BEAR DANCE (TRT: 72 Min., in French, English, and Portuguese). TRAILER: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/beardance/

Shot in Figueira da Foz, Portugal, during the International Film Festival. A Film By Rick Schmidt & Willie Boy Walker. FULL MOVIE: https://vimeo.com/427847894

Here’s me (in back, Panama hat, shooting with my little 1-chip camera and recording sound at the same time off the top of the Sony), shooting a bunch of Portuguese students and professional film people (Willie there, also Alfons Engelen, a dear now departed friend and movie critic who you’ll see telling his story about traveling with “the blue people” in the Sahara desert, and performing his “bear dance” in the DV’s opening) at the Figueira da Foz International film festival, 2002, when I got to attend there with Willie Boy Walker because I still had a credit card that gave a FREE second airline ticket from CA to there if I used their line of credit!

And so…Willie and I made a movie together! And that trip had been the fifth time I had been flown in for free––10 days or so to see movies, eat on their tab, premiere a flick (starting with American Orpheus in 1992), all thanks to the taste in cinema of festival director Jose Vieira Marquez. Just glad I was able to shoot/produced this movie where that special time was captured, and this great group of collaborators can inhabit this creation with all their intelligence and fun.

BEAR DANCE, shot in Portugal during the 2002 Figueira da Foz International Film Festival, discusses the sanity and insanity of daily life, cultures colliding, young and old meshing in a common stew of modern humanity in new-millennium turmoil. We are introduced to a cast of interesting characters who entertain us with various real-life stories of surfing accidents, knife threats, chocolate addition, bricks being thrown at babies, confessing Catholic sins, safaris with blue people, a past life as a castrated eunuch, etc. In the end, it hopefully becomes clear that we need to express tolerance for differing views of existence.

Bear Dance.

(72 minutes, Color, © 2004)

A Feature Workshops Production

Directed, shot, and edited by Rick Schmidt.

Scripted and produced by Rick Schmidt and Willie Boy Walker.

With Willie Boy Walker, Alfons Engelen, Charles Hedges, Diana Tavares, Yves Andre Delubac, Rosa Margarida Balreira Prazeres, Andreia De Jesus Alves, Sandra Isabel De Jesus Oliveira, Ana Isabel Da Silva Pereira, Sandra Maria Perestrelo Olim, Joao Abrunhosa Moreira, Aida Silva, and Pedro Miguel Condeios.