Steve Weiss wanted to be clear: The Arizona Architectural Film Showcase isn’t a film festival.
“It’s a showcase,” Weiss reminded me, not for the first time. “A showcase is more about thinking and less about influencing.”
I told him I totally believed him, even though I wasn’t sure what he meant. But I figured Weiss ought to know what he’s talking about – he’s been doing film festivals for a very long time. His latest (the one that’s a showcase and not a festival) is a curated collection of independently produced documentaries about the importance of architecture in contemporary culture. This April, each of the three films will be screened in different architecturally significant buildings around town.
Weiss, who founded the independent film-screening project No Festival Required in 2002, is a photographer and former location scout who studied film at the San Francisco Art Institute. “Like a lot of kids, I made little films at home with a home-movie camera,” he said. “But when I moved to Arizona and got to ASU, I set filmmaking aside.”
In the ’90s, Weiss discovered micro-cinema – a DIY approach to screening low-budget shorts and non-traditional programming. “I thought, ‘That’s what’s missing in Downtown Phoenix. I need to be doing that.’ And that led to me doing No Festival Required.”
And, eventually, to this new architecture showcase. Its films include Conni Castille and Charles Richard’s Ancestral Artistry: The Influence of Africans and Creoles of Color on Louisiana Architecture, which covers the artistry of Black craftsmen in that city; a work-in-progress film called Remembering the Future with Herb Greene, by filmmaker Lila Cohen about her avant-garde architect great-uncle; and April Wright’s Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace, which tells the story of American theaters and their architectural impact on our lives.
“That’s the one that will attract a whole other crowd,” Weiss told me, “because people who don’t care about architecture but love movies and movie houses will come to see it. And who doesn’t love movies?”
Fortunately for locals, Steve Weiss does.
Dates, times, and locations of the movies being screened at the Arizona Architectural Film Showcase can be found at nofestivalrequired.com
– Robrt L. Pela
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The Rehab Playbook
There are no easy answers when a loved one is stuck in the mire of addiction. Even if they’re open to treatment, how do you select a facility? How do you navigate insurance? What does a program entail? Scottsdale counselor Jaime Welsh Vinck, president of The Meadows behavioral health-care system, guides readers through the process with The Rehab Playbook: Demystifying Addiction Treatment (Regalo Press, $18.99). Vinck draws from her more than two decades in clinical care as well as her own family’s experience with addiction to help others navigate the journey, from tips as pragmatic and pedestrian as what to pack for rehab to more complex and layered advice on what to do after treatment. There are also helpful resource sections for friends and family to understand their roles in providing support. Vinck is donating a portion of proceeds from sales of the book to the American Addiction Research Foundation.
– Leah LeMoine
