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Documentary is odd, funny and ecological |
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Written by Kurt Brighton
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Friday, 30 November 2007 |
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 The history of mankind is often not so kind. Man-made ecological “disasters” are so commonplace throughout history that we really ought to come up with another name for them. Perhaps “ecological inevitabilities.”
One place where the folly of human “ingenuity” is on stark display is The Salton Sea, in Southern California. Once the recreational playground of choice for Southern Californians, complete with boating, water skiing and fishing, the Salton Sea is now a flooded wasteland where thousands of oxygen-deprived fish regularly wash up on the shore to rot, where copper-colored stagnant pools of water burst forth in massive algae blooms  beneath the decaying and long-abandoned facades of decrepit hotels and houses. And the area surrounding the sea is peopled by an odd group of stubborn folks hanging on in the 120-degree heat and carving out lives that are decidedly off the beaten track.
Enter filmmakers Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer, whose film “Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea” is being shown at the Lyric Cinema.
The pair decided to make a documentary about the people of the Salton Sea and in the process found they couldn’t help talking about how the area ended up that way.
“It’s a hybrid film,” Metzler said. “When you have people like Donald the Christian Nudist standing on the side of road waving, where he stands from 6 a.m. until 2 p.m., you know the usual rules don’t apply here. We went down there for the people, to meet the motley collection of eccentrics who have remade this post-apocalyptic paradise into their own. But when we started learning about the environmental issues, we realized that we had to tell people about that too.”
 And enlisting the help of narrator John Waters to tell the story of these intrepid folks was a coup. In his gently wry, unique way, Waters is able to poke a bit of fun at oddities like the guy who is building Salvation Mountain out of adobe and brightly colored paint, or the heavy-set woman standing in front of her double-wide asserting that she still swims in the sea.
“We tried to present the film in an unbiased way,” Metzler said. “So, much of what you see in the film is people telling their own story. But we wouldn’t have gone down there if we weren’t going to have a good time. The film does have our sense of humor embedded in it.”
At the same time, the filmmakers show tremendous respect for the odd group of people determined to live there.
“It’s a really idealistic, libertarian place,” Metzler said. “Everyone has their own unique way of living.”
The history of the Sea is long and convoluted. In a nutshell, what used to be called the Salton Sink was flooded in the early 1900s when engineers attempted to divert the flow of the Colorado River to Imperial Valley farmland. The sink, essentially a big puddle 220 feet below sea level, became a 35-mile long, 15-mile wide sea, accumulating minerals and salts from run-off from nearby farms. “We made an environmental comedy out of the stories we had to tell,” Metzler said. “It straddles the line between education and entertainment. But whatever you’re expecting from this film, you will hopefully be surprised in some way.”
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SCREENING OF PLAGUES & PLEASURES
“Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea” is showing at Lyric Cinema Cafe, 300 E. Mountain Ave. at 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 3. There will be a discussion with filmmaker Chris Metzler after the screening. Run time is 1 hour and 13 minutes. Call 493.0893 or go online to www.lyriccinemacafe.com. | Only registered users can write comments.
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