Glennfest wraps another successful film festival
Kids and young adults with special needs in the lobby of Look Dine In Cinema in Downey, wearing complementary souvenir beanies to get in the mood. (Photo courtesy Glenn Stephens.)
Glennfest has done it again. In spite of a year of Covid restrictions and the logistical problems that raised, founder and organizer Glenn Stephens has successfully brought an array of special interest films to mark the tenth anniversary of Downey’s own film festival, showing them at the Downey Theatre, Epic Lounge, Look Dine In Cinema, and expanding to a final location in neighboring Norwalk.
Watch for Year Eleven in 2022.
On Saturday Oct. 16, Glennfest wound up its 10-day 2021 festival with the movie "Racetime," for an audience of young adults with special needs. “Racetime,” an animated feature from Canada, is a children’s film that depicts ambitious kids who spend all their time outdoors in a snowy scape working to win a sled race. Thrills and spills galore.
In welcoming the audience, organizer of the festival Glenn Stephens said, “I want to thank our Assembly member Cristina Garcia, along with SEIU 721, the largest union in Downey, that provided the movie and rental. The newly formed Downey Film Society provided winter beanies, and Look Dine In Cinema gave out free popcorn and drinks. With everyone’s help the event was a large success.”
On Sunday, Oct. 17, for the final showing of Glennfest 2021, Glenn donned a white silk shirt with cherry blossoms, in honor of the venue and sponsor, The Southeast Japanese School and Community Center in nearby Norwalk. Glenn greeted the audience with his signature enthusiasm, and staff members handed out a goody bag with a water bottle and several delicious raisin, nut and oatmeal bars.
Glenn Stephens and jack of all trades David Devis at the Japanese Cultural Center. Devis’s Epic Lounge was a venue for films during Glennfest. (Photo by Lorine Parks.)
The film, “Talking to the Starry Sky,” is a thrill-filled fictionalized documentary about the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami that devastated the Tohoku area in March 2011, just 10 years ago. This is an account of those who survived and those who did not.
The film begins just moments before a giant quake hit a hilltop school for developmentally challenged citizens, and you can imagine the rapt attention of the audience, living in earthquake-prone California. But this was worse than anything anyone here has experienced: A 9.1-magnitude undersea megathrust earthquake occurred in the north-western Pacific Ocean at a relatively shallow depth of 20 miles, with its epicenter approximately 45 miles east of the Oshika Peninsula of Tōhoku, Japan.
The quake lasted approximately six minutes. 19,747 deaths were recorded in the twin disaster. But the movie goes beyond, to follow a puzzling statistic: no disabled persons’ names were ever found, not on death lists nor in any of the rescue shelters.
And yet, the disabled had been largely left behind because they could not leave by themselves. A search revealed how the system had failed the very persons it was to protect. The Japan Disability Network was about to start support activities in cooperation with support groups from all over Japan, but because of the Confidentiality of Disabled Persons Act, no information could be traced for these people. And there were survivors – but they were hidden, hurt, and starving.
At last the investigators found a loophole in the law that allowed them to get precious information, and locate and help the elderly, the infirm, and the mentally and developmentally challenged. It was found that the mortality rate of people with disabilities was twice that of people without them.
The hilltop school where the movie begins was spared from the tsunami because of its elevation. The title refers to the drawings of an autistic boy there, who believed at first that the sprits of the dead came back as owls, to watch over their loved ones. But a counselor explained to him that after the owls had seen to their families, they turned into stars and now watch over the world from the skies.
On this dramatic but optimistic note, Glennfest 2021 came to an end. But not quite.
One film has been held over, “The Conductor,” about a remarkable woman who became the first woman to lead a major symphony orchestra. A free screening, at the Downey Theatre on Saturday Nov. 13 at 4:30 pm, will be introduced by the Downey Symphony’s own maestro, Sharon Lavery.