Arcata From Dawn Till Dusk documents a day in the life of Arcata, from bakers preparing breakfast rolls at Los Bagels and an early morning round of disc golf in the community forest, to a belly-dancing rehearsal, and a Shabbat dinner in an Arcata home. It is a 42 minute “observational documentary,” which witnesses events without comment or music soundtrack added.
HSU film professor Ann Alter is the film’s executive producer, with HSU film student Sarah Lindsey Beck as producer.
Professor and filmmaker Ann Alter heard about the series from an official of the American Documentary Showcase. She contacted the National Film, Television and Theatre School of Poland which organized the series, and the Arcata project was approved.
“Thanks to the support of the HSU Department of Theatre, Film and Dance, I was able to offer a class in order to create the documentary,” Alter said. “Nineteen students participated, ranging from beginners with no experience to advanced film students. We had a wonderful and intense spring semester together.”
“The structure that the project gave us was to take each hour of the day and create a little four-minute portrait, each in a different place in Arcata. We ended up with ten segments. A totally different team of students worked on each segment, as director, editor, camera operator, sound and so forth. Each portrait has its own style, but also works within the film as a whole.”
Alter didn’t want to give too much away, but some other scenes in the film take place in an artist’s studio, a Mexican restaurant, the Humboldt Patient Resource Center and the Arcata Senior Lunch Program. There are also scenes of local landscape and wildlife.
“I thought it was important to show some of our diversity,” Alter said. “We have the coast, the mountains, the farmlands in the Bottoms. We have seniors and children as well as a large student population. We tried to reflect as much diversity as we could within the structure, and with the time we had to make the film.”
“Because this is the only documentary in the series from the United States, or from California, I felt a lot of responsibility to represent them in some way. But basically the film is about Arcata.”
The Arcata film was funded in part by the American Documentary Showcase and HSU Associated Students Instructional Related Activity Fee. Other films in the series are created by film students in Albania, China, Croatia, Slovakia, Australia, Iran and Russia.
Arcata From Dawn Till Dusk will be screened as a sneak preview at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 11, in the Van Duzer Theatre on the HSU campus. Attendance is free. It’s a child-friendly film, but children should be accompanied by an adult. DVDs of the film will be available for purchase at the sneak preview. More information is posted at HSU Stage & Screen: http://HSUStage.blogspot.com.