UPDATE: Forgot to add today's other recommendations and promising NBFF entries to this post (see end) . . .
What if some of the most profound ideas, thoughts and proclamations at America's top universities came not just from the professors, but the folks sweeping the floors? That's the raison d'être for The Philosopher Kings, Patrick Shen's documentary that gives up close and personal looks at a half dozen college janitors.
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We meet a woman who has turned her swing shift dusting natural history exhibits into a lifelong learning exercise thanks to the exhibit descriptions she reads over and over each night.
Another janitor inspired by a university art department drives a van painted like The Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo and builds life size dinosaurs out of spare wood parts.
And a third melts into the background at his campus, with no one realizing they are in the presence of a decorated military veteran.
The thought-provoking doc proves true wisdom can be found in the most likely of places–if you know to look for it beyond the lecture halls.
The Philosopher Kings screens at 2:30 p.m. today and 12:15 p.m. Sunday at Edwards Island Cinemas.Go here
for ticket info.
Also recommended and playing today at NBFF: American Jihadist; Burning Palms; Down Terrace; I Am Love; Suck.
The
long list (today's entries that sound promising): Baker Boys: Inside the Surge; Barry Munday; Christina; Elektra Luxx; Last Paradise; 140; The River Why.
Theaters: Regency Lido Theatre, 3459 Via Lido, Newport Beach; Regency South Coast Village Theatre, 1561 W. Sunflower Ave.,
Santa Ana; The Studio at Sage Hill
School, 20402 Newport Coast Dr., Newport Beach.
Visit newportbeachfilmfest.com
for times, theaters and ticket information.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.