Tropic Sprockets / The NOW film festival

By Ian Brockway

The NOW film festival at the Tropic Cinema is back with a terrific line-up of stirring and thoughtful films. This year NOW is especially excited to return better than ever.

First off is Ava Duvernay’s powerful naturalistic drama “Middle of Nowhere” (2012).

Ruby (Emayatzy Corinealdi) is a registered nurse. Her husband Derek (David Oyelowo) is in prison awaiting a possible early release.

Ruby juggles her medical career with legally assisting her incarcerated husband, while feeling the tempting pull of romance. The tension is palpable. Ruby is uncertain about just what to do. The performances from Corinealdi and Oyelowo are affecting and solid with not one misstep.

“Salt of the Earth” (1954) by Herbert Beberman, centers on a zinc mine strike in New Mexico. The women stood side by side with their husbands and supported the picket line. Politically charged with a resonant social commentary similar to Luis Bunuel’s “Land Without Bread,” this is an iconic film.

Legendary filmmaker Agnes Varda directs the autobiographical “The Beaches of Agnes” (2008). Quirky colorful vibrant and strange this movie is a lively slice of life portrait of the famed director and it doesn’t disappoint. A must for any film enthusiast.

“Daughters of the Dust” (1991) is a riveting drama by Julie Dash about the Gullah people on the border of North Carolina and Georgia and their movement north. The film is an interconnected story of a family, with many dream-like sequences and startling cinematography.

Last but certainly not least is Niki Caro’s “Whale Rider” (2002) which stars a young Keisha Castle Hughes in a groundbreaking Oscar winning performance. Hughes plays Pai, a girl who wants to steer a canoe, becoming a chief of her Maori tribe, a title forbidden to females. Like a “Karate Kid” of the ocean Pai is determined to prove her old-school elders wrong. The film features actual Maori dances, chants and rituals and potent exoticism. 

This film fills the screen and it is a kind of reverse Moby Dick. Instead of something unnamable and fearsome whales are restorative and benevolent, cetacean beings of the marine world.

Don’t miss out on this exciting and diverse festival with a film each Wednesday throughout March. Get your tickets at TropicCinema.com, and Celebrate with NOW once again. We’ll see you in the theater.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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