It is an anniversary that I would prefer to forget. But March 15th is looming, and it marks the date of our closure exactly one year ago. I would prefer to acknowledge the day as the catalyst for our newest and most expansive venture yet. Nothing can replace the communal experience of watching a film in the Rose or Starlight, but streaming is here to stay, and I would rather embrace it than fight it. Our new permanent streaming site, which launched last week, broadens our footprint from Taylor street to the entire world. And it provides a measure of security if we should ever face another disaster of this magnitude.
The new site is easier to navigate - with films categorized by subject - and ticket purchases simplified through a single payment processor. Our Film Library is growing every week, and yet it will take months and months for it to approach what I want it to be - a diverse collection of films and performing arts representative of what the Rose has been for 29 years. Rose Theatre gift cards can now be used to stream films, and Rose members can enjoy a discount on all movies.
To inaugurate our new site, I commissioned the very talented Port Townsend animator Andrea Love to create a short Rose intro to precede every film. It's great, and like the Rose, one-of-a-kind.
Roll credits. I would like to thank our long time wonderful web designer Perry Garvin; Rose manager Amy Priest for expertly shepherding a huge part of the project; Nhatt Nichols, our great Membership Director; Renata Friedman, my wise and indispensable go-to-for-everything daughter; Danielle Ferguson, our bursting-with-energy Content Manager; Cynthia Koan, IT extraordinaire; good friend and graphic designer Gregg Graff; and Andrea Love's workshop wizards, Annie Schermer (puppet costumes), Rick Myers (fabrication), Richard Gould (sound design), Marit Schmidt (special effects), Epidemic Sound (music), and Kaylee Rose Klebanow (voice work). Photographer Tyler Rowe of Cold Pizza Creative, and to everyone at Agile Ticketing.
MY DARLING SUPERMARKET is as idiosyncratic and delightful as its title. This charming documentary from São Paulo, Brazil blends humor, drama, mystery, romance and quantum physics alongside milk cartons, cuts of meat, barcodes and security cameras inside a grocery store. Director Tali Yankelevich, making her feature debut with this film talks about her creative process: "The supermarket became a wonderful metaphor for talking about our quest as human beings, the limits of our universe; our emotional prisons and our need for affection and understanding. My ambition with this film is to enable it to completely dissolve the space of the supermarket as a physical boundary - and to create a ballet, a dance of reality full of character, drama and poetry."
Cinematically Yours,
Rocky