no. 19: true/false

one of our favorite weekends in columbia, what we like to call the {true/false film festival} weekend, has been a favorite since moving here almost three years ago. it seems, though, that every time the weekend rolls around, something comes up & we cannot fully enjoy the many festivities & incredible documentaries. i just knew, however that this year would be different. we would make it to the t/f parade, see the documentaries we really wanted to see, meet some of the directors, listen to some good bands, & have an overall good time with our close friends. of course, something had to go wrong. problem: pneumonia. how long, you ask? four days! yeah, four days of sleeping, medicating, & drinking gallons of fluids.

luckily & thankfully {yes, there is an upside to this story}, my mom came into town to surprise me & nurse me back to health. she knew exactly what to do {as most moms do! although luke was doing an exceptionally good job} & i felt a tad bit better by saturday evening. we managed to catch one documentary, {colony}, an excellent piece about beekeeping & the phenomenon of the {colony collapse disorder}. so very good!

we also heard some good tunes & ate a delicious thai meal.

this weekend did not turn out how i would have planned, but we were in good company. our city came to life as even the smallest of stories were shared through film.

-natalie

This has only been my second time to take part in the True/False Film Festival, but it is such a wonderful event to experience. (Just to give you some background, T/F is a documentary film festival that takes place in downtown Columbia at the end of February. This is its seventh year and it has certainly been building momentum.) It really takes over the city for those four days. Directors, musicians, and cool people from all over the place are brought to the middle of Missouri to watch and talk about documentary films (or just play music). People are lining up all over the place to get in to see documentaries. Everywhere there are conversations about what movies people are going to see or the issues that the docs address.

This year, I spent most of my weekend behind the counter at Uprise Bakery, serving moviegoers coffee, pastries and sandwiches. This is busiest time of year for the bakery--imagine lines that don't let up for hours. It was exhausting, but fun.

Natalie's pneumonia also prevented us from getting out as much as we would have liked. But her being sick did bring her mom up from Arkansas: a positive side effect of Natalie's illness. By Saturday afternoon, after some mom time, Natalie was feeling much better and we were able to make it to see a movie.

The movie we saw was called Colony and it was about honeybees. I loved it. The cinematography was absolutely beautiful--close-up shots of bees in the hive coupled with breathtaking images of the California landscape in bloom. And it did a good job of presenting the issue of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), the phenomenon of bees abandoning their hives after pollination. I learned a lot. CCD might be caused by an unknown number of culprits: new insecticides, monoculture, diet, the lack of genetic diversity, and industrial agriculture are a few. But no matter the cause, our honeybee population is rapidly decreasing, which has serious ramifications when it comes to the yields of certain crops (like almonds) that rely on honeybee pollination. I find it all very fascinating. It really makes me want to keep bees.

After the film, Natalie's mom took us out to a great Thai restaurant and then to get ice cream at Sparky's (the best ice cream place in town). We had a blast, the three of us. Natalie's mom seemed to really be enjoying herself and said she wanted to be sure to come back next year to catch the whole festival. Though we only made it out for that one night, I felt satisfied. I thought we experienced a sliver of what the film festival means for Columbia.

- Luke