Documentary about local nonprofit challenges stereotypes concerning the disabled and surf culture

Special education teacher/videographer Julie Pollack, remembers filming from West Cliff in 2000 as one of her students, Brandon Arthur, went surfing for the first time.

“He was a little guy in a wheelchair, not able to sit up on his own, talk, or really hold himself up in the water,” she says. “His parents told me about this woman who wanted to take him surfing, so I held my breath from the cliff and watched them paddle this little guy out on the water. We all kind of got hooked on it from there because you could tell he was just so thrilled.”

On brink of closing, Capitola Book Café launches campaign to save store

When Capitola Book Café employees Wendy Mayer-Lochtefeld, Melinda Powers, Janet Leimeister, and Richard Lange became co-owners of the shop in 2007, the four booklovers had an inkling of the rough road ahead.

“The book business was already in decline at that point, but the decline sharpened deeply about a year after we took over, and then in 2008, the bottom fell out of the economy,” says Mayer-Lochtefeld. “So, our timing was not terrific. … [but] we were still in a good position to weather that storm until it sort of turned from a storm into a hurricane.”

Flamboyant seniors help redefine beauty in Walter Matteson’s documentary ‘Pretty Old’

Walter Matteson was in Copenhagen, Denmark to visit his then-girlfriend (and now wife) when he first saw the photograph that sparked it all. The photo, hanging at the 2007 World Press Photo Exhibit, displayed three senior women in a backstage setting. “I had just seen sports photography and war photography, and I was like, ‘What in the world is that?’” remembers Matteson. “It almost looked something like a David Lynch painting to me; it was a large print—it was giant—that I saw from across the room and it didn’t look real.” The caption was simple: “Ms. Senior Sweetheart Beauty Pageant, Fall River, Massachusetts.”

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Cid Pearlman and an international cast bring a piece of Estonia to Santa Cruz in ‘From Estonia With Love’

It all began in Estonia. Cid Pearlman was a Fulbright Scholar, teaching at Tallinn University for the 2009-2010 academic year. She spent the long winter instructing and researching, but most importantly, collaborating with five talented dance artists, three Estonians and two Americans: Tiina Mölder, Rain Saukas, Helen Reitsnik, Alexis Steeves and David King.

Gamblers, and ukuleles, and hippies! Oh my! The 11th annual Santa Cruz Film Festival unveils an eclectic round of cinema.

Navigating a film festival is not unlike finding your way through a foreign city for the first time—it’s difficult to know what’s worth checking out. Fortunately, the Santa Cruz Film Festival, now in its 11th year, manages to spread out its  creative offerings enough so that attendees can plan ahead. Diversity is key in this year’s fest—from the opening night film, California State of Mind: The Legacy of Pat Brown (May 10) to more eclectic fare, such as EarthVision’s “shorts” program, Active Planet (May 16). Take note of the following 10 films that caught our eye; a fine mix of local and non-local films, narrative and documentary, domestic and international, short- and feature-length works. See you at the movies.

Dead ex completes offbeat romantic triangle in JTC's entertaining 'Blithe Spirit'

A standard device of the classic drawing room comedy is the man with too many women: a wife and an ex-wife; a wife and a mistress; dueling girlfriends. In 1941, Noel Coward added a new, um, element to this classic situation in his comedy, “Blithe Spirit,” about a man, his wife, and the ghost of his previous wife (deceased). A fizzy concoction as dry as a martini, written as an antidote to the gloom of World War II, “Blithe Spirit” materializes once more in an upbeat and elegant new production by Jewel Theatre Company, the season finale to its seventh season.

Editor’s note: This week’s Poetry Corner features Martina Evans, an Irish poet and novelist living in London. Evans’ fourth collection, “Facing the Public,” was named a Book of the Year by The Times Literary Supplement and won the 2011 Piero Ciampi International Poetry Prize. “Petrol,” a verse novel, is set for release by Anvil Press in September 2012.