Matinee Saturday for Kids of all Ages



RIDGWAY – The transformation of the Sherbino Theater enters a new phase this weekend with the presentation of two film programs, Friday and Saturday.

The Friday night movie, the first ever for the New Sherbino, is the beautiful, and disturbing, documentary Sharkwater at 7 p.m. The Saturday show is a matinee (beginning at 3 p.m.) especially for kids, kids of all ages, featuring shorts from the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, including the 2012 Academy Award winner (Best Animated Short), The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.

Early in the process that has seen the old theater/bar on Clinton Street spring reborn as a community performance space, a film committee got to work preparing for this moment. Ridgway’s Jonathan Allen, whose company puts on film events around the globe, has secured a new, bright, 13-foot screen and a new digital projector for the revamped space. And Erika Moss Gordon, who coordinates the Sunday at the Palm shows for the Telluride Film Festival, as well as programming the TFF films at the Wilkinson Library, has brought two favorites to Ridgway for the opening weekend.

Sharkwater was released in 2006 by Canadian documentarian Rob Stewart. By all accounts, it is a gorgeous, technically brilliant, up-close, underwater look at sharks in some of the places where they congregate: Costa Rica, the Galapagos, Cocos Island. But in the course of filming Stewart became inadvertently embroiled in the dangerous world of the multi-billion-dollar, illegal shark-fin trade. He hooked up with Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and, well, go to the movies and see what happens. (Hint: boat rammings, gunboat chases, corrupt courts, mafia spies . . .)

The Saturday kids’ show is especially dear to the film committee’s heart. Gordon worked with Telluride Film Festival Board member Milos Stehlik to get Saturday’s movies. Stehlik runs a film distribution business called Facets Multimedia, “a really groovy Netflix,” Gordon said. “They have tons of hard-to-find, really good stuff.”

Stehlik also runs Chicago’s International Children’s Film Festival “and puts together a best-of compilation for us to use at Sunday at the Palm,” Gordon said. “I asked him if we could screen it here [in Ridgway], and he said absolutely. He wants people to have access to good films. He wants to create a new generation of film lovers.”

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore uses various animation and live-action techniques, including 3D computer characters, ingenious miniature sets, and 2D, hand-drawn animation.

According to IMDb.com, it is “inspired in equal measure by Hurricane Katrina, Buster Keaton, The Wizard of Oz, and a love of books.” Released in 2011 by New Orleans filmmakers William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg, it is “15 minutes I’ll never forget,” according to one reviewer.

Other shorts from the Chicago festival will be included for an approximately hour-long show.

For more information call 970/201-8570 or visit facebook.com/sherbinotheater.

P.S. – Plans call for big-screen NFL football every Sunday at the Sherbino, starting at 11 a.m.



pshelton@watchnewspapers.com