SF/Arts Curator Insight

Boasting a seductive combo of laid back, small town allure and astute programming, Mill Valley arrives with intriguing docs by local filmmakers focusing on indomitable women like Julie Rubio’s “The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & The Art of Survival.” It follows the escapades of the Art Deco painter and adventurer, from her rise to international art star in 1920s Paris and flight from the Nazis in 1940 to her move to the U.S. and ascension in the current art world. Known for her glossy, sensual nudes and strikingly evocative portraits of Jazz Age luminaries, Lempicka, a Polish aristocrat, notorious for her free spirited, boho lifestyle and affairs with her fetching, well-heeled models, reinvented herself, rubbing shoulders with 1940s-era Hollywood glitterati and New York high society. The timely “Democracy Noir,” by the multiple award-winning Connie Field, is a cautionary tale about the rise of autocracy in Viktor Orban’s Hungary, told through the experiences of three extraordinary Hungarian women: a young activist, a journalist and a member of the Hungarian Parliament. In Jalena Keane-Lee’s “Standing Above the Clouds,” mothers and daughters from three Native Hawaiian families of activists fight for six years to protect Mauna Kea, the sacred dormant volcano on the Big Island.