Members of a small club growing and caring for cannabis plants in central Mexico continue their operation while they await a legalisation bill to be passed by the Senate later this year.
Valley Of Souls
After getting cancelled thanks to last year’s coronavirus lockdowns, the San Francisco International Film Festival (hereafter SFFILM) returns this year with its 2021 edition. Running from April 9-18, 2021, this year’s SFFILM mixes together online streaming and live events at the Fort Mason Center drive-in. This year’s program presents 103 films from 41 different countries. 13 of these films are World Premieres.
One of these World Premieres takes Opening Night honors at the Fort Mason Center venue. Chase Palmer’s crime drama “Naked Singularity” stars John Boyega as Casi, an impassioned public defender. His accidental stumbling onto an attempted heist leads to his vying with both dirty cops and drug cartel members for control of an impounded SUV carrying millions of dollars worth of heroin. Can he and his two friends liberate the stash without getting killed by competitors also interested in the illicit drugs?
Mexicans deluge Acapulco despite warnings of new Covid wave 3 minutes read
By Salma Kaufman
Mexico City, Apr 4 (efe-epa).- Acapulco is ending this year’s Holy Week with a flood of visitors who have overwhelmed local beaches and bars presaging a much-feared third wave of Covid-19 infection in Mexico, which so far has suffered 2.25 million confirmed cases and more than 204,000 deaths.
After a 2020 during which the pandemic prevented the arrival of hundreds of thousands of free-spending tourists, the popular seaside resort has been resurrected, in a manner of speaking, into the country’s most desired tourist destination because of its golden beaches and nightlife, but this has all come at a complicated time.
G. Allen Johnson April 2, 2021
John Boyega stars in “Naked Singularity,” which will make its world premiere as the opening night film of the 2021 San Francisco International Film Festival on April 9. Photo: SFFilm
Programming a film festival in 2021 has an inherent difficulty: Because of the coronavirus pandemic, filmmakers toiling away in 2020 were challenged like never before.
Worries about budget and resources are a constant in independent filmmaking; adding COVID-19 protocols to the mix affected everything from where to film to whom you hire for your crew and whom you cast.
So it’s quite the first San Francisco International Film Festival for programmer Jessie Fairbanks, who took over for longtime programmer Rachel Rosen this year. To her surprise, she found the quality of work she had to choose from to be inspiring.