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Cannabis cinema at The 7th Annual Artivist Film Festival

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Frequent readers of this blog know that California’s thriving medical marijuana scene is rather…uh… near and dear to our hearts. Tomorrow night in Los Angeles, at The 7th Annual Artivist Film Festival, there will be a free festival screening of director Kevin Booth’s How Weed Won the West documentary at the Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Boulevard, at 7p.m. Booth will be in attendance for a Q&A after the screening. He will be joined by NORML’s Allen St. Pierre and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition’s Lt. Diane Goldstein. All screenings at the Artivist Film Festival are free, tickets for How Weed Won the West can be reserved here.

While California is going bankrupt, one business is booming. How Weed Won the West is the story of the growing medical cannabis/marijuana industry in the greater Los Angeles area, with over 700 dispensaries doling out the buds. As a treatment for conditions ranging from cancer and AIDS, to anxiety, ADHD, and insomnia, cannabis is quickly proving itself as a healthier natural alternative to many prescription drugs. Following the story of Organica, a collective owned by Jeff Joseph that was raided by the DEA in August of ‘09, the film shows that although some things have changed with Obama in office, the War on Drugs is nowhere near over. From Kevin Booth, the producer/director of Showtime’s American Drug War, How Weed Won the West puts California forward as an example to the rest of the country by documenting how legalizing marijuana can help save the economy.


 

 
Also screening for free at the Artivist Film Festival in a similar “herbal genre” is Hempsters, 9:00pm on Friday December 3 at the Egyptian with the director in attendance for a Q&A afterwards:

This lively documentary directed by Michael Henning, begins with the arrest of Woody Harrelson for planting four feral hemp seeds in Kentucky and his subsequent trial and acquittal, then joins traveling Hemp activist Craig Lee and a number of featured old-school Kentucky tobacco farmers who just want to grow the multipurpose crop as a way to save their farms. Viewers meet Alex White Plume, leader of the Lakota “Tiospaye” (family clan), and the first family to plant industrial hemp on American soil since the 1950′s. He makes a startling case that his right to grow hemp is a sovereignty issue. Julia Butterfly Hill goes to extreme lengths to protest the pulping of old-growth forests by living for over two years at the top of a 1,000 year old redwood tree in Northern California. Gatewood Galbraith, the fiery orator of the US Reform Party, attempts to bring to the public at large to its senses in his own inimitable style. A hyper-paced ride with a sizzling soundtrack, this motion picture puts hemp at the heart of just about every grassroots issue in America today. Featured players include Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Ralph Nader and Woody Harrelson. More than a political study of cannabis, Hempsters is a rousing portrait of our country’s most spirited and sensible free-thinkers.

 

 
Get free tickets for the Hempsters screening here.

The 7th Annual Artivist Film Festival

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.01.2010
05:56 pm
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