By STEVE MARTINDALE
For SS Film Festival
The Salt Spring Film Festival’s annual Best of the Fests film series continues at ArtSpring with one-night-only screenings of the award-winning documentary The Road to Patagonia on Nov. 29 and the classic 1970s concert film The Last Waltz on Dec. 6.
After last week’s well-attended screening of Swan Song featuring the National Ballet of Canada’s Karen Kain, advance tickets for The Road to Patagonia have already sold out. Co-presented by the Gulf Islands Horse Association, a limited number of tickets to this film will be available at the door when the ArtSpring box office opens an hour prior to the screening.
Salt Spring residents will be among the first people in the world to see Matty Hannon’s incredible documentary about what begins as a daring solo surfing adventure from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego on a motorcycle, and which becomes so much richer when he meets Heather Hillier right here in B.C., who risks it all for love by selling her house, buying a motorcycle of her own and following the handsome Australian adventurer south.
After crossing the treacherous Darién Gap, they eventually trade in their motorcycles and continue their arduous journey through South America on horseback, with their surfboards strapped to their saddles, meeting Indigenous people along the way who provide them with new perspectives on our relationship with the natural world.
Tickets are still available for The Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese’s revered 1978 documentary featuring the final performance of The Band at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom, although this rare opportunity to see what is widely considered to be the best concert film of all time — now with HD video quality and remastered 5.1 audio — is also expected to sell out.
Canadian music legends Joni Mitchell and Neil Young join Robbie Robertson and his beloved bandmates on stage in The Last Waltz, along with an astonishing array of talented performers such as Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Neil Diamond, Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, Emmylou Harris, Ringo Starr and the Staples Singers. Co-presented by Gulf Islands Radio, this masterpiece of music cinema is being re-released across Canada on its 45th anniversary to celebrate the life of Robertson, who died in August at the age of 80.
All Best of the Fests screenings are on Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. at ArtSpring. More information and tickets via www.saltspringfilmfestival.com.