DAY SIX: DAYS OF OUR LIVES

by Joyce Marcel

Yes, today's Day Six of the Film Festival, and I'm just now writing about days four and five. I apologize. But like most of you, I have to make a living. And since I write for a living, it appeared for a time that my head was going to explode.
But I took a couple of naps, it didn't explode, and I'm back.
On Monday we got to see "Crazy Sexy Cancer," an autobiographical film by the lovely Kris Carr.
Young, and silly and beautiful and open and honest and smart, Carr is the kind of woman of whom they used to say, "her nerves run close to her skin."
When she was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, she started making a film about it. "Crazy Sexy Cancer" is, as she puts it, her journey from "looking for a cure to finding my life."
Carr is terrified and lighthearted at the same time. "It's Stage Four slow-moving cancer," she says. "But there is no Stage Five."
Carr was just starting to make her was as an actress - she did a Budweiser beer commercial that was shown at the Superbowl, for instance - when she received her diagnosis.
We watch her go from one off-the-wall "healing" experience to the next, from a macrobiotic diet to a raw food diet, from yoga to Buddhism, from an alternative healing convention to an upscale New Age resort. She calls herself, fittingly, a "healing junkie."
Along the way she meets - and we meet through her - some other remarkable and accomplished young hip women who are fighting their own battles with cancer, among them a red-haired magazine editor and her once-red-haired-but-mostly-bald-now sister. and a tough punk rock chick. (I have to say that wigs are a huge part of the cancer struggle.)
We see Carr and her friends cry. We see them supporting each other. We see them wrestling with their disease in original ways.
Today Carr is not cancer-free, but her tumors are slow-growing to the point where they are a sideline to her full, rich, funny life. In one of the last scenes in the film, she even gets married to her cameraman. She's totally adorable - the kind of heroine that a really good chick flick would be proud to call its own. And she has a completely fresh take on cancer that explodes the usual "fighting with dignity" stuff.
"I won't call it a gift," she says - and God bless her for it. "Because I wouldn't give it to you."
The title? Because "Life is crazy and sexy, just like cancer." Actually, life is crazy and sexy, just like Kris Carr.


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The next day, I settled in to watch two pictures - after all, a girl's got to eat, so I missed "Outsider - The Life and Art of Judith Scott,' by Betsy Bayha. I'll catch it next week.
But I did see "Still Kicking" by Amy Gorman, a group portrait of six women of artistic talent, well into their 90s, who are still making art.
From the "Still Kicking" Website (www.goldenbearcasting.com):
"Amy Gorman invited Frances Kandl to journey with her throughout the San Francisco Bay Area searching for female role models--very old women, still active artists, living with zest. While Amy chronicles their oral histories, Frances is inspired to compose songs for several of these women, many well past 90, culminating in concerts celebrating lives liberated by age.
"Do these elders energize themselves through their art, craft and musicianship? Whatever their degree of talent, they all embrace a daily routine in which their special art form is an essential part. Each woman is spirited and resilient--interpreting for herself a life worth living to the end. Through their encounters, Amy and Frances unveil the possibility of aging richly, not in spite of becoming very old, but because of it.
"Still kicking honors the gift of age, and poignantly illustrates that growing old can be a time of creative expression and satisfaction. Challenging the perceptions and attitudes towards being old, still kicking is certain to trigger dialogue and ignite the imagination of us all."
I'm not doubting that the women portrayed in this film are remarkable. Whether they're doing flower arrangements ("Flowers are the medium between the seen and the unseen world"), oil paintings, braided rugs, dolls or sculpture, they're all talented, lively and involved. I especially loved Lily Hearst, who played classical piano beautifully, and dancer and teacher Ann Davlin, who said, "Religion is perhaps the greediest art of all arts. The others don't spread war so much."
But.
After the show, Gorman spoke movingly about the gifts of age. "You are your essence," she said.
I took exception to all this worshiping of the extreme elderly. As many of my readers know, I write often about my own mother, who at 90 is still choreographing and dancing. She and her theatrical cohorts down in Florida, however, are dealing with things that I don't think I would have the strength to deal with: loneliness is the big one. But there's also the loss of faculties; the loss of loved ones; the loss of friends - a huge issue; the fear of becoming ill and/or helpless; the restrictions of life, especially after you have to stop driving; incontinence - the list goes on and on.
I often quote the comic Martha Raye about this issue. "Old age is not for sissies."
So I asked Gorman about this after the show. She agreed that she knows more than her share of very old women who are not "living with zest," or who are living with zest, but also fear and great sadness.
"But I was searching for women who would show the possibilities," she said.

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In "Olive Pierce: Maine Master" by Richard Kane, the photographer talks her work.
After a cold and lonely childhood, in which she never fit in with friends who enjoyed shopping, society, going to formal dances and marrying young, Pierce said she has always identified with the outsider.
But still, at the heart of her work is a search for community and communities.
In her search, she's taken many series of photos - of a fishing family, of her own three children (she never mentions a husband), and especially, of children in Iraq.
She said that she became concerned during the run-up to the first Gulf war - the one started by the first George Bush - and went to Iraq to take photos of the children. Their haunted, frightened and hopeful faces tell you everything you need to know about their terrible futures, as guaranteed by the second George Bush. It makes you wonder who the terrorist really is. (See Leila Khaled below.)
When Pierce's pictures are exhibited, she is told that someone says, contemptuously, "You can't even tell what side she's on."
Well, isn't that the point?
The other point?
"You don't crush people by photography," Pierce said. "You hold the spirit up."

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That's it for today. More to come. If you read my column in the Reformer tomorrow, you will see more thoughts about the festival. We'll probably post it here tomorrow. And yes, I plagiarize myself.
Now the big question. Is anyone reading this? Please let us know.