Sidney Rittenberg: “The Revolutionary”

Imagine an American investing the best years of his life in a history-altering revolution, in a country and culture that might be described as the polar opposite of his own.

This is not fiction. It is fact. And the epic tale of Sidney Rittenberg has been marvelously caught on film in “The Revolutionary” by film journalists Irv Drasnin, Don Sellers and Lucy Ostrander.

Its second showing at the 2012 BendFilm festival is at 10 a.m. today in the Oxford Hotel ballroom. An additional presentation at the Regal Cinemas may take place tomorrow.

Between 1946 and 1980 — beginning when he was just 25 years old — Sidney Rittenberg lived in China as an active and highly visible member of the Chinese Communist Party. Nearly half of those 34 years he spent imprisoned, in solitary confinement, suspected of being an imperialist spy.

Rittenberg today

Now 91 and a resident of Fox Island, Wash., near Tacoma, Rittenberg is now one of the nation’s leading experts in American-Chinese economic relationships. He consults with major corporations and frequently travels to modern China, where he is met with respect.

During a visit to Bend with Ostrander and Sellers, he spoke at length of his experiences — from his Second World War posting in China as a language specialist to his work with Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai and other Chinese leaders through the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

“Mao was one of history’s great leaders,” Rittenberg said. “He was also one of history’s great criminals.”

Mao signs Sid’s “Little Red Book”

In the late 1940s — at the time of the Long March — Rittenberg lived in the fabled Caves of Yan’an with the fomenters of the Communist revolution. At one time, he worked as a translator for Anna Louis Strong, an American author and labor organizer about whom Ostrander and Sellers produced a short documentary film, “Witness to Revolution,” in 1984.  Ostrander had interviewed Rittenberg about Strong during the making of that film.

Twenty years later, Sellers read a story in The New York Times about Rittenberg’s current work, and they got back in touch. It turned out that Rittenberg, teaching part-time at Pacific Lutheran University, had not seen “Witness to Revolution.”

That led to a reunion in early 2005. Sellers and Ostrander soon read Rittenberg’s book about his life in China, “The Man Who Stayed Behind” (with Amanda Bennett). In conversations over the next five years, together with longtime collaborator Drasnin, a CBS journalist and award-winning filmmaker, they built the 92-minute feature documentary. First shown in private screenings a year ago, it has met with international acclaim.

“We didn’t base the film on Sid’s book, but we used the book as research material,” Ostrander said. “The film was an independent look at his life in China during the Maoist years.

“And it was done under fairly rigorous journalistic guidelines. Irv (Dreslin) does not let his subject matter affect his journalistic ethics. In fact, Sid never saw this film until he saw it with 150 people in its first screening last October.”

Read more about “The Revolutionary” and future screenings at www.revolutionarymovie.com.

 

Leslie Stevens “Excels in Solitude”

Leslie Stevens

Actress Leslie Stevens heard her late mother speaking through her as she acted in the short film “She, Who Excels in Solitude,” now showing at the BendFilm Festival.

“Don’t you dare let anybody tell you that you can’t do what you want to do, just because you’re a woman,” Stevens said. “That was my mother’s voice.”

“Solitude,” a 20-minute film by writer-director Mako Kamitsuna that grew out of the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women, made its Pacific Northwest debut this morning. It will be presented again at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at the Regal Old Mill theaters.

Stevens also has a co-starring role in “Black Irish,” a 15-minute film about racial tensions in a working-class neighborhood of Boston. It shows at 8:30 p.m. today at the Tin Pan Theater and 8 p.m. tomorrow at the Regal Old Mill.

“She, Who Excels in Solitude” is a look back at a 1960 NASA study that considered adding female astronauts to the male-dominated Mercury program.

“Female civilian pilots were undergoing secret medical tests in New Mexico to see if they had ‘the right stuff,’” Stevens said. “This film deals with one woman who is a pilot, and one who is a nurse administering the tests. They’re both trying to break the glass ceiling for themselves.

“As the older woman, the pilot, I recognize that the nurse is in danger of abandoning her goals from the pressure of the job. I kind of kidnap her in my plane and convince her not to give up her dreams.”

In “Black Irish,” Stevens said, “I have one scene as the working-class broad who runs human resources in a warehouse. That was a frickin’ hoot, playing that role with bad eyeshadow and a Boston accent.”

Born in Tulsa, raised in St. Louis, Stevens was a child gymnast who became a professional dancer. Only three years ago did she give up dancing to devote full time to acting.

“It was an internal shift,” she said. “You can feel when you direct creative energy and awareness in a new direction. When you allow yourself to be transformed, other things begin to move.”

An upcoming feature film, “The Boarder,” will showcase Stevens’ talents in a leading role — as the actress plays the wife of an African-American pastor in a family that adopts a troubled 11-year-old boy.

BendFilm: The Maiden and the Princess

Filmmaker Ali Scher, 27, was apologetic as she hurried away from a late lunch to prepare for the showing of her short film, “The Maiden and the Princess.” “I’ve got to get all princessed up,” she said.

“The Maiden and the Princess” was Scher’s thesis production when she graduated from the University of Southern California film school in May 2011.

Starring film veterans David Anders and Julian Sands with newcomers Tallulah Wayman Harris and Lora Plattner, the 18-minute film (www.maidenandprincess.com) is a parable told in fairy-tale style.

When little Emmy Adams (Harris) kisses a girl instead of a boy on the school playground, she must face the Grand High Council of Fairy Tale Rules and Standards. Headed by Sands (“Boxing Helena,” “A Room with a View”), the council places her in a “hetero-normative” fairy tale to send her down the “right” path in life.

Luckily for Emmy, she meets Hammond, a rogue narrator played by Anders (“Alias” and “Heroes”). “I like Hammond because he is frustrated by the rules, and he breaks them,” Scher said. “He tries to give people the story they need instead of the story they want.

“Hammond is a reflection of me. Emmy’s story isn’t necessarily my story, but it’s a little about me and (my girlfriend) Olivia. School is a confusing time for kids, especially for those of us who are more gender non-specific. Society doesn’t know where to put those girls.”

Scher directed the movie, which she co-wrote with frequent collaborator Joe Swanson.

“My resolve as a filmmaker is to make film for girls to create strong women who don’t think they have to be rock stars or fashion designers,” she said.

“The Maiden and the Princess” shows today at 6 p.m. at the Regal Old Mill
(before “Free Samples,” with Jesse Eisenberg) and Friday at 3:30 p.m. in a shorts block at the Tin Pan Theater.

BendFilm Festival 2012 Is Here

BendFilm opens its ninth annual run in downtown Bend tonight. And I personally am halfway through my ninth year as a citizen of Bend.
Coincidence? Yeah, probably. But the international festival of independent film has enmeshed me in its web — first as a magazine editor that emblazoned its cover with the first festival, later as a volunteer member of the selections committee.
For the past four years, I have been a member, albeit a quiet one, of BendFilm’s board of directors.
Memories? I have many of them, starting with festival founder Katie Merritt. She built a successful event from scratch, showing amazing creativity, skill and pure moxie in shaping what has become an institution not only in Central Oregon but also among aspiring Hollywood filmmakers.
Perhaps my favorite movie ever screened here was “Born into Brothels,” which subsequently won the Academy Award as best documentary of 2004. But I recall many more, such as “9” (2005), a UCLA animated student short that Tim Burton turned into a full-length movie; “Outsourced” (2007), which later became a popular television series; and “Den Osynlige (The Invisible)” (2004), a supernatural Swedish thriller that was remade into an American feature, “The Invisible” (2007).

Personalities? I won’t forget actress Rosanna Arquette devoting much of her time in Bend developing a friendship with a young cerebral palsy victim. Actor C. Thomas Howell describing an intimate moment in his early film career to awards-banquet attendees who didn’t really want to hear it. Director John Waters enthralling Tower Theatre goers with ribald tales of “Polyester” and “Cecil B. Demented.”

This year, the roster of foreign-produced films extends well beyond neighboring Canada. Germany, Denmark, Ireland and Poland all have entries, along with Thailand, Brazil, Tunisia and South Korea. That’s five continents’ worth, in case you weren’t counting.

But the movies to which I’m really looking forward are two documentaries — “Ethel,” which opens the festival program with a 5 p.m. showing today at the Tower, and “The Revolutionary,” to be presented at 2 p.m. Friday at McMenamins and at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Oxford Hotel.

“Ethel” is a full-length documentary biopic of the life of Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert Kennedy, as directed by their daughter, filmmaker Rory Kennedy. “The Revolutionary” tells the story of Sidney Rittenberg, an American who invested 35 years of his life in Maoist China.

Here’s a trailer for “The Revolutionary”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH9w34onSC8

I’m also looking forward to the West Coast premiere of “Deadfall,” with a stellar cast that includes Eric Bana, Olivia Wilde, Sissy Spacek and Kris Kristofferson. Set in Canada in wintertime, it is billed as an “icy thriller (with) a shocking climax.”

Go online to www.bendfilm.org for complete festival information, or drop by the festival office at downtown Bend’s Liberty Theatre, just north of the Tower Theatre on Wall Street.

Puerto Rico’s El Yunque Rainforest

A stream cascades through Puerto Rico’s El Yunque rainforest (John Gottberg photos)

“There is more biodiversity in this forest than anywhere on the entire North American continent,” said Frank Torres, a ranger for El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico.

After joining Torres on a walk through the only tropical rainforest in the national forest system — covering 29,000 acres in the eastern highlands of this Caribbean territory, between 2,000 and 3,500 feet elevation — I can imagine how that might be the case.

Frank Torres

The annual rainfall here averages more than 200 inches, substantially more than Washington’s soggy Olympic Peninsula. It occasionally exceeds 300 inches, most of it between June and November.

In all, there are 240 native Puerto Rican trees in this conservationist’s dream, 23 of them found only in El Yunque. Some 150 types of ferns, and 50 native bromeliad orchids, take root in many of these trees and in the rich soil beneath them. Among them is the Lepanthes woodburyana, the world’s tiniest orchid.

Rare vines cling to bark and drape from branches. Leathery “elephant ear” leaves, three feet across, lay rotting on the forest floor. Coral hibiscus, yellow heliconia and bright red bottlebrush add color.

Biodiversity: A snail clings to a bromeliad on a vine- and moss-covered sierra palm.

Torres, an Air Force veteran of Desert Storm, has worked in the forest for 17 years. He took me on a hike through an area where the movie “Predator” was once filmed, pointing out the ruins of buildings left by the Civilian Conservation Corps when it built roads and trails — as well as its own public swimming facility and trout hatchery — in the 1930s.

Puerto Ricans no longer swim here. In fact, no vehicles are permitted on the trails, not even mountain bikes. The trails are for foot traffic only.

“El yunque,” Torres told me, refers to “the land of white clouds” in the language of the long-departed aboriginal Taino people. It was regarded, he said, as the place where the earth touches the sky.

There are no carnivores in this forest, save its 11 species of bats, who feast on mosquitoes and other insects — along with singing tree frogs (“coquis”), lizards and dozens of birds. I had hoped to see the island’s legendary parrot, but “that would be like winning the lottery,” Torres said.

Lepanthes woodburyana, the tiniest orchid

Only about 60 of these magnificent green birds survive in the forest today, he said — but that is up from 13 counted in 1975, when the U.S. Forest Service began a preservation program. In addition to the forest’s wild parrots, Torres said, about 300 more are being bred in private aviaries, and are scheduled for eventual release.

I began and ended my tour of El Yunque from El Conquistador Resort (www.elconresort.com), where I am staying. This vast resort, situated atop a bluff at the northeastern corner of Puerto Rico, is at once old-school and classic, with more than 900 rooms and 11 restaurants. Rainforest tours begin daily at 9 a.m., returning to the hotel by 1.

Naked in the Kootenays

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=n1cCs-S5EKc&NR=1

Many Americans have not heard of the massive mudslide that took place July 12, a week ago, in southeastern British Columbia.

Triggered by heavy rains, a piece of mountain broke from the alpine heights of the Purcell Wilderness. It slid down to the northeastern shore of Kootenay Lake, burying much of the remote hamlet of Johnson’s Landing and taking four lives in the process.

Kootenay mudslide (Vancouver Sun photo)

Three of the victims were from the same family — two young Florida women, ages 22 and 17, who were spending their summer on the lake with their divorced father. Their house was crushed and buried.

My good friend Randy Morse, an author, musician, artist and entrepreneur whom I’ve known since we tolerated the same high-school classes, lives on the opposite shore of Kootenay Lake, in the small town of Kaslo at the foot of the Selkirk Mountains.

“The devastation is unbelievable,” he told me earlier today. “Judging from the fault line above the current high point, it looks like more of the mountain could go at any moment.”

Randy is taking an active role in recovery efforts. “These are terrible times for many of our friends and neighbors who have lost loved ones, homes and livelihoods,” he said. “I’m currently putting a lot of energy into organizing the Concert for Johnson’s Landing, slated for next Tuesday, the 24th.”

Yesterday, Morse told me, he had a special passenger in his boat — a Florida woman traveling to Johnson’s Landing to see the final resting place of her two daughters and her ex-husband. As they traveled, he said, the pair chimed together in an unlikely duet of “Let’s Get Naked in the Kootenays.”

While the 1,000 citizens of Kaslo are doing what they can to assist their neighbors, Randy said, there are only so many dollars to go around. He’s not normally one to do so, but he is asking friends to contribute to a Canadian Red Cross relief fund at www.redcross.ca/severeweather.

“Anyone who emails you, telling you they’ve made a contribution, will receive an mp3 emailed directly to them as a thank you!” he said. “Just pass on the addresses and I’ll send ‘em off.”

I will be at Morse’s home on Kootenay Lake, north of Nelson, for several days beginning August 7. If you know me personally, I’ll be glad to deliver relief donations and bring home your mp3 recording.

Alligator Wrestling in Florida

See you later, alligator (all photos by John Gottberg)

About this time last week, I was wrestling an alligator in Florida.

Okay, so he (she?) was only about two feet long, and his (her?) snout had been taped shut with electrical tape by a handler. And I wasn’t exactly wrestling the beast, so much as trying to kiss it.

But it was still an alligator.

And while this test of strength and wits took place at the Everglades Alligator Farm — and this young gator may be destined to someday become a high-fashion bag or a pair of cowboy boots — it served the purpose of getting me up close and personal with North America’s largest reptile.

Certainly, I wasn’t going to duplicate the stunt in nearby Everglades National Park (www.nps.gov/ever).

With an estimated 200,000 wild alligators in the park (out of about 1.5 million throughout Florida), the unique “sea of grass” known as the Everglades has been a conservation success story … thanks in part to alligator farming.

As recently as the 1950s, the American alligator was threatened with extinction. The prehistoric reptile was being heavily poached to satisfy a demand for high-fashion items, including shoes, belts and purses.

It was on the endangered species list when the State of Florida licensed commercial alligator farming in the 1980s. Suddenly, the market suddenly had a legal source of hides and meat — and the wild population rapidly rebounded. By 1987, the gator was no longer “endangered.”

I saw about a dozen wild Everglades gators while walking the Anhinga Trail, near a national-park visitor center west of Homestead. This half-mile boardwalk crosses a seasonal swamp; a park ranger assured me that the reptiles’ numbers would greatly increase by the arid season in mid-winter, when many other sources of water had dried up.

On this day, the animals mostly lay quietly in the water-side grasses beneath the boardwalk, or partially submerged in the shallow water. But I didn’t have any fantasies about reaching out to stroke their thick, dark hides. Granted, they can only see sideways — not directly in front of them, and certainly not behind — but 80 teeth are nothing to mess around with.

Back at the Everglades Alligator Farm (www.everglades.com), I enjoyed the Disney-like stage show and feeding exhibition, explored the pens filled with baby gators and looked over the alligator breeding pond. But I was most impressed with an airboat ride.

Loud and wet, these flat-bottomed boats carry as many as 30 visitors on a two-mile tour of the swamp next to the farm. They are propelled forward by a column of air that enables them to ride above a seemingly infinite expanse of sawgrass, even with little or no water beneath.

Rare panthers live in this ecosystem, although I saw none. But I did see numerous wildflowers found nowhere else on earth. And I saw several more wild gators.

I won’t be wrestling any of them. See you later, alligator.