Falling for Documentaries

I can't recall an autumn like this one.  The weather has been so spectacular, every day.  I keep waiting for a cold spell or for a dreary, rainy day and it simply doesn't happen.  I feel guilty if I don't get out every day, as if I'm wasting this opportunity to enjoy a special gift.  I know that the grey days of winter are not far off and that I will be wishing them away soon enough.  Nature has a way of keeping her promises.  She always seems to deliver, year after year.  The seasons.  Each of them, a full blown miracle.

A lot of people, my husband included, do not like to see the late setting of the sun come to an end.  He loves the prolonged hours of sunlight afforded by the summer solstice and does not welcome the shorter days with the early sunsets that begin a few weeks before summer's end.  I, on the other hand, find the early sunset to be comforting, quieting, peaceful.  A good day, filled with sun and fall colors, is almost too much for me and so the arrival of the shade of evening brings with it a special feeling and a permit to do the "evening" things.....like watching good films.

I love GOOD movies.  Independent films.  Art-house films.  Rarely will I see a first runner.  I don't even know who one quarter of the current "actors" are.  I use the term loosely.  So many of them don't really "act" do they?  But most of all, I LOVE documentaries.  So much so, that I attend a twelve week "course" in documentaries called "The Doc is In".  Every Friday afternoon, I, along with about thirty others, sit in a viewing room at the community college and see a film that has been chosen by a lovely woman named Lily and her co-director, Leslie.  We never know beforehand what we will be seeing so there's always a nice surprise.  These women are experts in the art of choice and so far, each film we've seen has been a triumph.
After the films, discussions follow.  One thing about the people who wash ashore onto Cape Cod, for the most part, are here because they WANT to be. I'm one of them. In the case of the doc course, as in the case of all the courses offered by the Academy for Life Long Learning, most of the students are retired, all over age fifty.  Each has had a life before this one and each brings elements and skills from that life to their current lives.  Meaning.....there is so much talent, so much intellect and so much life left.  So, I sit and I watch and I listen and I feel that I have been plunked down into a room somewhere in Greenwich Village. You can fill my shoes with sand but you can't take the rhythm of the New York subway out of this old gal. Oh, thank you Fridays.

Now, this one is not a documentary, but I will tell you that last night, at home, shortly after sunset, we saw a fabulous French film called "The Intouchables".  Loved, loved, loved it.  French with subtitles.  I need more of that......I'm going to Paris this winter and I have to start getting it all back soon.  Stay tuned.