

SUNDAY,

40 Falls Around Her CICAE

+30min Q&A

3:15pm 100mins

35 Mickey and the Bear

SCREEN 3

1:30pm 107mins

4:15pm 95mins

5:15pm 102mins

INTRO

HIMMEL PARK

23 Ága CICAE

9PM

8PM

7PM

6PM

5PM

4PM

24 The Infiltrators

SCREEN 3

SATURDAY, NOV. 9

38 Cinemad: Live Zine Show 9:30pm 80mins


NOV. 10 SCREEN 3

MONDAY, NOV. 11 SCREEN 1

TUESDAY, NOV. 12

SCREEN 3

SCREEN 1

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 13

SCREEN 3

SCREEN 1 35 Mickey and the Bear

39 Give Me Liberty 12:00pm 110mins

15 The Chambermaid 11:45am 102mins

2:45pm 102mins

43 Straight Up 5:00pm 95mins

43 Straight Up

11:45am 108mins

12:00pm 95mins

12:00pm 102mins

20 Shatterbox Shorts 44 American Dharma w/ Albatross Soup

44 American Dharma w/ Albatross Soup

34 Advocate CICAE

2:00pm 105mins

18 Nomad w/ The Tough

16 The Cave

29 Queen of Hearts

2:30pm 95mins

2:15pm 127mins

17 And then We Danced w/ Pointless Sisters 2:45pm 113mins

26 Cunningham 5:00pm 93mins

23 Ága CICAE 5:00pm 96mins

5:15pm 85mins

3:15pm 100mins

32 What She Said

30 Deerskin

5:15pm 95mins

5:30pm 77mins

37 The Heart CICAE

SCREEN 3

13 Paradise Hills 12:00pm 95mins

12:15pm 100mins 19 Extra Ordinary w/ Under Covers 1:30pm 101mins

40 Falls Around Her CICAE

SCREEN 1

46 I Was at Home, But CICAE 11:15am 105mins

1:00pm 99mins

+30min Q&A

28 Words from a Bear

11:00am 88mins

SCREEN 3

THURSDAY, NOV. 14

45 Son of the White Mare

42 White Snake

3 Windows on the World

2:45pm 99mins

2:30pm 107mins

3:45pm 81mins 39 Give Me Liberty 41 Always in Season CICAE

5:00pm 110mins

12 Varda by Agnès 5:15pm 115mins

5:45pm 89mins

29 Queen of Hearts 7:30pm 127mins

31 The Condor & the Eagle CICAE 7:15pm 90mins +30min Q&A

33 Saint Frances w/ How to Drink

14 Ernie & Joe w/ panel 7:15pm 96mins

7:30pm 122mins +30min Q&A

24 The Infiltrators 7:30pm 95mins

10 Highway 25 Patrolman Britt-Marie w/ Alex Cox Was Here w/ Dextrose-8 7:30pm 119mins

7:45pm 94mins

+30min Q&A

7 TRAVELING WHILE BLACK EVERY DAY OF THE FILM FEST

VR EXPERIENCE

IN COMPETITION: CICAE AWARD THIS GUIDE PROVIDED BY THE LOFT CINEMA AND ZOCALO MAGAZINE

2 Parasite 7:30pm 132mins

36 Temblores (Tremors) CICAE 7:45pm 107mins


14

Loft Film Fest

19

EXTRA ORDINARY

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7 AT 9:45PM WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13 AT 1:30PM DIRECTED BY

Mike Ahern & Edna Loughman, 2019, Ireland/Belgium, in English, 94 mins., Rated R

Lonely thirtysomething Rose (Maeve Higgins) is a driving instructor in a rural Irish town. It’s not an especially rewarding gig, but it’s all she can do to get away from her true calling — that of a paranormal “sensitive,” daughter of a famous departed TV medium. One of the most exhilaratingly funny and endearing comedy/occult creations in recent years, Extra Ordinary is an inventively oddball paranormal extravaganza fully befitting of its title. Co-starring Will Forte.

SOUTHWEST PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Preceded by the short film, UNDER COVERS On the night of a lunar eclipse, we uncover the sweet, salacious, and spooky secrets of a small town. DIRECTED BY Michaela Olsen, 2019, USA, 7 mins., Not Rated

SXSW; Fantasia

20

SHATTERBOX SHORT FILMS

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11 AT 2:00PM

Currently in its third season, Shatterbox is a culture-shifting series from Refinery29 and Level Forward that gives women storytellers a platform to create short films that redefine identity, imagination, and continue to advance the urgent shift for equity in narrative product and process. SHOOT DIRECTED BY

Veronica Rodriguez, 2019, USA, 12 mins..

GIRL CALLIN DIRECTED BY

Tiffany J. Johnson, 2019, USA, 14 mins.

PRESENTED BY LEVEL FORWARD AND REFINERY29

WINGMEN DIRECTED BY

FILM DESCRIPTIONS AT: loftfilmfest.org

JACK AND JO DON’T WANT TO DIE DIRECTED BY

Dir. by Nicole Emanuele, 2019, USA, 16 mins.

HUMAN TERRAIN DIRECTED BY

Parisa Barani, 2019, USA, 16 mins. Kantú Lentz, 2019, USA, 19 mins.

DOROTHEA’S BLUES DIRECTED BY LChanning Godfrey Peoples, 2019, USA, 15 mins. WHITE ECHO DIRECTED BY

Chloë Sevigny, 2019, USA, 16 mins.

SUNDANCE INSTITUTE INDIGENOUS SHORTS PROGRAM THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7 AT 5:00PM 21

In honor of Native American Heritage Month in November, the Sundance Institute Indigenous Program and the Arthouse Convergence present this program of acclaimed Indigenous short films. BIRDS IN THE EARTH DIRECTED BY Marja Helander (Sámi), 11 mins. FAINTING SPELLS DIRECTED BY Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk/Pechanga Band of Luiseño), 10 mins. POINT BLANK JÁAJI APPROX DIRECTED BY Dir. by Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk/Pechanga Band of FILM DESCRIPTIONS AT: loftfilmfest.org

Luiseño), 8 mins.

MY FATHER’S TOOLS DIRECTED BY Heather Condo (Mi’gmaq), 7 mins. THROAT SINGING IN KANGIRSUK DIRECTED BY Eva Kaukai (Inuit) and Manon Chamberland

(Inuit), 4 mins.

SHIINAAB PART II DIRECTED BY Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr. (Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa Indians), 8 mins.

HOOGHAN DIRECTED BY

Blackhorse Lowe (Nenahnezad, New Mexico Navajo), 10 mins.

THIS GUIDE PROVIDED BY THE LOFT CINEMA AND ZOCALO MAGAZINE


Loft Film Fest

22

15

KNIVES AND SKIN

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8 AT 9:45PM DIRECTED BY

Jennifer Reeder, 2019, USA, 111 mins., Not Rated

Surreal forces lurk behind the fluorescent facade of an unassuming Midwestern town in writer/director Jennifer Reeder’s hyper-stylized Knives and Skin. Sophomore year of high school is upended when Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley) suddenly vanishes after being abandoned at the lake by her jock boyfriend (Ty Olwin). In the wake of Carolyn’s mysterious disappearance, a dark abyss widens among the inhabitants of Big River as the ripples of anxiety and mistrust begin to permeate through the high school halls and beyond. In a series of intertwined suburban vignettes, fear and loss cause the members of Carolyn’s inner-circle to develop unexpected and desperate coping strategies as they slowly begin to unravel under the impact of their grief and suspicions. Neon-drenched cinematography, moody synthesizers, and acapella renditions of 80s pop hits are the foundations of this feminist teen noir that evokes the surreal dreamscape of Twin Peaks and the meangirl existential malaise of Heathers.

ARIZONA PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Berlin; Tribeca; Fantasia

23

ÁGA

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8 AT 11:00AM TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 AT 5:00PM DIRECTED BY Milko Lazarov, 2019, Bulgaria/Germany/France, in Yakut with English subtitles, 96 mins., Not Rated

OTHER FESTIVALS: Berlin; Chicago; San Francisco

ARIZONA PREMIERE IN COMPETITION: CICAE AWARD

BULGARIA’S OSCAR SUBMISSION

In a yurt on the snow-covered fields of the North, Nanook and Sedna live following the traditions of their ancestors. Alone in the wilderness, they look like the last people on Earth. Nanook and Sedna’s traditional way of life starts changing — slowly, but inevitably. Hunting becomes more and more difficult, the animals around them die from inexplicable deaths and the ice has been melting earlier every year. Chena, who visits them regularly, is their only connection to the outside world — and to their daughter Ága, who has left the icy tundra a long time ago due to family feud. When Sedna’s health deteriorates, Nanook decides to fulfill her wish. He embarks on a long journey in order to find Ága.

24

THE INFILTRATORS

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8 AT 4:15PM TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 AT 7:30PM DIRECTED BY Cristina Ibarra & Alex Rivera, 2019, USA, in English/Spanish with English subtitles, 95 mins., Not Rated

WINNER! NEXT Audience Award and NEXT Innovator Award, Sundance Film Festival

ARIZONA PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Sundance; Tribeca; Frameline

In 2012, members of a motley crew of undocumented youth activists known as DREAMers willingly handed themselves over to the Florida Border Patrol. While locked up inside the crowded for-profit Broward Transitional Center, they would attempt to hatch their plan: free the detainees—and themselves—before being deported. Conspiring with their cohorts on the outside including gay DREAMer activist Mohammad Abdollahi, Marco (Maynor Alvarado) and Viri (Chelsea Rendon) find themselves in over their heads, fighting against the clock and striving to maintain anonymity within the lockup until their mission is complete.

THIS GUIDE PROVIDED BY THE LOFT CINEMA AND ZOCALO MAGAZINE


16

Loft Film Fest

25

BRITT-MARIE WAS HERE

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7 AT 2:15PM WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13 AT 7:45PM DIRECTED BY

Not Rated

Tuva Novotny, 2019, Sweden, in Swedish/German with English subtitles, 94 mins.,

Based on the bestselling novel by Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove), this warmhearted comedy/drama finds Britt-Marie, age 63, suddenly reconsidering her purpose in life after she discovers her husband of 40 years has been cheating on her. Accepting a supremely unglamorous job at a ramshackle youth center in the backwater town of Borg, she reluctantly takes on the impossible task of coaching the children’s soccer team to victory. Despite having no experience and no resources, Britt-Marie is invigorated by the team’s infectious energy and, for the first time maybe ever, allows herself to step outside of her comfort zone – and into a potential romance with a charming local police officer.

TUCSON PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Edmonton; Victoria

26

CUNNINGHAM 3D

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7 AT 7:30PM MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11 AT 5:00PM DIRECTED BY

Alla Kovgan, 2019, Germany/France/USA, in English, 93 mins., Rated PG

The iconic Merce Cunningham is stunningly profiled in this 3D documentary – a breathtaking explosion of music, dance and never-before-seen archive material woven together to create an experiential tribute to one of the world’s greatest modern dance artists. Even for those who know little about dance, Merce Cunningham is a recognizable name — an iconic figure in his field. His mid–20th century collaborations with composer John Cage (his lifelong partner) and visual artist Robert Rauschenberg were central to an era of transformation. Now, with Cunningham, we have a chance to experience what he did. Filmmaker Alla Kovgan assembles the last generation of Cunningham dancers to present landmark works from the Cunningham repertoire.

TUCSON PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Toronto; New York; Chicago

27

INTERNATIONAL SHORTS

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9 AT 11:00AM ALL INCLUSIVE DIRECTED BY AZIZA DIRECTED BY

Corina Schwingruber Ilić, 2018, Switzerland, 10 mins.

Soudade Kaadan, 2019, Lebanon/Syria, 13 mins.

IT’S GOING TO BE BEAUTIFUL DIRECTED BY

Mexico/USA, 9 mins.

MUDPOTS DIRECTED BY

Luis Gutierrez Arias and John Henry Theisen, 2019,

Cate Smierciak, 2019, USA, 12 mins..

DULCE DIRECTED BY Angello Faccini and Guille Isa, 2019, Colombia/USA, 10 mins.. FILM DESCRIPTIONS AT: loftfilmfest.org

CABLESTREET DIRECTED BY Meredith Lackey, 2019, USA, 22 mins. EDGECOMBE DIRECTED BY Crystal Kayiza, 2018, USA, 15 mins. LIFE IN MINIATURE DIRECTED BY Ellen Evans, 2018, UK, 5 mins. THE SILENCE OF THE DYING FISH DIRECTED BY Vasilis Kekatos, 2018, Greece/France, 2018, 14 mins. 99¢ DREAMS DIRECTED BY Tasnim Boufelfel, 2019, USA, 9 mins.

THIS GUIDE PROVIDED BY THE LOFT CINEMA AND ZOCALO MAGAZINE


Loft Film Fest

28

17

WORDS FROM A BEAR

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7 AT NOON MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11 AT 5:15PM DIRECTED BY

Jeffrey Palmer, 2019, USA, 85 mins., Not Rated

When N. Scott Momaday won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for his novel, House Made of Dawn, it marked one of the first major acknowledgments of Native American literature and the vibrant contemporary culture it described. Now, Momaday’s transportive words come to life in this cinematic biography of one of the most celebrated Native American storytellers. In Words from a Bear, distinctly expressive animations intersect with stunning footage of the Great Plains as Momaday draws from his Kiowa ancestry and identity to pose universal questions about how we connect to our origins, each other, and the earth. In a series of intimate interviews, Momaday expounds on his life and its many challenges, while insights from the likes of Joy Harjo, Robert Redford, and Jeff and Beau Bridges reveal the impact of his literary contributions.

TUCSON PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Sundance; Seattle

29

QUEEN OF HEARTS

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10 AT 7:30PM TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 AT 2:15PM May el-Toukhy, 2019, Denmark/Sweden, in Danish/Swedish with English subtitles, 127 mins., Not Rated

DIRECTED BY

ARIZONA PREMIERE WINNER! Audience Award (World

Cinema), Sundance Film Festival

OTHER FESTIVALS:

Anne, a successful lawyer, lives in a beautiful modernist home with her two daughters and physician husband, Peter. Yet when Gustav, Peter’s troubled teenage son from another relationship, comes to live with them, Anne forms an intimate bond with Gustav that jeopardizes her perfect life. And what initially seems like a liberating move for Anne soon turns into a disturbing story of power, betrayal, and responsibility with devastating consequences. With bold and astonishing vision, cowriter/director May el-Toukhy masterfully builds Anne’s world, seducing the viewer into complicity before maneuvering her protagonist onto an unsettling and shocking path.

Sundance; Rotterdam; Hong Kong

30

DEERSKIN

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7 AT 10:00PM WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13 AT 5:30PM DIRECTED BY

ARIZONA PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Cannes; Toronto; Chicago SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR FILM SPONSOR,

Joe Tarver

Quentin Dupieux, 2019, France, in French with English subtitles, 77 mins., Not Rated

From the delightfully demented mind of French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux, best known for 2010’s murderous-tire movie Rubber, comes this hilariously addled exploration of obsession, identity, and apparel. Starring Oscar-winner Jean Dujardin (The Artist), Deerskin is a comic character study in which clothes make the man… mad. After failing to flush his corduroy jacket down a roadside restroom toilet, Georges (Dujardin) drives to the rural manor of an aging hippie who sells him a vintage fringed deerskin jacket and a camcorder. No one could mistake this old jacket for a flattering garment but for Georges, it’s love at first sight. His heart broken and finances frozen, Georges embarks on an odyssey to destroy all other jackets, filming himself in the process, and his intimate conversations with the beloved deerskin coat only fuel his paranoia and steely resolve.

THIS GUIDE PROVIDED BY THE LOFT CINEMA AND ZOCALO MAGAZINE


18

Loft Film Fest 31

THE CONDOR & THE EAGLE

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11 AT 7:15PM POST FILM Q&A WITH DIRECTOR CLEMENT GUERRA AND FILM PROTAGONIST, BRYAN PARRAS Clement Guerra, 2019, Germany/USA/Canada/Ecuador/Peru, in English/Spanish with English subtitles, 90 mins., Not Rated

DIRECTED BY

ARIZONA PREMIERE IN COMPETITION: CICAE AWARD

Four Indigenous leaders embark on an extraordinary trans-continental adventure from the Canadian plains to deep into the heart of the Amazonian jungle to unite the peoples of North and South America and deepen the meaning of “Climate Justice”. The Condor and the Eagle documents the stories of these four well-known Native environmental spokespeople who are at the forefront of a perspective shift in the identity of their people.

32

WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8 AT 11:30AM TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 AT 5:15PM DIRECTED BY

ARIZONA PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Berlin; Doc NYC; Telluride

Rob Garver, 2019, USA, 95 mins., Not Rated

Tagged by Roger Ebert as the most influential film critic of the late twentieth century, this smart, punchy and highly entertaining documentary tells the story of Pauline Kael’s turbulent life and work, through never-before-seen archival footage, her published writing and personal letters, and interviews with both friends and foes of her pen. Pauline is voiced by Sarah Jessica Parker, and participants include Quentin Tarantino, Camille Paglia, David O. Russell, Molly Haskell, Francis Ford Coppola, and daughter Gina James.

33

SAINT FRANCES

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9 AT 4:15PM MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11 AT 7:30PM DIRECTED BY

Alex Thompson, 2019, USA, 106 mins., Not Rated

WINNER! Audience Award and Special Jury Award (Breakthrough Voice), SXSW Film Festival

ARIZONA PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

SXSW; Frameline; L.A. Outfest

Funny, moving and wincingly real, Saint Frances is both a heartening story of an unlikely friendship and an illuminating look into girlhood, womanhood, and motherhood. Preceded by the short film, HOW TO DRINK Eddie’s hard drinking dad teaches him and his well-to-do friend “how to drink.” DIRECTED BY Kelly Loudenberg, 2019, USA, 15 mins., Not Rated

34

ADVOCATE

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9 AT 1:45PM TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 AT 11:45AM DIRECTED BY Phillipe Bellaiche & Rachel Leah Jones, 2019, Israel/Canada/Switzerland, in Hebrew/Arabic/English with English subtitles, 108 mins., Not Rated

ARIZONA PREMIERE IN COMPETITION: CICAE AWARD

Israeli human-rights lawyer Lea Tsemel is a force that won’t be deterred. Having defended Palestinians against a host of criminal charges in Israeli courts for nearly five decades, she is a staunch supporter of compassion within the court system. In Advocate, Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaïche masterfully juxtapose two of Tsemel’s cases, one professional and the other personal: the defense of a minor accused of attempted murder and a past case in which she defended her activist husband from an accusation of treason against the state.

THIS GUIDE PROVIDED BY THE LOFT CINEMA AND ZOCALO MAGAZINE


Loft Film Fest 35

19

MICKEY AND THE BEAR

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8 AT 7:45PM WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13 AT 11:00AM DIRECTED BY

ARIZONA PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Cannes; SXSW; Seattle

Annabelle Attanasio, 2019, USA, 88 mins., Not Rated

Wise beyond her years, teenager Mickey (Camila Morrone) is trying her best to be a center of stability for her alcoholic, opioid-addicted veteran father Hank (James Badge Dale), who still hasn’t recovered from the recent passing of his wife. Feeling stuck in her small hometown, Mickey is dreaming of going to college and forging an independent future for herself, but the love she feels for her father pulls her back into his orbit over and over again. In a desperate search for independence and her own identity, she must risk family, heartbreak, and her standing in the only place she can call home.

36

TEMBLORES (TREMORS)

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7 AT 12:15PM THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14 AT 7:45PM DIRECTED BY Jayro Bustamante, 2019, Guatemala/France/Luxembourg, in Spanish with English

subtitles, 107 mins., Not Rated

SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR FILM SPONSOR, Max McCauslin

ARIZONA PREMIERE IN COMPETITION: CICAE AWARD

In this deeply personal follow-up to his landmark debut Ixcanul, director Jayro Bustamante shifts his focus from rural Guatemala to the denizens of Guatemala City but once again set his sights on an individual caught between two seeming irreconcilable worlds. A seemingly exemplary pillar of Guatemala City’s Evangelical Christian community, Pablo’s announcement that he intends to leave his wife for another man sends shock waves through the family.

37

THE HEART

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8 AT 3:15PM THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14 AT 12:15PM DIRECTED BY

Rated

SOUTHWEST PREMIERE IN COMPETITION: CICAE AWARD

Fanni Metelius, 2019, Sweden, in Swedish with English subtitles, 100 mins., Not

A young photographer named Mika (Fanni Metelius) isn’t looking for a serious relationship. As she admits, she prefers to listen to Lil’ Kim and watch Sex in the City, adding that freedom is everything to her. At least until she meets music producer, Tesfay (Ahmed Berhan), who is nothing like her, and the endless nights of drunken parties suddenly turn into a live-in relationship with evenings spent on the coach playing Xbox. The Heart is a fresh, compelling portrait of a new generation of young adults wrestling with intimacy, sexuality and great expectations.

38

CINEMAD LIVE ZINE SHOW

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9 AT 9:30PM

HOSTED BY FILMMAKER MIKE PLANTE, SENIOR SHORT FILM PROGRAMMER FOR THE SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL In 1999, while living in Tucson, projectionist and film nut Mike Plante printed the first issue of a staple-bound zine called Cinemad. Now, for the 20th anniversary of its debut, Plante has assembled a survey of the magazine’s rambunctious early years and subsequent evolution. A revelatory transmission from cinema’s outer limits at the turn of the millennium, his illustrated talk will be accompanied by original audio interviews as well as a screening of choice short films and weird underground clips that circled through Cinemad’s orbit.

THIS GUIDE PROVIDED BY THE LOFT CINEMA AND ZOCALO MAGAZINE


20

Loft Film Fest 39

GIVE ME LIBERTY

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10 AT NOON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14 AT 5:00PM DIRECTED BY

Not Rated

TUCSON PREMIERE SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR FILM SPONSOR,

Anonymous

Kirill Mikhanovsky, 2019, USA, in English/Russian with English subtitles, 110 mins.,

Vic (Chris Galust), a hapless young Russian American, is a medical transport driver in Milwaukee whose day goes from hectic to off-the-rails over the course of this hilarious, breathlessly freewheeling portrait of American dreams and disenchantment. As the increasingly-frazzled Vic shuttles a dizzying array of passengers – including a gaggle of Russian funeral goers, an Elvis super-fan, a meddlesome boxer, and Tracy (Lauren “Lolo” Spencer), a headstrong young woman with ALS – across the city, his journey becomes a window into American society in all its richness and complexity.

40

FALLS AROUND HER

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9 AT 11:30AM WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13 AT 3:15PM Darlene Naponse, 2019, Canada, in English/Ojibwa with English subtitles, 100 mins., Not Rated

DIRECTED BY

ARIZONA PREMIERE IN COMPETITION: CICAE AWARD

In this compelling drama, legendary singer, Mary Birchbark (Tantoo Cardinal, in a heart-wrenching performance), abandons a life of fame and fortune to follow the instinctual pull that calls her home to her First Nation. Hoping to reconnect with the land and her community, she returns to the beautiful woods of her reserved to seek solitude in an isolated cabin. But as the slow change of seasons marks her thirst for transformation, she begins to have the unsettling feeling that she is being watched and quickly finds that doors to the past are not so easily shut.

41

ALWAYS IN SEASON

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8 AT 1:15PM WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13 AT 5:45PM DIRECTED BY

Jacqueline Olive, 2019, USA, 89 mins., Not Rated

SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR FILM SPONSOR, Claire Scheuren

ARIZONA PREMIERE IN COMPETITION: CICAE AWARD

Claudia Lacy wants answers. When her 17-year-old son, Lennon, was found hanging from a swing set in Bladenboro, North Carolina, the authorities quickly ruled his death a suicide. In light of suspicious details surrounding his death, and certain that her son would not take his own life, Claudia is convinced Lennon was lynched. Director Jacqueline Olive’s unwavering debut film puts Lacy’s pursuit for justice into a wider historical context, inspiring a powerful discussion about lynching across racial lines.

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WHITE SNAKE

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14 AT 2:45PM Amp Wong & Ji Zhao, 2019, China/USA, in Mandarin with English subtitles, 99 mins., Not Rated / Suitable for ages 15 and up

DIRECTED BY

ARIZONA PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

New York; Fantasia; Calgary

From Light Chaser Animation, one of China’s premiere animation studios, comes a visually stunning new take on a classic legend. One day a young woman named Blanca is saved by Xuan, a snake catcher from a nearby village. She has lost her memory, and together they go on a journey to discover her real identity, developing deeper feelings for one another along the way. But as they learn more about her past, they uncover a darker plot of supernatural forces vying for power, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

THIS GUIDE PROVIDED BY THE LOFT CINEMA AND ZOCALO MAGAZINE


Loft Film Fest 43

21

STRAIGHT UP

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10 AT 5:00PM TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 AT NOON DIRECTED BY

James Sweeney, 2019, USA, 95 mins., Not Rated

Director James Sweeney’s debut feature is a hilarious, sexual identity-bending romantic comedy piled high with razor-sharp one-liners delivered at light-speed. Sweeney stars as Todd, a hyper-articulate, obsessive-compulsive gay man in Los Angeles whose avalanche of insecurities around dates and sex lead him to a baffling conclusion: he might not be gay at all! Despite all evidence to the contrary and against the advice of his closest friends, Todd is determined to give dating women a try.

ARIZONA PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Outfest; Frameline; NewFest

44

AMERICAN DHARMA

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10 AT 2:45PM MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11 AT NOON DIRECTED BY

Errol Morris, 2018, USA, 95 mins., Rated R

Groundbreaking, Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris’ unnerving new film is a probing portrait of controversial Breitbart honcho, Trump advisor, “populist” warrior and long-time cinephile, Steven K. Bannon. American Dharma is an unflinching film, and a deeply disturbing experience. ARIZONA PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Venice; New York; Toronto; Chicago

Preceded by the short film, ALBATROSS SOUP An animated short hybrid documentary film based on an entertaining yet disturbing lateral thinking puzzle. DIRECTED BY Winnie Cheung, 2018, USA, 7 mins., Not Rated

45

SON OF THE WHITE MARE

NEW RESTORATION!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8 AT 10:00PM WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13 AT 3:45PM DIRECTED BY

Rated

SOUTHWEST PREMIERE OTHER FESTIVALS:

Fantasia

Marcell Jankovics, 1981, Hungary, in Hungarian with English subtitles, 81 mins., Not

One of the great psychedelic masterpieces of world animation, Son of the White Mare is a swirling, color-mad maelstrom of mythic monsters and Scythian heroes, part-Nibelungenlied, part-Yellow Submarine, lit by jagged bolts of lightning and drenched in rivers of blue, red, gold and green. A massive cosmic oak stands at the gates of the Underworld, holding seventy-seven dragons in its roots; to combat these monsters, a dazzling white mare goddess gives birth to three heroes – Treeshaker and his brothers – who embark on an epic journey to save the universe.

46

I WAS AT HOME, BUT

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7 AT 2:45PM WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13 AT 11:15AM Angela Schanelec, 2019, Germany/Serbia, in German w/ English subtitles, 105 mins., Not Rated

DIRECTED BY

WINNER! Best Director, Berlin International Film Festival OTHER FESTIVALS: Berlin; Toronto; San Sebastian

ARIZONA PREMIERE IN COMPETITION: CICAE AWARD

The award-winning new feature from German auteur Angela Schanelec (The Dreamed Path) hinges on the mysterious disappearance (and reappearance) of a 13-year-old boy, which sets in motion a cubist narrative that oscillates between precision and enigma, headiness and sensuality.

THIS GUIDE PROVIDED BY THE LOFT CINEMA AND ZOCALO MAGAZINE


MADE POSSIBLE IN PART BY OUR GENEROUS SUSTAINING MEMBERS!

AUTEUR

Richard Bates Stephen Golden & Susan Tarrence Pam Grissom Allen & Kim Halper Peggy Houghton & Paul Garner Peggy Johnson & Joe Tarver Bonnie Kay Paul & Mary Koss Max McCauslin Adib & Vivi Sabbagh Sam & Linda Yalkowsky Amy Zuckerman

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Kathy Alexander & Paul Lindsey Ron & Nancy Barber Kathryn Bates Betsy Bolding Bina Breitner Arch & Laura Brown Eric Carr & Richard Rhoads Joseph Chambers & David Daniell Carolyn Evarts Price Fishback Danielle & Russell Fix Muriel & Marc Goldfeder Zippy Rick & Linda Hanson Mary Ellen Heard Joel Ireland Gary & Joni Jones Hal Melfi Jan & John Mueller Eleanor Ortega Hilary Patterson Timothy Reckart Jennifer Schneider Jeanne Sharp & Barry Young Harriet Silverman & Paul Smelkinson

THIS GUIDE PROVIDED BY THE LOFT CINEMA AND ZOCALO MAGAZINE


THIS GUIDE PROVIDED BY THE LOFT CINEMA AND ZOCALO MAGAZINE



Luminaria Nights Tucson Botanical Gardens

Powered by Tucson Electric Power

Where the Holidays Begin

December 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15 5:30pm - 8:30pm Get your tickets today at TucsonBotanical.org


1969

2019

IN SOUTHERN ARIZONA

CELEBRATE WITH US DURING OUR 50TH ANNIVERSARY SALES IN NOVEMBER! FOR DATES VISIT GOODWILLSOUTHERNAZ.ORG/ANNIVERSARY-SALES

RAINWATER ON TAP

50 ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com|November 2019

Giving Tuesday Dec 3, 5:30 - 8:30pm WMG’s Living Lab 1137 N Dodge Celebrate the Santa Cruz River’s rebirth at WMG’s 5th annual Rainwater on Tap happy hour for Giving Tuesday. Enjoy live cumbia music with Santa Pachita, Pueblo Vida’s new Riparian IPA, rainwater cocktails, and dinner from local food trucks. Explore WMG’s newest interpretive exhibit featuring the story of the Santa Cruz River’s glorious past and our future vision. Advance Tickets $15. Purchase at: Watershedmg.org/RainOnTap 520-396-3266


downtown Z

The Screening Room, Tucson’s Premier Art Theater, Turns 30 by Gregory McNamee WHEN GIULIO SCALINGER arrived in Tucson from South Africa by way of London and points in between, the film scholar found plenty going on of interest in every corner of the University of Arizona campus. There were film clubs and societies everywhere, a Gallagher Theater that ran the latest first-run films, something to see practically every night. But as for the city beyond the campus—well, not so much. “I asked about downtown,” says Scalinger. “The other professors told me not to go there. It was too dangerous.” He didn’t, not for a while, but finally, in a moment of daring, he escaped from campus and made his way to Congress Street. “It was beautiful,” he recalls. “And eerie, halfway deserted.” Poking around, he discovered a row of all but abandoned buildings near the corner of Congress and Sixth Avenue, the eventual homes of the AKA Theatre, the Dinnerware Gallery, and Scalinger’s own Screening Room, which opened its doors in November 1989. Scalinger’s guiding idea was that the cinema would be a place where local filmmakers could highlight their work, a clearinghouse and meeting place for all those who were interested in the art of film. Working through the Arizona Media Arts Center, an umbrella nonprofit that he’d founded three years earlier, Scalinger began cleaning up and improving what he calls “a very crude exhibition space,” with projectors teetering on boxes and seating that, having been donated by a Marana church, was punishing in a way that only a church pew can be. Eventually local architect Corky Poster and media promoter Yvonne Ervin were enlisted to help, partnerships with the Temple of Music and Art and other organizations were forged, and the Screening Room transformed, foot by foot, into the comfortable venue that it is today.

Over the decades, the Screening Room has had numerous defining events, one of them the installation of a can’t-miss-it marquee in 2009. It hosts the annual International Film Festival and Primavera Film Festival, screens premiere documentaries, and brings films into schools around Tucson. Scalinger counts as some of those events working with the late documentary filmmaker Kathryn Ferguson and local director Michael Mulcahy, one of whose films was featured on the Screening Room’s opening night. He looks back fondly on other highlights: screening Krzysztof Kieslowski’s ten-part film Decalogue with DVD projection, a Tucson first; debuting Pablo Toledo’s 2001 film Runnin’ at Midnite, a Tucsonfilmed drama about at-risk youths who form a midnight basketball league; and, in 2013, staging a riotous version of the musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Then there are a festival devoted to Chicano film, the Arizona Underground Film Festival, the installation of a top-drawer surround sound system in time for the 2019 director’s cut of Apocalypse Now, the Tucson Fringe Festival, the Tucson Terror Fest, and concerts accompanied by soundless films by Tucson musicians Al Perry, Billy Sedlmayr, Fish Karma, Maggie Golston, and Al Foul. The Screening Room has faced challenges over the years, too. One of the greatest of them was rebuilding after the modern streetcar came down Congress Street. “Before the streetcar, it was easy to park,” says Scalinger. “Now it’s not, and people don’t come to the Screening Room like they did before.” A few years ago, Scalinger decided to step back a bit from the day-to-day running of the Screening Room, leasing the space to an organization called Outsider Cinema while continuing to plan festivals and special events. Filmmakers and film buffs can look forward to plenty of coming attractions. Look for something special on November 23 to mark 30 years of Tucson cinematic history; see www.screeningroomtucson.com for more information. n November 2019|ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com 51



photo: Gregory McNamee

southwest Z

Sandhill Cranes Dinosaurs of the Sky by Gregory McNamee To look at a sandhill crane, you’d be forgiven for wondering how the thing can get airborne. It’s big, with a wingspan of more than six feet, and it can stand four feet tall and weigh more than ten pounds. Like herons and storks, which cranes resemble, they seem ungainly, gawky, stumble-footed. And yet they fly—and for thousands of miles, spending their summers as far north as the Arctic Ocean, and then, at the coming of the cool weather of autumn, flying south to winter grounds in southeastern Arizona and Sonora. Sandhill cranes travel in large flocks, squawking squadrons of birds that can be heard from a long way off. This time of year, you can position yourself on the New Mexico border around Steins Pass and watch them lumber in from the Rio Grande in great vee formations, then follow them westward to the Willcox Playa, where they assemble by the thousands. Some of them remain in the area for months, but most head farther south to the area around Whitewater Draw, a 1,400-acre site that Arizona Game and Fish set aside in 1997 specifically to protect sandhill crane roosts. It’s a winter home not just to cranes but also to avocets, kittiwakes, grebes, and other waterfowl, as well as to falcons, golden eagles, and other raptors. The existence of the Whitewater Draw site points to a welcome success story, for in the 1930s cranes were practically hunted out across much of their range, prized for their meat. In the previous century, records report, sandhill cranes wintered in Tucson and Yuma as well as southeastern Arizona, but by the

1940s sightings of Grus canadensis west of the San Pedro River were sporadic. The species has recovered since, and as many as 20,000 can be found on the Willcox Playa and at Whitewater Draw at any one time, ranging broadly during the day to gather food among the stubble of nearby harvested fields. They tend to stick together as they travel and to congregate in areas with broad views, affording them safety from predators, which means they’re far easier to see than, say, an elegant trogon. It’s worth a trip to see these modern pterodactyls in their wild splendor. They’re around from November to March, so there’s plenty of time to do so, and it makes for an easy day trip. To get to the Willcox Playa, take I–10 east to exit 331 and go south on US 191, skirting the western edge of the ancient lakebed. You can also go a few miles ahead to exit 340 and, going through Willcox itself, take 186 to Kansas Settlement Road and enter the playa from the eastern side. Continue on US 191 south to McNeal and go west on Davis Road about three miles to Coffman Road, which leads to the wildlife area, which is ringed by a level, paved walking path. You can also come in on Davis Road a couple of miles south of Tombstone, turning left and following it as it winds through grasslands north of the Mule Mountains. It’s a short hop from Whitewater Draw to Bisbee by way of Double Adobe Road, a good place to grab a bite on the way back home. n November 2019|ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com 53


11/30/19 –12/29/19 “A MASTERPIECE OF MUSICAL THEATRE...” – Chicago Tribune

HURRY!

What good is sitting alone in your room?!

Book by

Music by

Directed by

Lyrics by

Joe Masteroff John Kander Fred Ebb Sara Bruner

ARIZONATHEATRE.ORG / 520-622-2823 TEMPLE OF MUSIC AND ART PRODUCTION SPONSOR

JIM AND DOLLY MORAN

SEASON SPONSOR

330 S. SCOTT AVE, TUCSON

I. MICHAEL AND BETH KASSER

54 ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com|November 2019


art galleries & exhibits Z ABSOLUTELY ART GALLERY & GIFTS

ETHERTON GALLERY

Artist Extravaganza is November 2 & 3, featuring over 60 AZ artists with an expanded outdoor gallery tent. Event hours: 10am to 4pm both days. Hours: Mon-Sat 10am5pm, Sun 11am-3pm. 16701 N. Oracle Rd Suite 145, Catalina, AZ. 520-818-1242 . AbsolutelyArtGallery.com

Expecting to Fly: Kate Breakey, Susan Burnstine, Keith Carter and Pentti Sammallahti is on view November 19 to January 11 with a reception on November 23 from 7pm to 10pm. Hours: Tues-Sat 11am-5pm or by appointment. 135 S. 6th Ave. 520-624-7370. EthertonGallery.com

ARIZONA HISTORY MUSEUM Current exhibits

IRONWOOD GALLERY Connecting Our Natural

include: Stories of Resilience: Overcoming Adversity in Arizona History on view through December. Permanent Exhibits include: History Lab, Mining Hall, and Treasures of the Arizona History Museum. Hours: Mon & Fri 9am6pm; Tues-Thurs 9am-4pm; Sat & Sun 11am-4pm. 949 E. 2nd Street. 520-628-5774. ArizonaHistoricalSociety.org

Worlds is on view through January 5. Hours: MonFri 10am-4pm. 2021 N. Kinney Rd. 520-883-3024. DesertMuseum.org

ARIZONA STATE MUSEUM Sorting Out Race: Examining Racial Identity and Sterotypes in Thrift Store Donations is on view through February 29. Pahko’ora / Pahko’ola: Mayo and Yaqui Masks from the James S. Griffith Collection opens October 26. The Resiliency of Hopi Agriculture: 2000 Years of Planting closes January 6. Long term exhibitions include Woven Through Time; The Pottery Project; Paths of Life. Hours: Mon-Sat 10am5pm. 520-621-6302. 1013 E. University Blvd. StateMuseum. Arizona.Edu

JEWISH HISTORY MUSEUM

Asylum / Asilo is currently on view in the Allen and Marianne Langer Contemporary Human Rights Gallery. Hours: Fri 12-3pm; Sat & Sun 1-5pm. 564 S. Stone Ave. 520-670-9073. JewishHistoryMuseum.org

LOUIS CARLOS BERNAL GALLERY

Take Nothing for Granted is on view through December 6, with a reception and gallery talk November 7 from 5pm to 7pm. Hours: Mon-Thurs 10am-5pm and Fri 10am-3pm. Pima Community College, 2202 West Anklam Rd. 520206-6942. Pima.Edu

MINI TIME MACHINE

Edward Weston’s Leaves of Grass is on view through November 30. A Portrait of Poetry: Photographs and Video by B. A. Van Sise continues through November 23. Hours: Tue-Fri 9am-4pm; Sat 1-4pm. 1030 N. Olive Rd. 520-621-7968. CreativePhotography.org

Jean LeRoy’s Buzzard Creek Ghost Town is on view through November 3. Mario Patino’s Ravished Landscapes and Rundown Interiors is on view through December 15. Miniature Silver: The Helen Goodman Luria Collection continues through May 21. Tues-Sat 9am-4pm and Sun 12-4pm. 4455 E. Camp Lowell Dr. 520-881-0606. TheMiniTimeMachine.org

CONTRERAS GALLERY “The Cat, The Bird, and

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

CENTER FOR CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY

The Boisterous Mixing Board” opens November 2 with a reception from 6pm to 9pm and continues through November 30. Hours: Tues-Sat 10am-3:30pm. 110 E. 6th St. 520-398-6557. ContrerasHouseFineArt.com

DAVIS DOMINGUEZ GALLERY

Four Women Artists opens November 15 and is on view to January 4. Arizona Print Invitational will continue to be on view through November 11. Hours: Tues-Fri 11am5pm; Sat 11am-4pm. 154 E. 6th St. 520-629-9759. DavisDominguez.com

DEGRAZIA GALLERY IN THE SUN Arizona

Ali Silverstein: The Fantastical Reconstruction of the Epine GY7 Chapter 1: The Fragments; Caroline Wells Chandler: Close Encounters; Rachel Frank: Thresholds; and Lilly McElroy: So Long are on view through December 29. Hours: Weds-Sun 12-5pm. 265 S. Church Ave. 520-6245019. MOCA-Tucson.org

PHILABAUM GLASS GALLERY & STUDIO Fresh Views will be on display through January 25. Hours: Tues-Sat 11am-4pm. 711 S. 6th Ave. 520-884-7404. PhilabaumGlass.com

PORTER HALL GALLERY

Highways and Ted DeGrazia will be on display through January 29. Hours: Daily 10am-4pm. 6300 N. Swan Rd. 520-299-9191. DeGrazia.org

Pearls of Eden – Wil Taylor is on view through January 5. Hours: Daily 8:30am-4:30pm. 2150 N. Alvernon Way. 520-326-9686. TucsonBotanical.org

DESERT ARTISANS GALLERY Tucson, Gem of

RAICES TALLER 222 GALLERY

the Desert opens November 5 with a reception November 8 from 5pm to 7pm. Desert Deluge ends November 3. Holiday Bazaar is November 30 from 10am to 2pm. Hours: Mon-Sat 10am-5pm; Sun 10am-1:30pm. 6536 E. Tanque Verde Rd. 520-722-4412. DesertArtisansGallery.com

THE DRAWING STUDIO On Home opens with a reception on November 1 and is on view to December 12. Hours: Mon-Thurs 9am-4pm. 2760 N. Tucson Blvd. 520620-0947. TheDrawingStudioTDS.org

Dia de los Muertos is on view November 2 to 16 and Small Works opens November 23 and continues through January 4. Hours: Fri & Sat 1-5pm and by appointment. 218 E. 6thStreet. 520-881-5335. RaicesTaller222.com

SOUTHERN ARIZONA WATERCOLOR GUILD All Members’ Show is on view through November 3. Color My World opens November 5 and is on view through December 1 with a reception November 14 from 5pm to 7pm. Hours: Tues-Sun 11am-4pm. Williams Centre 5420 East Broadway Blvd #240. 520-299-7294. SouthernAZWatercolorGuild.com

STUDIO ONE

Nogales Border Art Project Plastic Arts Corridor an art exhibit featuring artists from Ambos Nogales AZ and Sonora. 7pm to 11pm. 197 E Toole Ave.

SUNSHINE SHOP Leona Caldwell - From the Family Archive and David Adix - Tucson’s Vintage Bars & Lounges is on view through November 17. 2934 E. Broadway Blvd (Hirsh’s Bldg). 520-389-4776. SunshineShopTucson.com

TOHONO CHUL PARK In the Main Gallery, Dia de los Muertos is on view through November 6. Rancho Linda Vista opens November 15 and is on view through February 5. Curator’s Talk is November 19 and November 21, both at 10am. If It Doesn’t Have a Hole It’s a Bowl Art Planters for Art People is on view through November 6 in the Welcome Gallery. On November 15, Jim Waid The Drawings of Rancho Linda Vista opens and continues through February 5. 10 x 10 is on view through December 22 in the Entry Gallery. Hours: Daily 9am-5pm. 7366 N. Paseo del Norte. 520-742-6455. TohonoChulPark.org

TUCSON MUSEUM OF ART Dwayne Manuel: Landslice is on view through June 30, 2020. I’m Every Woman: Representations of Women on Paper is on view through September 6, 2020. The Western Sublime: Majestic Landscapes of the American West is on view through February 9. Harry Brorby: The Strength of a Cold Line is on view through February 9. Oazacan Folk Art from the Shepard Barbash and Vicki Ragan Collection is on view through August 9, 2020. Ongoing exhibits include Ralph Gibson: Photographs; Art of the American West; Latin American Folk Art; J. Knox Corbett House, and the La Casa Cordova. Hours: Tues-Sun 10am-5pm. 140 N. Main Ave. 520-624-2333. TucsonMuseumofArt.org

UA MUSEUM OF ART

Crafting My Story: Experience of Loss, Grief and Spiritual Life is on view through January 12. The University of Arizona School of Art Faculty Exhibition is on display through January 5. A New Unity: The Life and Afterlife of Bauhaus is on view through December 1. Shades of Subalternity is on view through December 12. Ongoing exhibitions include, Highlights of the Permanent Collection and The Altarpiece From Ciudad Rodrigo. Hours: Tues-Fri 9am-4pm; Sat 9am-5pm; Sun 12-5pm. 1031 N. Olive Rd. 520-6217567. ArtMuseum.Arizona.Edu

WILDE MEYER GALLERY In November, Peggy Judy – The West, Past and Future is on view with a reception November 22 from 5pm to 7pm. Hours: MonFri 10am-5:30pm; Thurs 10am-7pm; Sat 10am-6pm; Sun 12-5pm. 2890 E. Skyline Dr. Suite 170. 520-6155222. WildeMeyer.com

WOMANKRAFT ART GALLERY The Holiday Bazaar is on view from November 2 through December 18 with receptions November 2 and December 7 from 7-10pm. Hours: Weds-Sat 1-5pm. 388 S. Stone Ave. 520629-9976. WomanKraft.org

November 2019|ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com 55


Steinfeld Warehouse Community Arts Center Open Studio Tour ~ 101 W 6th Street Home to Steinfeld Artists & Galleries

June LeClair ~ Moonlite Creations Janny Taylor Haight Ashbury Trading Co. John Nyberg Roxanne Rossi ~ Paper Clouds Gallery Tanya Joiner Slate Rachel Nelson Derys Lyttle

Guest Artists

Nathalie Aall

Open Studio Tours 2019 Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona self-guided tours are happening November 2 & 3 and November 9 & 10. Visit www.Ost.ArtsFoundTucson.org for more information.

Moonlite Creations Gallery & Studio 101 W. 6th Street

at the Steinfeld Warehouse

Open Wed ~ Sun 12 to 6pm and during Art Walks, 6-9pm

The gallery features local artisans and craftsman whose unique work is in various mediums; Art, Jewelry, Ceramics, Photography, Woodwork, Textile, Glass and so much more! 56 ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com|November 2019

Bill Baker Barbara Brandel

Suzanne Sahakian Nancy Charak ~ Rounder Studio Jane Mohler Andrea Mendola Ute Vaughn Mary Theresa Dietz Joseph Labate & Laura LaFave Subspace

Milton Tarver Paula Gibbs

Diane Fairfield Angela Pittenger


November 2019|ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com 57


Z neighborhoods

The breeze-block entryway greets visitors to the new addition of the Downtown Clifton.


neighborhoods Z

photos: David Olsen

The Downtown Clifton Puts on a New Face by Hilary Stunda

T

he lure of the motel lives deep in the American psyche. Who can forget the era of vibrating beds generated by a coin slot in the headboard? Beige plastic ice buckets and bleak corridors leading to ice and soda pop machines? A pool in the parking lot surrounded by a chain-link fence? The romance of those days lives on, but the Downtown Clifton has taken the vision and turned it on its head. Located on the corner of Stone and 17th Street in the historic, ever more hip Armory Park neighborhood and blocks away from the Barrio Viejo and the El Tiradito shrine, and right on the old U.S. Route 80 leading south from downtown—the Clifton has always been poised as a stopping point for travelers. But in some sort of faded Hollywood western movie kind of way, the Clifton was always destined to be something bigger than what it is. It still is. Back in the day, it was the Town Motel—a nononsense, 10-room inn built in 1947 by Tucson businessman and rancher Joseph M. King, and a direct shot from Phoenix, Hollywood, and points beyond for sundry road warriors, wannabe cowboys, and other characters. In 2014, when Moniqua Lane and her business partner, Phil Lipman, purchased the hotel and the adjacent vacant lot, they saw the humble one-story building as a perfect blank slate for a hotel that, she says, would “speak to the grit that makes Tucson what it is.” There was no one better to lead the aesthetic vision of the motel but Tucson designer, rocker, and raconteur Clif Taylor, who doubles as cross-dressing rock star Chick Cashman. Taylor grew up on a ranch in the Tucson Mountains. “There wasn’t a day when my brother and I went looking for arrowheads that we didn’t find them,” he recalls. He and his family also traveled to Puerto Vallarta and other places in Mexico. “There’s a romance of traveling to Mexico from Tucson and from Mexico to Tucson,” Taylor says. “We wanted to evoke a connection between an older Tucson, as we have romanticized it, and a more elegant, graceful Mexican tradition that is woven into our Tucson heritage.”

With his no-holds-barred Tucson spirit and awareness of the city’s multicultural character, one thing was clear: With Taylor as designer, the Downtown Clifton wasn’t going to be boring. Taylor had designed for the Hotel Congress, Maynards Market & Kitchen, and the Broadway Village apartments. By the time he walked through the doors of the Clifton, he could see beyond the drab painted brick walls, painted floors, and holes. He saw potential. For her part, for the original 10 rooms, Lane envisioned a place “where the cowboys and ranch hands who still kicked up dust in the streets of downtown Tucson might feel comfortable.” Scouring antique shops and estate sales from Tucson, Phoenix, and Flagstaff for period dressers, nightstands, and chairs, and commissioning custom platform beds, Taylor created what he calls a “brutalist bunkhouse mod cowboy outpost,” with Ted DeGrazia– style fixtures outside of each room and a tiled room number. With beds covered with colorful saddle-blanket bedspreads and vintage dressers, Taylor was able to create a funky, highly stylized southwestern vibe that has an Old World elegance. So spot-on was Taylor’s aesthetic, Lane named the hotel after him. And with the recent expansion of the motel to 22 rooms, along with a restaurant and bar, Taylor is back for more. If the Bunkhouse is more Midnight Cowboy, the aesthetic for the Señorita, the newly completed addition, is more Anne Bancroft in The Graduate, or what Taylor calls “Modern Monterey.” “We know there is a niche for hotels that are clever and clean, with a romantic story,” says Taylor. “We didn’t spare any of the details. We did what we know works.” Named after the infamous Danny Martin mural of a certain señorita and a “dia de los muertos” skeleton cowboy that presided over the original Bunkhouse, the two-story Señorita is reminiscent of a motor court motel, with a midcentury-modern-inspired breezewall at the entrance designed by Taylor. “I found these collar blocks at a brick yard,” he says. “Moving the blocks off center creates a repetitive pattern and texture.”

continues... November 2019|ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com 59


Open Daily Bar + Bottleshop at the MSA Annex 267 S. AVENIDA DEL CONVENTO

Trendy to Timeless Upscale Ladies Consignment

Green Monkey Boutique

Mon-Sat 10am-5:30pm Sun 11-4

Consignment is taken in on Tues, Thurs, Sat 10am-2pm.

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neighborhoods Z

Well lighted and clean, with polished concrete floors, colorful printed, Merimeko-esque curtains, retro lamps and dressers bearing a few vintage copies of Arizona Highways magazine, and abstract paintings, the rooms at the Señorita all have Roku TV with Netflix and HuluPlus, free Wi-Fi, and minibars stocked with Mexican sodas and Tucson-made snacks. Highball glasses await on the side table, so all it takes is a quick walk to the corner liquor store to have an insta-party. There are always those who just want a low-tech, quiet stay, but for the livelier visitor, a funky vinyl collection is available in the front office, curated by Taylor. Portable record players are available to borrow, as are books from the Clifton’s library. Visitors also get a perq that you can’t find at any other hotel. Called The Clifton’s Key Holder’s Club, your room key gives you discounts to local favorites. The list of boutiques, restaurants, and classic Tucson bars continues to grow, with walking-distance breakfast/lunch and lunch/ dinner spots at Five Points and Café Desta. Along with the new rooms, the Downtown Clifton now boasts the Red Light Lounge. Chef Travis Peters from The Parish is lending his expertise to develop a ’70s-inspired comfort food menu. The bar manager is Don Murray, formerly of the Dusty Monk. “He’ll most definitely be behind the bar trying to convert Tucsonans and visitors alike to Amarolovers and Knicks fans, one well-made cocktail at a time,” says Lane. All this is why the Downtown Clifton is a hot destination with Germans and Canadians. But it’s not just the millennials who have discovered the Clifton, or the weary road tripper, or even the NY hipster craving anonymity— Macy Gray being one of them. What lures is the vibe. Like the city of Tucson itself, Clifton walks to its own authentic beat. Lane has been a downtown fixture for years. She’s made it a point to make sure the new expansion doesn’t jar too many neighbors. “We spent a lot of time trying to make this new set of buildings feel like a natural part of the neighborhood and a lot of time thinking about what people want to see and experience from their front porches or on their nightly walks or daily commutes,” she says. “So it’s rewarding and, honestly, a relief to see people who live downtown and have to live with our new buildings appreciate it.” Adds Clif Taylor, the motel’s namesake, “We wanted to channel an authentic Tucson feeling here. We’ve always considered this place to be a love letter to Tucson.” n The Downtown Clifton hotel is located at 485 S. Stone Ave. For more information, see www.downtownclifton.com.

Photos: A peek at the new “Señorita” addition to the Downtown Clifton, as the finishing touches are put in place. November 2019|ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com 61



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A Thanksgiving Laboratory by Gregory McNamee

THANKSGIVING IS A TIME to take stock of the year’s blessings, visit with family and friends, and admire the grace of floating balloons and arcing footballs as they illustrate the laws of physics. Meanwhile, the Thanksgiving feast itself gives occasion to review basic principles of chemistry and physics, for the nature of the universe lies hidden there among the succotash and pie. Lesson 1: Variety is the spice of life. Much as we might enjoy eating a diet composed of steak, or cake, or mac and cheese, there’s good reason to mix it up. No single food provides all the nutrients we need, and humans are capable of eating a vast range of foods—good reason, that, to scale way back on eating animals (if at all) and diversify lower on the food chain. That adaptability increases our chances of obtaining the many vitamins and minerals that are needed for health, needs that are nonnegotiable. We have to ingest dietary fats, for instance, for their essential acids and to break down vitamins contained in other foods. You can get them in many ways, from eating a handful of nuts to sucking down a cheeseburger. Choose wisely. Lesson 2: Cooking to survive. As food cooks, it changes in chemical structure. A raw onion contains chemicals that mingle with the fluids of an invading animal’s eyes to form sulfuric acid, which explains our onion-born tears. When cooked, that lachrymator turns 50 times sweeter than refined sugar. Cooking lima beans releases the cyanide the raw beans carry, which floats away on clouds of steam. Just so, a potato becomes tasty—and, in its ancestral form, nontoxic—only through cooking. Cook, then, and cook well. You’re saving lives. Lesson 3: Make waves. On the other hand, many foods lose nutrients during conventional cooking processes. Boiling carrots causes them to shed their valuable stores of vitamins and minerals, which you can divine in the orangish tint of the cooking water. The more nutrients are lost, in general, the poorer the taste. And, as any good cook knows, there are few things more disheartening than mushy asparagus or waterlogged corn. A microwave oven

excites the electrical poles in water molecules, causing friction that creates thermal energy in relatively equal measure throughout the food, cooking it evenly. Microwaves cause little or no degradation of nutrients, because they essentially act as steamers. They’re not the best tool for many cooking jobs, but there’s no reason to fear them, as some folks do. Lesson 4: Change is constant. By contrast to microwaves, in conventional ovens and ranges, food is cooked from the outside in. This thermal process causes the denaturing of proteins, caramelizing of sugars, and the like. For instance, an egg is made up of about 90 percent water and 10 percent protein. As it cooks, the egg’s densely packed proteins disperse to release amino acids and force out liquids. The longer the egg is cooked, the harder this protein pack becomes. Just so, behold the turkey in the oven. As it cooks, its skin browns through the phenomenon known as the Maillard reaction, in which reducing sugars and amino acids interact, rearranging themselves, dehydrating, polymerizing. Those sugars disappear faster than do amino acids, replacing sweetness with a slightly bitter taste in the case of foods like carrots and yams. Maillard reactions are all around us: the browning of bananas and apples as they age, the browning of bread as it bakes. The aroma coming from a cooked ham is generated by the reaction of maltose and glutamic acid, while the heavenly scent of chocolate comes from phenylalaine and sucrose working together. Maillard reactions all, and praise them. Lesson 5: The way to the heart is through the stomach. A turkey’s leg meat is dark because it contains an abundant supply of myoglobin, a compound that stores oxygen for ready use in active muscles. Were the turkey to luxuriate on pillows, that myoglobin would dwindle, and its leg meat would be as pasty-white as that of its breast, which gets no exercise. The wilder the turkey, the better. And once you’ve filled up your tank, you need to take yourself out for a spin. Your body will thank you. Happy Thanksgiving! n November 2019|ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com 65


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tunes Z

Geist of the Times A New Album by Tucson’s Others by Gregory McNamee LISTENING TO the Others’ new album Geist is like walking through a house, perhaps haunted, whose rooms aren’t quite square and whose floors aren’t quite level, where things creep and go bump in the night, a house where there’s something unexpected behind every door. “It’s a concept album,” says Daniel Martin Diaz, who teamed with Lesli Wood to make the album in Wood’s home studio. “It’s just that I’m not really sure what the concept is.” To grok that concept, it may help to know a little something about music that was coming into its own decades ago. There’s so-called krautrock, which both Diaz and Wood cite as influences, through bands like Can and Tangerine Dream. Sometimes, in the sonic spaces that Geist carves out, you can hear drumming that sounds like a slightly demented Charlie Watts, but more often you’ll find guitar and bass work that hangs onto single notes and makes Neil Young sound like the note-flurrying of Mahavishnu Orchestra. There are touches of techno, of beats and beeps and crackles that sound like the robot uprising has just occurred, stuff not quite meant for human ears, with minimalist touches here and there by way of an old synthesizer, as well as Vicki Brown’s enchanting violin work. There’s a little desert rock of Giant Sand/Calexico vintage, nodding to the presence of guest player Gabriel Sullivan, and, deep in the DNA, lots of Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd. With two sides conveniently labeled Side 1 and Side 2, the musical progression of Geist is never predictable and doesn’t hew to any particular conception of what a song—or a side, for that matter—is supposed to do. And in any event, says Diaz, “I’m more fascinated by sounds than by songs.” Adds Wood, “There’s a lot of Moog, a lot of what I call cinematic space songs.” Diaz and Wood have been playing together and separately for years, with Wood playing keyboards for the late band Cobra Family Picnic. She works as a scent artist by day, concocting perfumes in her downtown studio, including one that she developed to coincide with the release of Geist. For his part, Diaz

is a visual artist whose elaborate creations are turning up in some perhaps unexpected places—for example, in the CBS television series Elementary, a show centering on a modern Sherlock Holmes, he provided the artwork for an artist who’s suspected of being a murderer. (“She didn’t do it,” Diaz assures.) This month, his work will be featured in the coffee-table book Game of Thrones: A Guide to Westeros and Beyond, a completist collection for which he drew complex maps of that fictional world. Busy though both Diaz and Wood are, they strive to make time for music, and, for that matter, music that takes them and their listeners to places that they may not have intended to explore. “We’re both after a similar thing,” says Wood, “without know exactly what it will be.” It’s for that reason that Geist isn’t an easy album to categorize. “There’s not too much rock & roll in it,” she adds, though there are some nice moments where a crunchy rock guitar rolls in. If you had to categorize it for purposes of putting it on the shelf in a record store, then it might be called modern classical, though the Schoenberg/Stockhausen connection wouldn’t cover all the bases. You might attribute some of its sound to bebop and free-form jazz and put it close to Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew, though that wouldn’t quite get at it, either. The album sleeve isn’t much help, calling the recording “a collection of temporal conceptions inspired by the broken consorts of 18th-century chamber music.” It’s that very indefinability that drew the album to the attention of Cinedelic, an Italian label that specializes in soundtracks and offbeat world sounds. Cinedelic has released a limited edition of 300 white-vinyl LPs, possibly to be followed by a CD release, though that’s still up in the air. Sometime in November, Diaz and Wood plan to stream the album through their website at www.othersmusic.com. Visit that site for more, as well as for news of live shows in town that may shape up in the next month or two. n November 2019|ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com 67


Z tunes

What’s Live THIS AND THAT…The Bryan Dean-less Trio, the Tucson Musicians Museum, a musical swap meet, Kathy Williams and duos. by Jim Lipson BRYAN DEAN, a top shelf guitarist on anyone’s list, has been out of action since mid-summer having suffered a severe broken leg from a terrible fall from a ladder. And yet a recent visit to his band’s Monday night gig at The Rockabilly Grill, shows not only a gig as vibrant as it’s ever been, but also one that showcases everything good about Tucson’s various musical scenes. Since Bryan went down, trio members Ralph Gilmore on drums and Koko Matsumoto on bass have had a variety of great players stepping up and filling in on these Monday nights. Folks like Amochip Dabney, Michael P, Alvin Blaine, Paul Green and Heather Hardy among others, have all showed up to support Bryan, his mates and the gig. This show which began as a free Monday early evening mercy gig at the Boondocks nearly 10 years ago, has energetically mushroomed and made Mondays a major gig night for not just blues but also true musical fellowship. “I’m looking around and this place actually feels like the Boondocks,” said a friend on this late October evening. High praise indeed. (And better sound as well.) On this particular night, making the trio a five piece was Mitzi Cowell on guitar, Angel Diamond on soulful vocals and Hardy on violin, all joining Koko and Ralph. Both the energy and the music were captivating. On a Facebook post from later that night, Koko writes, “People say to me I do a great job of arranging the guests but I just shoot the messages…it’s them who are willing to help me and Ralph out cold, without rehearsals, and then showing up with their best stuff!“ Look for an actual Bryan Dean sighting as soon as Wednesday, November 6 at the Royal Sun for their first Wednesday of the month gig at that unique venue, as well as a big return to the Rockabilly on Monday, November 25 in the week leading up to Thanksgiving. The Tucson Musicians Museum (TMM) is a slightly odd and wonderful thing. Its relatively high priced (for Tucson) induction ceremonies, may be a bit too exclusive for many, but its heart is in the right place. Originally spearheaded by Susan French and drummer, singer and bandleader George Howard, the TMM attempts to recognize and honor those whose contributions to music, both on and off the stage merit a big time recognition and appreciation. Beautiful portraits of the inductees grace their space within the Tucson Convention Center and it’s great to see so many deserving folks acknowledged in this way. In addition to so many great jazz, blues and older generation inductees, TMM has also made room for people off the stage in the media as well as promoters. One group however, not well represented in the Museum are folks from the various folk music communities. In an effort to expand its reach, Howard, on behalf of TMM has reached out to the Tucson Kitchen Musicians Association (TKMA) and on Sunday, November 24, TMM is sponsoring a show that will tap a number of folks within the TKMA sphere of influence to play a gig where they would be backed up by a core band of TMM players. This unique show will include people like Nancy McCallion, Don Armstrong, Sabra Faulk, Big Grin, Eric Schaeffer, Joyce Luna, members of the Determined Luddites and Way Out West as well as several others who regularly find themselves on stage at the Tucson Folk Festival. The plan is to have them all backed by a house band of TMM members that will include Evan Dain, bass, Alvin Blaine, strings, Marx Loeb, drums and Lew Lepley, piano, among others. The show will take place at the site of the former 17th St. Market which is being refitted for music. 68 ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com|November 2019

And speaking of 17th St., Frank Sanzo, former manager of 17th St. Music, is holding his second annual Musical Swap Meet at Borderlands Brewery on Sunday November 10 from noon-6 pm. Having sold out all available vendor spaces, look for a huge variety of instruments, pro-audio gear, records and such to be on display and for sale. A good chunk of the swap meet will coincide with Kevin Pakulis and his band’s weekly Sunday Sessions, another great, free weekly gig which goes from 2-4:30 PM at Borderlands. Kathy Williams is not a name many will recognize, unless you were a promoter of gigs or perhaps back in the pre-social media era, a promoter of your own gigs via the omnipresent flier. Perhaps better known as the purveyor of Kathy’s Poster Service, she must have distributed 50-100,000 thousand fliers in the 25 plus years she had been getting posters up on bulletin boards and display windows in coffee shops, restaurants, record stores, bookstores and other appropriate retail outlets all over town. While her business may have become a bit more corporate with the advent of social media, she continued to be a major resource for promoters wanting to get the word out. Sadly, Kathy, or Karima to her beloved Sufi community, passed away on September 5, 2019 after a long struggle with bladder cancer. From an announcement of her passing, So many of us have been lightened and enlightened by her love for us and the world. She has blessed us and will continue to in every way she can. Kathy’s business which has helped thousands of people, organizations, cultural events and happenings around town be bigger, more exciting and more successful, will continue on. Finally, November is marked by six great shows featuring duos including Lisa Otey and Diane Van Deurzen, the Brothers Reed, Cheech and Chong, Edgewood and Feather, Robby Roberson and Eric Ramsey and Ryanhood, all of whose shows are documented below. November 3 - Diane van Deurzen and Lisa Otey, Monterey Court – The first of the duo gigs, Diane & Lisa feature outstanding vocal interplay as they explore an extensive library of blues, boogie woogie, pop, and torch songs. Their shows might be as close to a caberet type performance as we’re likely to see around here. November 5 - Matt Heckler, 191 Toole - Matt is the fiddle player originally from the Catskills, where he grew up and the Carolina Appalachians where he now calls home. Heckler says he combined influences of punk and old-timey music and developed a distinctive sound on banjo and fiddle. This should be most interesting. November 7 – Cheech and Chong, Fox Theatre – Back in the day there was probably a time when you were laughing your ass off to one of their albums or movies and thinking this kind of humor will never get old. This show then will be a perfect opportunity to revisit that notion and to see just what kind of comedic sensibilities you may have retained from that era. That and discovering how you and these icons of drug infested humor have evolved. Their first movie Up in Smoke remains a period classic. How many of us upon simply hearing someone speak the name “Dave,” can’t keep from at least thinking, if not verbalizing, “Dave’s not here,” a classic bit from one of their earliest albums. I know, you actually did have to be there.


tunes Z

Ryanhood, November 30 at Fox Theatre

November 8 – Jesse Cook, Fox Theatre - Master guitarist Jesse Cook is widely considered one of the most influential figures in “nuevo flamenco” and is known for his fusion of world music while having traveled the globe looking for sounds that resonate with him. “I like finding common ground for different music traditions – a space where music from around the world can come together.” Cheech and Chong this is not. November 9 - General Tchefary, Monterey Court – There’s now a reason we get to see him for what seems like several times a year as he has apparently relocated to Tucson. Now backed by an indigenous African band playing Afropop, reggae and world beat. November 9 – Beyond Words, Club Congress – Mostly what you need to know is that this quartet is a project of outstanding fusion guitarist Pete Fine. Known to many for his work as guitarist for the band Whole Lotta Zep, Fine is one of the great literate guitarists we have who rarely gets out enough. Others in the quartet include Cat Ripley, bass, Andrew Hannon, keys, and Martin Tiernan, drums. November 10 – Brothers Reed, Monterey Court - Despite their brotherhood, Aaron and Phil Reed didn’t start playing music together until five years ago after Phil left their hometown of St. Charles, Missouri to join Aaron in the Pacific Northwest. Their style evokes finger picking folk singers of the 60s and 70s with a contemporary edge. With harmonies, banter and original compositions, the brothers will offer a lot to reflect upon. November 11 – Robby Roberson & Eric Ramsey – From Phoenix, these two former winners of the Tucson Folk Festival Songwriting Competition, are about 300 per cent more than the sum of their individual parts. This kind of synergy is what can happen when like-minded folks pool their collective talents and musical resources.

November 13 – Elwood and F/E/A/T/E/R, Monterey Court - La Grande Oregon artist Elwood returns with his original indie folk. On this night he will be joined by the touring artist Feather, aka Taylor Rich, for an evening of excellent folk, indie folk and inspired original music. November 15 – Carnivaleros, Monterey Court – If you are like me and you missed International Carnivaleros Day last month, originally proclaimed by the late promotor Jonathan Holden and then affirmed by mayor Jonathan Rothchild, you’ve got another opportunity to see this most unique amalgam of desert swamp rock, or whatever you want to call it. I believe they are billing this as their final show of the season in their big band format. November 22 – Randy Rainbow, Fox Theatre – Does anyone remember Mark Russell? Well if he were 50 years younger, gay and with a lot more of an edge, he’d be something of a Randy Rainbow. Known for his biting political parodies he’s become an Emmy nominated You Tube sensation. Can’t get enough of the Impeachment hearings? You’ll love this show. (And what better way to celebrate the 56th anniversary of JFK’s death?). November 22 – The New Coolers, Monterey Court – Having given a farewell performance at a packed MOCO several months ago, the Coolers have reformed with an all new horn section. Old or new, these guys are very exciting. November 22 – Sidewinders 30 Year Anniversary – Actually it’s the anniversary celebrating the release of their LP Witch Doctor, the album that led to a much celebrated deal with RCA Records. Come see Dave Slutes and Rich Hopkins continue to make nice with each other. November 30 – Ryanhood, Fox Theatre – Be it as a duo or being backed by others, their level of superior musicianship, songwriting and genuine affection for each other is always center stage. Not sure if there is anyone better locally. n November 2019|ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com 69


Z sceneintucson

Union Pacific’s Big Boy No. 4014 steam engine rolled into town on October 17 for an overnight stay. As the largest steam engine in the world, Big Boy is 132 feet long and weighs over 1 million pounds. The locomotive was delivered to Union Pacific in December 1941 and was retired in December 1961, having traveled 1,031,205 miles. In 2019, No. 4014 was operated for the first time after sitting dormant for many years. Part of Union Pacific’s heritage fleet, it now operates in excursion service, in addition to hauling revenue freight. No. 4014 is currently making excursion runs amid the celebrations marking 150 years since the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad.

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