Ever since its inception, the explicit mission of the San Pedro International Film Festival (SPIFF) is to celebrate “the diverse culture and community of San Pedro with a broad spectrum of independent film, documentaries, and shorts.”
With a lineup featuring films focusing on the homeless, the hearing-impaired, Korean War refugees, and Native American artists and athletes, the 11th incarnation of SPIFF stays true to that mission, while at the same time drawing attention to major issues of the 2020s.
Scheduled to open the festival on February 2 at the Warner Grand Theatre are two works with intimate ties to San Pedro itself. First up is Girl at the Top of the Mast, which brings to life selected scenes from the autobiography of Bungy Hedley, a San Pedro resident who in the 1940s and ‘50s managed to break into the all-male world of sailboat crews, by way of which she journeyed from California to Hawaii, Tahiti, and points beyond. Then comes Christopher H.K. Lee’s Forgotten Victory, telling the story of the S.S. Lane Victory, from its role in the “Miracle of Christmas” — the evacuation via of 86,000 refugees from in and around the port city of Hungnam, North Korea after UN troops were overrun at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir — to its present-day function as a link to the past as one of only three surviving “Victory”-class ships from “the Forgotten War.” (Built and launched at Terminal Island in 1945, today the Lane Victory is berthed in San Pedro as a historical landmark and museum ship.)
On February 3 the focus shifts to social justice with Reimagining Safety, an attempt to further the post-George Floyd conversation about transforming our public-safety paradigm. Arguing that America is fighting a war against crime with the wrong weapons and targets, a variety of scholars and people on the frontlines discuss the origins of policing in the United States (inextricably tied to slave-catching and thus growing from these “birth defects”) and the abject failure of our “conception of justice [as being] rooted in retribution, retaliation, and revenge.” Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón is one of those voices: “Looking at our entire system through a lens of rehabilitation and prevention will completely [revamp] DNA of our criminal legal system. Frankly, I think it will take it someplace [so] that I would call it a ‘criminal justice system.’ [As it is,] I’ve purposely taken ‘justice’ out of it because I believe that our system has so many injustices that it cannot a called a ‘justice system.’”
February 4 sees a change of venue to the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, a fitting setting for an entire “EcoDocs” program. Among these is Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops. Narrated by Richard Gere, by itself this introduction (of what is a connected series of five short films, which can be screened with subtitles in any of 23 languages) is a concise primer on how human-caused emissions are triggering potentially irreversible, self-perpetuating global warming mechanisms. Also on the bill are three films taking on issues specific to the West Coast: Without Water, which documents the ongoing dispute between stakeholders in Long Valley, California and Los Angeles Dept. of Water & Power’s efforts to keep L.A. County residents flush in the midst of a dwindling supply; Saging the World, which discusses how the faddish overuse of white sage (native only to Southern/Baja California) is threatening it with extinction; and Surviving the Pacific Northwest: A Bumblebee Tale, an enthusiast’s search of the wild for these critically-endangered crucial pollinators.
Later in the day is a mixed program of documentary shorts. Among these is another work taking on today’s front-page issues: Beyond Homelessness: Finding Hope, an examination of how the “Housing First” strategy favored by the majority of government officials on the federal, state, and local levels is failing — particularly in California, where housing policies inimical to low-income housing are fueling the current crisis. Arguing that “Housing First” is like “trying to empty the ocean with a paper cup” because it shortchanges supportive services and thereby leaves unaddressed the issues underlying homelessness, the filmmakers hold up San Antonio’s Haven for Hope, a campus of sorts providing up to 1,700 boarders at a time with a panoply of services to redress those underlying issues, as a recipe for long-term success, noting homeless in San Antonio has dropped by over 10% since Haven for Hope opened in 2010.
Also on February 4 and 5, numerous shorts of all sorts screen in competition at the Terrace Starlight Cinemas, which also hosts the closing party, where the winners will be announced.
Q&As with filmmakers and other panelists are scheduled after each program throughout the festival. For a complete list of programming, venues, and to reserve tickets (free!), visit spiffest.org.