Reel Stories Film Festival 2013

Despite how tired Hannah, Natalie and I were on Friday night, we managed to force ourselves to attend Pepperdine’s fourth annual film festival! And I am so glad we did!!

Had we waited a second longer to make our way into the ticket line, I’m not sure we would have seen the feature presentation that we wanted to. Luckily for us, when we approached the table, there were exactly three tickets left!

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Once we scored our tickets, we had a little bit of time to kill before the movie started, so we headed over to the photo booth!

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(Don’t worry…after seeing these pictures, I got my bangs trimmed the next day!)

Then, there was a bit more time to kill. So, we decided to take part in the identity tapestry. You are probably asking yourself what an identity tapestry is…so let me explain. There was a blank wall with statements attached to a peg that was sticking out from the wall. To create the tapestry, each participant was to take a ball of yarn and string their yarn around each statement that he or she associated with. Some of the statements on the wall included “I love my family,” “I like to try new things,” “I love my life”, “I am fortunate”, etc. I happened to run out of yarn on the “I love my life” statement, which is a pretty good one to end on if you ask me!

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And then it was time to take our seats, sit back, relax, and enjoy the selected student films and feature presentation!

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For our feature presentation, we chose to see Searching for Sugarman. The documentary describes a South African man’s quest to uncover the mysterious disappearance of Rodriguez. Rodriguez is a singer, whose music made it big in South Africa (unbeknownst to him). In South Africa, Rodriguez was as famous and as popular as the Beatles or Bob Dylan. However, in America, he sold maybe six copies of his record. Because Rodriguez didn’t know he was successful, he decided to give up on his dream to make a career out of making records to live a modest life in Detroit. But when no more records made their way to South Africa, it seemed as though he had dropped off the face of the earth. Some South Africans believed he lit himself on fire, others believed he shot himself. And others were determined to discover just how he died. One man in particular began investigating Rodriguez’s death…only to find that Rodriguez is alive!

Here is the trailer:

And thanks to the recognition this documentary brought him, Rodriguez now has another opportunity to make impression on Americans because he made the line up for California’s huge music festival – Coachella! Hopefully, this time America will catch on to his brilliance. I can’t even imagine the excitement he must be feeling.

Searching for Sugarman is an amazing story, and if you have the chance to see the documentary, I highly recommend it! If you don’t trust my word…Searching for Sugarman was nominated for an academy award. So, there. Go see it!

Comments

  1. What a great story!! How crazy is that? I can’t imagine how Rodriguez felt finding out that he was such an influence across the world.

  2. Natalie just introduced me to your blog. I love reading about all your adventures and seeing the lovely pictures of you girls. All you girls are amazing!!!

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